Revolutionary solar center funds new energy technologies

Colorado State University is working on a broader effort to convert the sun’s energy to clean, low-cost electricity and fuels with four projects funded by a $375,000 grant from the Center for Revolutionary Solar Photoconversion. CRSP, the newest research center of the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory, recently awarded grants totaling more than $1.1 million for novel solar research projects.

CRSP launched in April 2008 to research new, cost-effective solar energy technologies or advance existing systems for direct solar energy conversion. The center’s grant funding now is helping support the work of CSU professors/researchers, including Eugene Chen, Travis Bailey, Steve Strauss, Olga Boltalina, and National Renewable Energy Laboratory physicist Nikos Kopidakis. The team is working to provide clean energy without adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere – developing revolutionary organic photovoltaic polymers to significantly increase the efficiency of organic photovoltaic solar cells.

Another CSU project will develop inexpensive, thin films for solar panels that are capable of producing electrical current. "We're trying to find a material that would be an efficient material for solar cells that contains only earth-abundant, non-toxic elements," says Amy Prieto, CSU chemistry professor. "There is still much to be understood about how the material we're now using works – how it absorbs photons and converts them to current."

A third project will develop semiconductor nanocrystals from inexpensive materials that absorb energy from sunlight and transport that energy in the form of electricity. A photovoltaic device based on semiconductor nanocrystals could be much more efficient in converting sunlight to electricity than other devices currently in use, explains chemistry professor Alan Van Orden. "We also hope to better understand the process of how 'charge carriers,' which contribute to the electricity generated within a photovoltaic device, hop between nanocrystals."

A fourth CSU project will help scientists better understand and control plasma processing in relation to film properties and interfaces in organic, polymeric, and hybrid solar cells.