The World in 2030

The World in 2030 221
conductors have been developed at the New Jersey Institute
of Technology. As physorg.com reported in July 2007:
Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology
have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be
painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets.
‘The process is simple,’ said lead researcher and author
Somenath Mitra, PhD, professor and acting
chair of NJIT’s Department of Chemistry and Environmental
Sciences. ‘Someday homeowners will
even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with
inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers
can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or
billboard to create their own power stations.’ 425
And in the same month MIT Technology Review published
a story revealing that plastic solar cells are reaching record
levels of efficiency:
A new process for printing plastic solar cells boosts
the power generated by the flexible and cheap form
of photovoltaics. Initial solar cells made with the
technique can, according to a report in today’s issue
of Science, capture solar energy with an efficiency of
6.5 percent – a new power record for photovoltaics
that employ conductive plastics to generate electricity
from sunlight. Most photovoltaics are made from
conventional inorganic semiconductors. 426