Now that’s what I’m talking about…

MIT reports that a team of researchers has published a new paper in the journal Advanced Materials detailing how solar cells can be printed as easily and as cheaply as “printing a photo on your inkjet” thanks to new special inks.

“The sheet of paper looks like any other document that might have just come spitting out of an office printer, with an array of colored rectangles printed over much of its surface. But then a researcher picks it up, clips a couple of wires to one end, and shines a light on the paper. Instantly an LCD clock display at the other end of the wires starts to display the time,” reports MIT news. And indeed it does look basically that simple!

We need away to break from batteries. They do not last long enough, they drive us crazy, we find ourselves always looking for outlets. This is the new pressure. We need our laptops and smartphones on all of the time. We live in the future.

Thanks goes to Sockolt for the tip.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

6 replies on “Solar Paper”

  1. We need away to break from batteries. They do not last long enough, they drive us crazy, we find ourselves always looking for outlets. This is the new pressure. We need our laptops and smartphones on all of the time. We live in the future.

    I will not be sharing my battery with you when you’re running around looking for a streetlight to run your solar-powered laptop after sundown.

  2. We do?

    My iPad runs for a few days without stopping, so long as I don’t let my son video chat and watch TV on it.

  3. We need as much solar power as we can get on our grid, but we’ll still need batteries in portable devices. One thing has almost nothing to do with the other.

  4. If you think you’re going to run your laptop on solar power instead of looking for somewhere to plug it in, I have bad news for you.

    @2: I also have bad news for you: in a year, that ipad battery’s going to last about 15 minutes.

    Sorry folks, but batteries and all the shitty things about them are still going to be with us for a while, even with cheap solar.

  5. Sounds like you really thought this one through Charles. People don’t just pick on you to be mean, but every time you post anything remotely science related, you show very little comprehension. Generating power isn’t the problem, it’s storing it.

Comments are closed.