Low cost solar cells, from nanotubes

Single-wall nanotube arrays, grown in a process invented at Rice University are both much more electroactive and potentially cheaper than platinum, a common catalyst in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), says Jun Lou, a materials scientist at Rice. When combined with newly developed sulfide electrolytes synthesized at Tsinghua University, the work paves the way for a low-cost, efficient alternative to silicon-based cells. Lou and co-lead investigator Hong Lin, a professor of materials science and engineering at Tsinghua, detailed their work in the open-access Nature journal.