Solarmer of  El Monte, CA is working with the University of California Los Angeles, researcher Prof. Yang Yang to develop colored polymer photovoltaics.  Also, a new collaboration with NREL will look at increasing the cell lifetime. The colors could be integrated into building skins or in decorative panels.  This could lead to PV fabric materials. Solarmer has a NREL certified 7.9% conversion efficiency cell. Solarmer has teamed with Joel Berman Glass Studios (Vancouver, BC) to make semitransparent panels.

Also, Konarka (Lowell, MA) is selling their Power Plastic® organic PV cells in a flexible sheet form. A new application is for transit roof shelters in San Francisco. The PV roofs will power signage and WiFi routers.  In the 2008 Nanomarket Report it is estimated that the portable PV power market alone would be $80 million by 2015.

Click here to read more about the UCLA Partnership

Click here to read more about the NREL Partnership

Click here for Information on Konarka Bus Shelters

Image: San Francisco Bus Transit with Konarka Power Plastic® - photo by Ryan Hughes, Lundberg Design

From Science Daily, April 12, 2010

by: Science Daily Staff from materials provided by DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

"Graphene, the two-dimensional crystalline form of carbon, is a potential superstar for the electronics industry. With freakishly mobile electrons that can blaze through the material at nearly the speed of light -- 100 times faster than electrons can move through silicon -- graphene could be used to make superfast transistors or computer memory chips.

Graphene's unique "chicken wire" atomic structure exhibits incredible flexibility and mechanical strength, as well as unusual optical properties that could open a number of promising doors in both the electronics and the photonics industries. However, among the hurdles preventing graphite from joining the pantheon of star high-tech materials, perhaps none looms larger than just learning to make the stuff in high quality and usable quantities.
"Before we can fully utilize the superior electronic properties of graphene in devices, we must first develop a method of forming uniform single-layer graphene films on nonconducting substrates on a large scale," says Yuegang Zhang, a materials scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Current fabrication methods based on mechanical cleavage or ultrahigh vacuum annealing, he says, are ill-suited for commercial-scale production. Graphene films made via solution-based deposition and chemical reduction have suffered from poor or uneven quality."

By Lin Edwards, PhysOrg.com, June 16, 2010

"Sanyo has announced its development of the world's most energy efficient solar module, the HIT-N230. The module was unveiled at a press conference run by Sanyo Electric's Solar Division.
 
Sanyo is a major manufacturer of solar panels, with three factories in Japan, one in Hungary serving Europe, and a fifth in Mexico that serves the US market. The N series of modules are produced in Japan and consist of solar cells of the Hetero-junction with Intrinsic Thin-layer (HIT) type.

HIT solar cells contain a single thin crystalline wafer of silicon surrounded by ultra-thin amorphous layers of silicon. They are characterized by high efficiency at high temperatures, and increased output power even during high summertime temperatures. The high conversion efficiency of HIT cells means more capacity can be installed compared to conventional crystalline silicon solar cells."

Click the image to read the full article on www.physorg.com