Coating could make power-generating window

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory say the material consists of a semiconducting polymer doped with carbon-rich fullerenes in a pattern of micron-size hexagon-shaped cells, ScienceDaily.com reported Thursday.

The material remains mostly transparent because the polymer chains group together only at the edges of the hexagons while remaining thin across the hexagon's center.

"The densely packed edges strongly absorb light and may also facilitate conducting electricity," Mircea Cotlet, a physical chemist at the Brookhaven laboratory, said, "while the centers do not absorb much light and are relatively transparent."

"Combining these traits and achieving large-scale patterning could enable a wide range of practical applications, such as energy-generating solar windows, transparent solar panels, and new kinds of optical displays," Brookhaven materials scientist Zhihua Xu says.

The work has been described in an article in the journal Chemistry of Materials.

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