Quantum Dot Recipe May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels

Science Daily is reporting that scientists have developed a new method for cost-effectively producing four-armed quantum dots that have previously been shown to be particularly effective at converting sunlight into electrical energy. The discovery could clear the way for better, cheaper solar energy panels.

Comments

Oil Companies

[biocute]

I notice oil companies are heavily involved in solar energy, are they securing their future and/or slowing solar tech down?

I would hate to reincarnate into a world where BP is still selling me (solar) energy as costly as what it is today.

Can individuals adequately produce energy themselves in the future, or will big-corps still be the real suppliers?

Re:Oil Companies

[Rycross]

I remember hearing here on slashdot that a lot of the energy companies actually recognize the fact of global warming. That, combined with the dual threat of peak oil, and they probably see the writing on the wall. To that effect, they're probably looking for ways to maintain their bottom line. Corporations are many things, but they aren't evil just for the heck of it. They're in it for profit.

Re:Oil Companies

[vertinox]

are they securing their future and/or slowing solar tech down?

Maybe they know their business model is about to die a very bad death due to market changes we don't know about.

Remember, the oil companies came up with the Peak Oil theory, not the environmentalists.

Re:Oil Companies

[amRadioHed]

Corporations are many things, but they aren't evil just for the heck of it. They're in it for profit. I'm confused. Are you trying to say corporations are evil, but it's ok since it helps them make money?

Re:Oil Companies

[Jeremi]

I'm confused. Are you trying to say corporations are evil, but it's ok since it helps them make money?

He's saying they aren't immoral so much as amoral. They don't sit around twirling their mustaches thinking of new ways to ruin the planet; rather, they sit around twirling their mustaches thinking up new ways to make money.

Re:Oil Companies

[Jeremi]

Fossil fuel is still pretty cheap, even with the OPEC cartel.

Don't forget to factor in the externalized costs (air pollution, global warming, terrorism, your children getting sent to Iraq, etc). The price you pay at the pump isn't the only price there is to be paid.

Re:Oil Companies

[Rei]

So, let's see if I have this straight. If oil companies don't invest in renewables, then they're referred to as dinosaurs and treated as garbage that's holding the world back while they destroy it. If oil companies do invest in renewables -- in the case of solar, outright doubling the amount of investment dollars in it (esp. BP and Shell) -- then they're only doing it to lay out patent minefields and stamp out development.

Tell me -- how do they win? No, really -- what can they do to make you happy? Leave the oil industry altogether, so that prices shoot through the roof, and some other oil company which cares *less* for the environment can take their place?

Meanwhile, people like you just keep driving and driving, taking airplanes and using plastics, and all the while acting like it's someone else's fault. Well, guess what? The problem is *consumption*.

Some oil companies, like Shell and BP, are hedging their bets with investments in renewables and carbon sequestration. While in each case it's only a couple percent of their revenues, the oil industry is so much bigger than the renewables industry that it majorly increases the dollars going into renewables. They're making that bet so that, in case energy sources do change or carbon sequestration is mandated, they're in a position to capitalize on it. Since sequestration and renewables would drive their competitors out of business, you'll find lots of instances of Shell and BP execs encouraging governments to act on climate change. Others, like the monstrously big Exxon-Mobil, aren't taking that bet. As a consequence, you'll find that something like 90% of the anti-global-warming and anti-renewables PR can trace back to them.

That's not to say that even the renewables supporters are angels. They still lobby, like all oil companies, for laws that protect their core businesses**. It's a dirty business, and the stricter environmental controls are for production, the tougher it is for them. Still, I'm a firm believer that A) renewables investments so big that they double the size the investment pool in some cases are a very good thing, and B) instead of complaining about those evil old oil companies, *stop consuming their damn product* if you have a problem with it. If you don't, you're *part of the problem*. The world's burdens shouldn't fall on their shoulders just because *you* don't want to think of yourself as part of the problem when you're the reason why they have to produce that environment-destroying stuff in the first place.

** On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised when I looked up what was being lobbied for and found that most oil companies, even Exxon-Mobil, lobby as "peaceniks" ;) Each major oil company had at least one country that they were pushing for more peaceful relations with. Why? You can't safely drill in a war-torn nation, and you can't drill in a nation that has a cold war going with your country. One wanted better relations with Iran. Another wanted better relations with Libya (they got that). And on, and on.

Re:Oil Companies

[Rei]

I don't know where on earth you get that from, but it can take over a decade for a new oil field to come online. You think that they're sinking money a for things that will pay off a decade or more down the line but they're only thinking on a 3-6 month timeframe?

Part of the problem is that it *does* take a while to shift production. You can reopen old wells or expand an existing field in half a year to a couple years, but brand new projects take many years to get started. Consequently, they have to do a lot of gambling on what the state of the world will be. There are tons of oil resources (bitumen, coal liquifaction, oil shale, arctic and deep sea extraction, etc), but we're running out of the "cheap" ones. The question is, how much of the more expensive ones do we think we'll need, ten years down the road? Will Nigerians be sabotaging pipelines, or will the crisis be resolved? Will the middle east have calmed down or will a whole new can of worms have opened up? Will foreign governments make nasty surprises on your projects, like Russia taking over Sakhalin or the Venezuelan goverment taking over joint ventures with PDVSA?

Not exactly an easy problem to solve. Bet wrong, and you'll go out of business. But you have to bet. Oil companies don't stay in business for half a century or more by only looking at their next year. Yet, that's exactly what the supermajors have done -- stay in business, decade after decade.

Re:Oil Companies

[autophile]

It's like some kind of demented Turing test. You have two terminals. One is connected to an evil guy twirling his moustache. The other is connected to a profit-seeking corporate board. But you don't know which terminal is connected to whom! Can you tell, just by examining their actions, which is the evil moustache, and which is the corporate board?

Kthxbai,

--Rob

More information about quantum dot solar cells

[mo]

From:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/bob8. asp

"Both the Los Alamos and NREL teams calculate a maximum of 42 percent conversion of solar power to usable electricity. Conventional cells, by contrast, operate at 15 to 20 percent efficiency."

Re:YASPB

[hey!]

The problem is not that solar panels aren't improving fast enough.

The problem is that petroleum is still so cheap.

So for the time being, we have not crossed any economic thresholds for application types, nor are we looking at any such developments in the next serval years. So while basic engineering developments are promising, we aren't going see much investment aimed at making solar part of our daily lives.

We haven't reach world peak petroleum production yet. As we approach it, and the rate of production increase slows relative to world economic growth, things will change.

Hacking Matter on Quantum Dots

[metlin]

Wil McCarthy has an interesting book called Hacking Matter, which talks about Quantum Dots and explains a bunch of applications.

Quite an interesting read, and well written. And I think you can download the book online at his website, as well.

Highly recommended - entertaining, informative read.

A long way to go yet

[flend]

As the summary points out, this is just a new recipe for making quantum dot tetrapods, for use in, for example, thin film solar cells where the cadmium selenide dots are encased in a polymer layer.

As with all stories about incremental progress in solar cell there are still a few hurdles yet to overcome:

Power conversion efficiencies from these cells are typically below 4% (eg. 1.8% original report, Sun et. al Nano Lett 3, 961). A good crystalline silicon cell will give you 12-15%.

Stability. Nanocrystals tend to go off pretty quickly and you don't want to be replacing your solar cell every week or so.

Cadmium is hella-toxic and _may be_ more so in nanocrystal form. A little vial of the stuff is enough to kill you, apparently. Makes you wonder about all those Ni-Cd batteries.

However, I welcome the (eventual) coming of our new tetrapod overlords.

Re:I applaud any solar breakthroughs regardless

[mattatwork]

It seems to early to tell how cool this will be...it'll be nice to see how the quantum-dot-based photovoltaics technology performs in the real world

I find it ironic that just about every solution we find to preserve limited resources and create environmentally friendly technology contains at least one toxic compound in it (cadmium selenide in this case)....

Show me the cheap pannels!

[Deagol]

I've been a /. member for 10 years now, and these "cheaper, more efficient" solar panel techniques have popped up at least a two or three times a year. When the hell can I go shopping for consumer grade panels and find something substantially below $4/Watt?

Given the subsidies solar research has had since the 70s, I can't figure out why progress has been so slow for the past 30 years. I'm not a big conspiracy buff, but, given the explosive rate of technology on other fronts over the same period, something just doesn't seem right.

Re:Show me the cheap pannels!

[sien]

Solar research has not had a lot of research dollars compared to fusion research, let alone any form of military research. This wasn't unreasonable when it seemed like there was no good reason for not using coal for power.

There has actually been fairly consistent, gradual improvement in solar panels.

If you're interested, get a hold of the May 8th Economist and check the Technology Quarterly. The article is online but requires an Economist subscription. There was an article on solar panels that was very informative. First, on price:

Even so, many people believe the prospects for solar energy have never looked brighter. Decades of research have improved the efficiency of silicon-based solar cells from 6% to an average of 15% today, whereas improvements in manufacturing have reduced the price of modules from about $200 per watt in the 1950s to $2.70 in 2004. Within three to eight years, many in the industry expect the price of solar power to be cost-competitive with electricity from the grid.

There is also a very interesting quote on how the technology can be compared to other technologies dealing with silicon and thin films.

The solar industry has in the past profited from the manufacturing improvements of chipmakers, and is now finding ways to benefit from innovations in other high-tech fields. "I think of the silicon solar-cell industry as a marriage between the semiconductor industry, where it gets its base technology, and the CD industry, which is very high volume," says Richard Swanson, SunPower's president and technology chief. Applied Materials, a leading maker of chipmaking gear, recently decided to apply its expertise in making flat-panel displays to thin-film solar panels.

There is also a graph in the article showing installed solar power capacity from 1994 to 2004. In 1994 there was about 0.2GW of installed solar power. In 2004 there was about 2.5GW of installed power.

From the article, you could go ahead and make up a 'Sol's Law', similar to Moore's law. It would not have anything like the 18 month double of transistor packing, but may have 10 year order of magnitudes of increases in installed solar panels and considerable reductions in cost.

Slashdot Post Title Generator

[dorix]

#!/usr/bin/perl

my @firstwords = ("Quantum", "Solar", "Mysterious", "Ancient", "Lovecraftian");
my @secondwords = ("Dot", "Nanotube", "Lubricant", "Artifact", "Octogenarian");
my @thirdwords = ("Recipe", "Formula", "Scripture", "Rumour", "Box", "Thingy");

my $firstword = @firstwords[int(rand($#firstwords + 1))];
my $secondword = @secondwords[int(rand($#secondwords + 1))];
my $thirdword = @thirdwords[int(rand($#thirdwords + 1))];

print "$firstword $secondword $thirdword May Lead To Cheaper Solar Panels\n";

non-toxic quantum dots

[Anonymous Coward]

Indium Phosphide (InP) QDs are around the corner. You heard it here first. My coworkers have been synthesizing them recently. No heavy metals or toxicity there--but then again, even if you were to accidentally ingest (and digest) some CdSe quantum dots, the amount of cadmium exposure would be comparable to smoking a cigarette.

(posting as AC so I don't get in trouble with the company legal team)

Re:How about storage

[matt21811]

"How do we store it?"

By pumping water uphill.

Re:How about storage

[MtViewGuy]

Problem with flywheel plants: they need very high quality metallurgy, ceramics or composite materials--none of which are cheap--to make them work, especially when you have to factor in the physics of a big, fast-spinning flywheel.

A better solution is to develop MIT's nanotube supercapacitor power storage units, which eliminates the complications of fast-moving parts and still offer quite a lot of power storage in a unit not much bigger than an air conditioning compressor for a whole house.