“Solar ‘sandwich’ could cover a variety of surfaces”

PhysicsWorld published a report on GRC and Machester already famous paper on enhanced light-matter interactions in heterostructures of atomic thin films.

“Ultrathin and flexible solar cells could be one step closer thanks to an international team of researchers that has made photovoltaics from 2D crystals called semiconducting transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). These devices could someday coat any surface exposed to sunlight to produce electricity – something that has proved difficult to do with current solar-cell technologies, which are thick, heavy and brittle.

‘If this technology is developed further, it has a chance of becoming a game-changer in the area of solar energy,’ says team member Antonio Helio Castro Neto of the National University of Singapore. The group also included Andre Geim and Kostya S Novoselov from the University of Manchester in the UK and researchers in Portugal, South Korea and Germany.”