May 5, 2013
A research team at MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering has achieved 5 percent conversion efficiency with an experimental thin-film cell, by growing transparent vertical nanowires from cheap, abundant zinc oxide and suffusing the matrix with colloidal lead-sulfide quantum dots.
The nanowires absorb and conduct light efficiently and the quantum dots produce multiple excitons. The goal is to produce a cheap, flexible PV module made from cheap, industrial-grade materials.
For the paper, see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201204192/abstract.