UW Energy Future: April 1, 2010

Kane Hall 130, 6:30PM

Plastic Solar Cells? Challenges and Opportunities for Photovoltaics

Prof. David Ginger, UW Chemistry Department

Energy is in the news nearly every day, but few people appreciate how enormous our appetite for energy has become.  Every person in America consumes the energy equivalent of 80 pounds of coal every single day.   What are the consequences of such consumption and how can we switch to a more sustainable path? This talk will review the massive scale of the solutions we must consider if we are to obtain a significant fraction of our energy consumption to sustainable sources.  In addition to implementing known technologies as fast as we can, I will argue that solar power must inevitably play a major role in any long-term sustainable energy plan, and that new technologies are needed to complete the transition in coming decades.  As one possibility, I will consider a technology that seemed science fiction even ten years ago, but is leading to start-up companies and prototype devices today: the development of low cost, flexible, plastic solar cells.