Make Solar Panels in your Pizza Oven

The reason why traditional power sources (line electric, gasoline engines, etc.) hold on is because of their cheap cost in comparison to "alternative" energy methods. Over the course of 5 years, consumption via solar-power will always be more expensive than line-power. What there were a way to bring that cost down for solar electric power? Look Down Under. An Australian scientist has developed a new method of manufacturing solar cells using nothing more than some nail polish remover, a pizza oven and a standard inkjet printer.

The iJET technique is so easy and cheap to carry out that it could revolutionize access to solar technology in the developing world.

In a recent radio interview (audio), Nicole Kuepper, a 23 year-old PhD student at the University of New South Wales, explained the process.

Firstly, she takes a standard silicon solar cell and sprays it with a substance similar to nail polish. Then, she inkjet prints something like nail polish remover onto the wafer in a set pattern in the same way that you’d print a normal photo. This enables the creation of high-resolution patterns on the cell at a very low cost. The cell is then metallized with an aluminum spray and baked at a very low temperature of around 550 fahrenheit in “something like a pizza oven.”

Kuepper went on to explain how solar cells are currently manufactured using expensive “high-tech, high-cleanliness equipment,” too costly for many countries in the developing world, adding, “we’re trying to do away with all of that so that so we can ensure that these solar cells can actually be manufactured in a developing country’s environment that you might find in say Ghana or Laos for example.”

(from Clean Technica)

Fablabs are Fab!

Fablabs are taking one step closer to home usage. This from the NY Times:

Bill Gross, chairman of IdeaLab, says the technology it has developed, which uses a halogen light bulb to melt nylon powder, will allow the price of the printers to fall to $1,000 in four years.

“We are Easy-Bake Ovening a 3-D model,” he said. “The really powerful thing about this idea is that the fundamental engineering allows us to make it for $300 in materials.”

Others are working on the same idea.

“In the future, everyone will have a printer like this at home,” said Hod Lipson, a professor at Cornell University, who has led a project that published a design for a 3-D printer that can be made with about $2,000 in parts. “You can imagine printing a toothbrush, a fork, a shoe. Who knows where it will go from here?”

Three-dimensional printers, often called rapid prototypers, assemble objects out of an array of specks of material, just as traditional printers create images out of dots of ink or toner. They build models in a stack of very thin layers, each created by a liquid or powdered plastic that can be hardened in small spots by precisely applied heat, light or chemicals.

Imagine something that combines the qualities of a printer, a sprayer and an easy bake oven. It's terrific. When the price falls below $600, I am so going to buy one. They won't fall that low? Laser printers have gone from $20,000 to $3,000 in the mid-1980s to the inkjet alternatives today at $60 each. I don't think these will do this low, but it is reason to think they could get a mass market edition below $1000 in the next couple of years.

What will follow that? Open Source 3-D models. About 5% of the population will use this to replace alot of their manufactured items: kitchenware, toys, trinkets. About 5% will buy one and under-utilize them. Lots of places in the middle of nowhere will use these for most of their manufacturing, beholden only their supply of patterns, electricity and raw material. This will lead to the next invention: defablab. A De-Fablab will rip down any material into basic elements. Or, the killer FabLab generation will be the one that can rip anything down and turn it into fodder.