Bucky Balls to the Rescue

I'm very excited about this technology. Instead of Silicon-based photovoltaics, it uses Buckminister Fuller's "bucky balls" to create "power plastic". One of the beauties of this process is that it can literally print photovoltaic receptors.

Konarka Technologies, Inc., an innovator in development and commercialization of Power Plastic®, a material that converts light to energy, today announced that the National Energy Renewable Laboratory (NREL) has verified that the material class within Konarka’s portfolio of flexible organic based photovoltaic (PV) solar cells has demonstrated 6% efficiency performance. The results were achieved by Dr. Alan Heeger of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and chief scientist at Konarka, under the scope of the Sustainable Development Technology Canada program (SDTC), which provides funding to partners Université Laval (Quebec), the National Research Council of Canada (Ottawa) and PCAS Canadian Subsidiary St-Jean Photochemicals (Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec) for the development of low cost printable organic solar cells. Konarka is the U.S. industrial solar cell partner

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