Researchers replace ‘visibility-blocking’ metal with transparent, environmentally-friendly compounds which collect electricity generated on the Company’s SolarWindow™, currently under development. BURTONSVILLE, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--New Energy Technologies, Inc. (OTCBB: NENE), currently developing MotionPower™ technologies for generating electricity from the kinetic energy of moving vehicles and SolarWindow™ technologies capable of generating electricity on glass windows, today announced that researchers have overcome a significant scientific hurdle in creating the first-of-its-kind see-thru solar glass by replacing a visibility-blocking solid metal component with environmentally-friendly, non-metallic, transparent compounds. To-date, one of the biggest obstacles faced by researchers developing New Energy’s SolarWindow™ technology has been the presence of metal, an opaque material which blocks all visibility and prevents light from passing through glass. Eliminating metal has proved especially challenging since the metal component acts as the negative ‘polar contact’ – an important function in collecting the electricity generated from solar cells on the surface of the glass. Today’s breakthrough replaces this visibility-blocking metal with environmentally-friendly and more transparent compounds. These compounds now function as the negative polar contact and collect electricity from New Energy’s SolarWindow™. The production of solar-generated electricity on glass is made possible by the world’s tiniest working solar cells, which have been successfully applied on to glass surfaces by researchers currently developing the Company’s transparent SolarWindow™ technology. These ultra-small solar cells measure less than ¼ the size of a grain of rice, are fabricated using environmentally-friendly materials, and successfully produce electricity, as demonstrated in a published peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy of the American Institute of Physics.
