Spray on solar cells become reality?

The research of Illan Kramer could be a major step towards making spray-on solar cells easy and cheap to manufacture. It could even make every object become an energy supplier.

My dream is that one day you’ll have two technicians with Ghostbusters backpacks come to your house and spray your roof,” (Kramer). Kramer is a post-doctoral fellow with the Ted Sargent group at the University of Toronto, and IBM Canada’s Research and Development Centre. Kramer calls his system sprayLD, a play on the manufacturing process called ALD, short for atomic layer deposition, in which materials are laid down on a surface one atom-thickness at a time.

The scientists stopped by an art store near the university and purchased a few airbrushes for a little over $100. They also bought 3 spray nozzles, including one fine-mist type from a vendor who mostly services the steel mill industry. The device they created and which is able to create the spray on solar cell coating looks like something constructed during a Junkyard Wars episode. The costs are less than $1,000 to build. Solar cells not included in this small investment

“If your hope is to coat every road or ... make many, many, many kilometers worth of solar cells, you need to be able to coat very large areas in a ... quick amount of time and in a uniform way,” Kramer explains.

What will the future bring? A abundance of energy because of these kinds of breakthroughs. The trends is towards a circular world where we become less dependent of fossil energy. This to safe the planet and to leve within the boundaries of our precious planet. Solar technologies like spray on solar cells could bring this wanted and needed future much closer. The future of solar power is that people may be able to convert almost any surface into a solar power generator.