A simple new approach to plastic solar cells

Humankind is in the midst of a massive drive to harness solar energy to power our homes, gadgets, and industry. Plastic solar cells, based on blends of conducting organic polymers, are of interest for making lightweight and ...

Scientific advances can make it easier to recycle plastics

Most of the 150 million tons of plastics produced around the world every year end up in landfills, the oceans and elsewhere. Less than 9 percent of plastics are recycled in the United States, rising to about 30 percent in ...

Making flexible electronics with nanowire networks

A smartphone touchscreen is an impressive piece of technology. It displays information and responds to a user's touch. But as many people know, it's easy to break key elements of the transparent, electrically conductive layers ...

Plastics and the curse of durability

Plastic is an indispensable part of everyday life. Bottles, bags, packaging and technical molded parts made of plastic are lightweight and resistant to water and decay. While such qualities are highly valued during usage, ...

Polymer additive could revolutionize plastics recycling

When Geoffrey Coates, the Tisch University Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, gives a talk about plastics and recycling, he usually opens with this question: What percentage of the 78 million tons of plastic used ...

X-ray vision reveals how polymer solar cells wear out

Scientists from the Technical University of Munich have used the acurate X-ray vision provided by DESY's radiation source PETRA III to observe the degradation of plastic solar cells. Their study suggests an approach for improving ...

Scientists find a new dopant for organic electronic devices

A team of the Lomonosov MSU researchers in collaboration with their German colleagues from the Institute of Polymer Research in Dresden (Leibniz Institute) believe a particular molecule could lead to the development of organic ...

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