Nanosys Co-Founder Reports Technical Breakthrough in Solar Element Manufacturing

Cambridge, MA - (March 28, 2002). Nanosys Incorporated announced today that a team led by Dr. Paul Alivisatos, Nanosys Co-founder and Professor of Chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley, has discovered a novel nanomaterial for the efficient production of solar energy. The nanocomposite devices can be produced using inexpensive manufacturing methods and will capture the benefits of solar energy in a way that is more cost effective than traditional technologies.

The team’s discovery is reported in the March 29, 2002 issue of the prestigious journal Science in an article entitled “Hybrid Nanorod-Polymer Solar Cells”. Dr. Alivisatos is the senior author of the article, along with UC Berkeley scientists Wendy Huynh and Janke Dittmer.

“Traditional silicon-based photovoltaic elements are expensive to manufacture in large volumes, requiring extremely high temperature, high vacuum and numerous lithographic steps,” stated Dr. Alivisatos. “That’s why we chose to pursue the hybrid nanocomposite approach, incorporating inorganic nanorods into organic semiconductor films. The nanorod/polymer hybrid elements can be mass-produced under ambient conditions without any of these complicated and expensive steps”. He continued, “By growing nanorods with a specific diameter, we can also precisely control the band gap of the nanocomposite, adjusting it for optimal absorption of ambient light; that’s not possible to do with traditional semiconducting materials.”

“Until now, the high costs of photovoltaic-element manufacturing made solar energy too expensive to compete with commodity electricity available from utilities”, commented Larry Bock, President and CEO of Nanosys. “The discovery by Dr. Alivisatos will create solar cells that could compete with the highest-efficiency semiconductor cells, but be fabricated using the techniques used to make photographic film, which is produced at low costs and in volumes of literally miles of material per day. This breakthrough is especially important in light of last week’s passage of the U.S. Senate bill requiring that 10 percent of U.S. electricity be derived from renewable sources by 2020”.

"There has been much interest recently in the possibility of making cheap, plastic solar cells,” stated Keith Barnham of Imperial College, London. “The efficiencies of these plastic-cells, however, are currently far too low for commercial exploitation. Professor Alivisatos' group has made a breakthrough by incorporating nanorods into polymer devices, so as to give them many features of conventional, high-efficiency crystalline cells." Professor Barnham pioneered the use of quantum well nanostructures in high efficiency solar cells like those deployed on satellites. He is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of solar energy. "I think this hybrid approach is a most promising way to achieve the efficiencies necessary to make plastic solar cells commercially viable. It would help to make solar electricity competitive with fossil fuels."

About Solar Energy

In 2001, the worldwide sales of solar, or photovoltaic, systems were estimated at over $1 billion. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory at the U.S. Department of Energy, the solar energy market has been growing at 25% annually for the last decade and will reach $15 billion by 2020. On March 21, 2002, the U.S. Senate passed a bill requiring all investor-owned electric utilities to obtain at least 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources such as solar energy. Currently, less than 2 percent of electricity comes from renewable sources. Instead of building solar stations themselves, the utilities may choose to purchase renewable energy credits from other companies in the open market.

About Professor Paul Alivisatos

Dr. Alivisatos is co-founder of Nanosys Inc. and Chancellor's Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science at the University of California-Berkeley. He also has a joint appointment at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. Dr. Alivisatos is a leader in the field of nanotechnology with a focus on the physics and applications of semiconductor nanocrystals and nanorods. Dr. Alivisatos is the founding editor of the American Chemical Society journal, Nano Letters. He has received several awards, including the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator Award for pioneering work in this area.

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