Aussie researchers use household sticky tape to create high-tech, ultra-thin solar cells

Australian scientists have successfully used household sticky tape to help build ultra-thin and lightweight solar cells that could improve the way solar energy is collected.

Solar cells are used to collect energy from the sun to convert into electrical power for portable devices such as lights, radios and computers.

Scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra used sticky tape to create single-atom thick layers, termed phosphorene, in the construction of the cells. This was done in the same simple way as the Nobel Prize winning discovery of graphene.

Unlike graphene, phosphorene works as a semiconductor but is thinner and lighter than silicon which is the basis of current electronics technology.

"Because phosphorene is so thin and light, it creates possibilities for making lots of interesting devices, such as LEDs or solar cells," said lead researcher Dr Yuerui (Larry) Lu, from ANU.

"It shows very promising light emission properties."

Lu said the household tape was used to peel thinner and thinner layers of crystals from the black crystalline form of phosphorus.

As well as creating much thinner and lighter semiconductors than silicon, phosphorene has light emission properties that vary widely with the thickness of the layers, which enables much more flexibility for manufacturing.

"This property has never been reported before in any other material," said Dr Lu, from ANU's College of Engineering and Computer Science, whose study is published in the Nature serial journal Light: Science and Applications.

"By changing the number of layers we can tightly control the band gap, which determines the material's properties, such as the color of LED it would make.

"You can see quite clearly under the microscope the different colors of the sample, which tells you how many layers are there," said Lu.

The behavior of phosphorene in thin layers was superior to silicon, Lu said. "Phosphorene's surface states are minimized, unlike silicon, whose surface states are serious and prevent it being used in such a thin state." Endi