A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame has made a major advance toward this vision by creating an inexpensive "solar paint" that uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy. The advance was made with nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide, which were coated with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide. The particles were then suspended in a water-alcohol mixture to create a paste.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for researchers is to get the efficiency levels to be as great if not greater than typical solar cells which means around 10-15%. So far the paint is at 1% efficiency in the best-case scenario.
The paint has been deemed Sun-Believable by its creators because it can be made cheaply in large quantities. Certainly one distinguishing character… Read More