Jones,
Thanks for posting that reference! Cool! Actual desktop USB interface
computer laser cutters. And they sell used ones on occasion too.
That stuff reminds me of the liquid sodium silicate I used to play
with as a kid. It was sold under the name "Eisenglass" I think. It
came as a viscous liquid in quart cans. It was used to paint eggs
(still in the shells) in order to preserve them longer I think. This
lost importance when refrigerators became common. I added chemicals
like copper sulfate to the Eisenglass to grow a "chemical garden" in
a glass jar. It formed neat plant-like tentacles. I don't know where
I got the "recipe" for that. I think it might have been Sci. Am. or
Pop. Sci.
I am curious as to why you think circuits have to be etched? To use
silicon for a solar cell I think it has to be doped, so as to create
a PN boundary. It is the potential drop across the PN boundary that
actually drives a solar cell. The sun "merely" creates the ions in
the gap so they can be accelerated across it. I do wonder if it
might be possible to use a zinc or zinc plated substrate (zinc is a
hole conductor) coated with silicon that is chemically doped as an N
(electron) conductor. If so, the remaining things necessary to create
a solar cell are a transparent conductive overcoating, and possibly
the printing of a very conductive metallic collector circuit on top.
On Feb 9, 2010, at 6:51 AM, Jones Beene wrote:
Ron,
You have to wonder - with liquid glass and a commercial laser engraver
(etcher) which is similar to an ink jet printer -
http://www.epiloglaser.com/product_line.htm
and some imagination and metal-coated film, if one could not etch the
circuits with the printer, then coat this film with the glass, and
thereby
make a large and fairly efficient homemade nano-solar thin film
photocell
array...
Jones
-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Wormus
This sounds very cool.
<http://www.physorg.com/news184310039.html>
Ron
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
