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Printable solar materials could soon turn many parts of a house into solar panels

Posted in habitats, solar power, sustainability

New houses could soon deliver on a long-awaited promise and incorporate windows or roof tiles that harvest solar energy, research conducted at KAUST suggests.

Derya Baran, at the KAUST Solar Center, and her colleagues have developed a photovoltaic organic material that captures light efficiently and that potentially could be coated on building .

Traditional roof-mounted solar panels are made from slabs of silicon, but can also capture energy from sunlight. These molecules could be formulated as inexpensive printable inks that are applied to regular building components such as windows. Turning sunlight into electricity is a multistep process, and the key to developing high-performance has been to find organic molecules that are good at every step, Baran explains.

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