Grätzel Cells Still Need Improvement
This year’s winner of the Millennium Technology Prize, Michael Grätzel, director of the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, has appeared often in Technology Review for his work developing dye-sensitized solar cells (also called Grätzel cells). The solar cells can be flexible, transparent, and tinted just about any color you’d like–features that make them attractive for consumer goods and windows. We wrote about the first product to use the devices last fall–a backpack with a solar panel attached to the back for charging portable electronics.
They’re not ready to replace crystalline silicon and cadmium-tellluride thin film solar panels, the kind sold today for rooftop and large-scale utility installations. Ultimately, when their cost is figured not by initial price, but rather the price divided by the total kilowatt hours produced during their warrantied life, they’re not yet cheap enough. But Grätzel and many other researchers are hard at work to make them more durable, cheaper to make, and more efficient.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.
OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora
The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.
Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.
Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.
How one mine could unlock billions in EV subsidies
The Inflation Reduction Act is starting to transform the US economy. To understand how, we tallied up the potential tax credits available as the nickel from a single mine flows through the supply chain.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.