Solar Paint May Soon Provide Energy at Home

There could soon come a time when solar cells, instead of being large panels which sit atop your roof harnessing energy, are instead literally painted onto the top of the house to do the same job, but with less cost and less of an eye sore. That’s the idea, anyhow, behind research recent published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

This research, highlighted recently by LiveScience, points out that photovoltaic (solar cells), which “convert sunlight directly into electricity and are typically made from silicon,” could potentially be made much smaller. The researchers behind this work, including one Brian Korgel of the University of Texas at Austin, have developed “nanoparticle ink” prototypes which are sunlight absorbing and could potentially be sprayed on to surfaces to offer energy for a building. The time factor on this development though is at least three to five years off, and even that is probably being a little over optimistic. The idea, though, does hold a lot of promise.

LiveScience [via GreenBeat]