{"id":2136,"date":"2014-06-25T15:33:39","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T20:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=2136"},"modified":"2014-06-25T15:33:39","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T20:33:39","slug":"sea-salt-makes-for-cheaper-greener-solar-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/sea-salt-makes-for-cheaper-greener-solar-cells\/","title":{"rendered":"Sea salt makes for cheaper, greener solar cells"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_2132\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JohnMajor-3Large.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2132\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2132\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JohnMajor-3Large.jpg\" alt=\"Researcher Jonathan Major demonstrates a simple method of applying magnesium chloride to a thin film solar cell. By replacing more expensive and toxic cadmium chloride, magnesium chloride could make solar cell manufacture less expensive and more environmentally friendly. (Photo credit: University of Liverpool) \" width=\"350\" height=\"304\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JohnMajor-3Large.jpg 350w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JohnMajor-3Large-300x260.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-2132\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Researcher Jonathan Major demonstrates a simple method of applying magnesium chloride to a thin film solar cell. By replacing more expensive and toxic cadmium chloride, magnesium chloride could make solar cell manufacture less expensive and more environmentally friendly. (Photo credit: University of Liverpool)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\">A new processing technique could enable cheaper, cleaner thin-film solar cells, according to a new study. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Cadmium telluride is often touted as a replacement for silicon in solar cells; because it absorbs light so much better than silicon it could lead to thinner and more efficient cells. However, part of the manufacturing process involves cadmium chloride, an expensive and highly toxic salt. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #222222;\">The new study demonstrates that cadmium chloride can be replaced with magnesium chloride &#8211; which is easily extracted from seawater and is safe enough to eat &#8211; without compromising the efficiency of the solar cell. This could lead to cheaper, greener manufacturing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nature\/journal\/vaop\/ncurrent\/full\/nature13435.html\" target=\"_blank\">Original research paper<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0published in the journal\u00a0<em>Nature\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>June 25, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><span><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h4>Jonathan Major, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new processing technique could enable cheaper, cleaner thin-film solar cells, according to a new study. Cadmium telluride is often touted as a replacement for silicon in solar cells; because it absorbs light so much better than silicon it could lead to thinner and more efficient cells. However, part of the manufacturing process involves cadmium [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[644,215,1838],"class_list":["post-2136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-energy","tag-environment","tag-solar"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/JohnMajor-3Large.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-ys","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2137,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136\/revisions\/2137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}