A team of scientists has finished developing a cheaply manufactured paint-like product prototype that they hope you will eventually be able to put on the outside of your home. The paint will generate electricity from light – electricity that can then be captured and used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside of your home.

The product, dubbed as a “solar paint”, and named “Sun-believable” by its developers at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, is pretty much like any other paint used to coat home exteriors and other surfaces.

But, when hit by light, the semiconducting particles within Sun-believable produce small amounts of electricity that researchers want to eventually capture in great enough quantities so as to power home appliances.

Basically, when the paint is brushed onto a transparent conducting material and exposed to light, it creates electricity.

Prashant Kamat, Professor of Science in Chemistry and Biochemistry, and an investigator in Notre Dame’s Center for Nano Science and Technology:

By incorporating power-producing nanoparticles, called quantum dots, into a spreadable compound, we’ve made a one-coat solar paint that can be applied to any conductive surface without special equipment.

The best light-to-energy conversion efficiency we’ve reached so far is 1 percent, which is well behind the usual 10 to 15 percent efficiency of commercial silicon solar cells.

But the paint can be made cheaply and in large quantities. If we can improve the efficiency somewhat, we may be able to make a real difference in meeting energy needs in the future.

That’s why we’ve christened the new paint, Sun-Believable.

Although Kamat admits there is still plenty more they need to do before the product hits the market, he wants “to do something transformative, to move beyond current silicon-based solar technology.”

[Source: ScienceDaily]