CpE - Carbon Nanotube Research / Developing a Low Cost Solar Voltaic Paint
Paint your roof, paint your siding - paint the tool shed. Paint your car roof!
Easily "paint" a solar panel onto any surface exposed to sunlight!

The goal is to create a low cost, spreadable covering for application to sections of the residential roof -- using the structure itself as the substrate.

What is nanotechnology? What is a carbon nanotube?

For the past 30 years, the politics of energy production may have restricted the growth of solar power. Extremely large investments by the oil companies to drill, refine, and distribute their product commands extreme power in our government. The current structure of campaign contributions, lobbying and advertising has the public divided -- possibly against its own best interest. However, the current instability of the oil supply and the impending disaster of global warming seems to be inspiring everyone to overwhelmingly support alternative sources of energy.

At the turn of the 20th century, Albert Einstein won a Nobel Peace prize for his work on what is called "the photoelectric effect." Since then, it has developed into reliable a power source -- used to provide electricity for everything from satellites to residences.

Light is, simply, electromagnetic energy. Nature has had billions of years to develop countless uses for the sun's radiance. To convert this freely-available energy into electricity, the best technology we have developed so far is that of photo voltaic cells.

A great advantage inherent in producing electricity in this way is that there are no moving parts -- a properly installed system requires very little maintenance. The main disadvantage is the requirement of local forms of power storage, as power can be produced only when the sun is shining. To complement this weakness of solar power generation, add batteries and an inverter tied to the grid. This way, a reliable arrangement is created -- while at the same time taking a necessary step towards a distributed power network.

As with any product, cost is an important factor. It is a variable that is subject to supply and demand principles like everything else. The cost begins relatively high because the demand is low. However, if every rooftop in our country had a solar array and grid tied inverter, the mass production would cause the price to go down -- as the demand would be high. This presents a classic "Catch 22"!

Advocating solar panels on every roof certainly does not exclude the need for an updated power grid. Super-conductors can transmit power without loss over great distances, and have the potential to "follow" the solar output area around the world to provide everybody on Earth with inexpensive electricity.

Interestingly, the coolant in such a super conducting grid could very well be liquid hydrogen -- which is being pumped to various dispenseries around the world, used as an energy source for our vehicles. The cooling effect would be able to keep the wires in the super conducting temperature range no matter where they were routed.

The high level of preparation required for the materials involved in creating a standard solar cell precludes the possibility of applying it as a “paint.” One of the problems faced while trying to make a solar cell is the need for two conductors to carry the current down and out of the photo active substance. A typical solution used is to prepare a conductive coating on glass and cover the entire cell with it. This also protects the material that converts the light to electrical current while blocking a small percentage of the usable light and significantly increasing the cost.

Since building an arc servo for another application, CpE has learned that the particular conditions of our experiments happens to be one the known ways to produce valuable carbon nanotubes. Although we have no access to the highly-sensitive equipment needed to see these extremely small structures yet, there are cruder experiments to collect these nanotubes and confirm their presence.

Although the initial trial creation of solar cells using titanium dioxide as the semi-conductor and various other dyes and solvents produced a photoelectric effect, the power produced was not significant enough to generate a usable current. This was still a successful experiment, as it confirms the concept of a gel-like spreadable solar voltaic material -- and certainly warrants further research and development.

As I understand the reasoning for using nanotubes in a photo-voltaic cell, they assist in conducting the current out of the photo active regions while minimizing the blocked light due to their unimaginably tiny size. This is where "thinking out of the box" came in to play. None of the papers I have read describe a procedure that had positive results. A patent application needs to be filed...