Australian Student Invents Cheap Solar Using Nail Polish and a Pizza Oven
An Australian PhD student has found a cheap way to make solar cells with nail polish, a pizza oven and an ink jet printer. 23-year-old Nicole Kuepper’s invention, named iJET, doesn’t require the pricey clean rooms and high-temperature ovens of traditional solar panel manufacturing plants, thus dramatically lowering the cost of solar and paving the road for introducing the technology to third-world countries.
Kuepper was awarded two Australian Museum Eureka Prizes, the country’s top science award, for iJET. Unfortunately, it seems like the only page that would explain how iJET works is down right now, but Kuepper said it would probably take five years to commercialise the technology and it’ll help people in less developed nations to “read at night, keep informed about the world through radio and television and refrigerate life-saving vaccines” without all those nasty CO2 emissions. [The Australian via Treehugger]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
I do think that technology should be freely-available in an energy-starved world.
Please consider a Creative Commons license for it, eh?
Yes, I realize that your University has rights to it if its part of your degree requirements.
Convince them of the great press they’d get– better than any that can be purchased!
Hope it goes forward quickly, because the “5 years” quoted here to release is waaaay too slow!