By Melody Pupols -
The materials in most of today’s residential rooftop solar panels can store energy from the sun for only a few microseconds at a time. A new technology developed by chemists at UCLA is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks — an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
The new design is inspired by the way that plants generate energy through photosynthesis.
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Ref: Long-lived photoinduced polaron formation in conjugated polyelectrolyte-fullerene assemblies Science (2015) | DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa6850
New development could increase solar panel energy storage from a few microseconds to several weeks
