Researchers at Warwick University and Imperial College London will work with Kurt Lesker, Asylum Research, New World Solar and Warwick University spin-out Molecular Solar on the project, which is intended to lead to the development of solar cells made from organic semiconductor materials that are inexpensive to manufacture.
Prof Tim Jones from Warwick University said that it would be possible to deploy such cells as flexible sheets that could be used for a variety of applications, including a solar-powered mobile phone charger that rolls up into a shape as small as the size of a pen or a detachable sun shade for automobile windscreens that powers a small fan to circulate air and cool the interior of a car when parked in direct sunlight.
In total, 15 British businesses and seven universities are to share £5m of government funding from the Technology Strategy Board and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to enable them to research the use of novel nanoscale technologies to develop the next generation of solar energy devices.
Viking Link connects UK and Danish grids
These underwater links must, based on experience with gas pipelines, be vulnerable to sabotage by hostile powers. Excessive dependency on them could...