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"If you could make solar cells cheaper and more efficient, then you could think about putting them on a much wider variety of surfaces," said Hanley, professor and head of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago."There's only a certain amount of energy that falls from the sun per square meter. You can't increase that amount of energy, but you can make it less expensive to capture it," he said.

"If you can do everything from the gaseous deposition stage, you might make the process less expensive,” Hanley said. “You also may make a novel material that has a better efficiency."Hanley and his coworkers will evaluate the electrical properties of these new films and study how they respond to light. He thinks that using different chemicals for nanoparticle-embedded solar films could create new products some two to three times more efficient than products now on the market, making solar energy more competitive.Working with Igor Bolotin, research assistant professor of chemistry, and graduate students Mike Majeski and Doug Pleticha, Hanley developed a method for depositing metal chalcogenide nanoparticles by cluster beam deposition. Following parallel research, the american company Magnolia Solar is already very near to launch into the market much cheaper solar cells.. See our article http://www.nanocomputer.com/?p=2443.

Source: http://www.chem.uic.edu/hanley/