Solar Energy On a Roll
Affordable, film-thin photovoltaic plastic promises to make solar energy mainstream.
Innovator: Alan J. Heeger
Silicon-based solar panels remain rigid, bulky and expensive a half-century after their introduction. Alan Heeger, the 2000 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, is working to change that. He sees the answer in the bottles of colored liquids--semiconducting polymers suspended in solution--that he developed and keeps in his office at the University of California at Santa Barbara. "They look like inks," Heeger says. "That's the point. They can be treated as inks."
Heeger and his colleagues at Konarka, the Lowell, Mass.-based company he co-founded, can "print" strips of photovoltaic (PV) plastic as thin as photographic film. As with traditional PV panels, sunlight is converted into electrical energy. The advantage over traditional crystalline silicon on a glass substrate: Heeger's power plastic is 100 times thinner, as well as more pliable, cheaper and easier to mass-produce. Imagine electricity-generating awnings, tents, roofs and even clothing. "Solar energy is going to happen," says Heeger. "It will happen sooner and on a larger scale if we can provide a lower-cost technology."
Deployment date: Heeger points to a "clear technical road map" that will put product in people's hands within two years.