Two Developments in Solar Cells

Solar cells are, of course, one of the great hopes for a renewable energy source, but they're expensive to make and install and not that efficient. (See also these general articles on solar efficiency and grid parity.)

Two recent theoretical developments may improve the situation, though neither is a cure all (and there is no cure all for solar power without radically different approaches than silicon based solar cells).

First, scientists in Finland have developed a nano surface (theoretically) that traps a large amount of light -- a better development than current anti-reflective surfaces which still allow a significant amount of light to pass through. They believe the surface is capable of being printed on at low cost.

Second, Swedish and German scientists, along with a scientist from China, have developed a method for growing micro wires of indium and phosphorus which can capture and convert more sunlight to electricity. This process hopefully can be further tweaked to increase efficiency and may be developed for application on industrial scales, though that seems a ways away. This method also apparently lends itself to multijunction solar cells in which multiple layers of different types of solar cells capture more sunlight, though still less than 50%.

As a bonus, Scientific American has a nice interactive graphic on solar cells work.