Solar renewable energy in higher extent is still not in reach of homeowners. Therefore young scientists and students of Austin University in Texas are making big research to develop a new type of solar cells with ability to be printed like a newspaper.
Main problem of high expenses is gas-phase deposition in a vacuum chamber, which should be replaced with new nanomaterial that would be in normal expense range.
The cells are based on the use of specialized inks that can be printed using a roll-to-roll printing process on a plastic substrate or even stainless steel. The light-absorbing nanomaterials are 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair and because of this microscopic size they carry better physical properties that can enable their use in higher-efficiency devices.
For now the efficiency is not high enough, but the team is already working on it with great optimism!