Breakthroughs in nanotechnology provide the potential to enhance and move beyond the current renewable energy alternatives. Nanotechnology can be used to develop technologies that are more efficient, inexpensive and environmentally sound than the conventional energy sources.

Solar energy is the renewable energy alternative that nanotechnology can have the most direct impact on. We are currently funding five projects, worth £6.5 million, that focus on the harvesting of solar energy. Four of these projects are in photovoltaic applications and one is in water splitting. These projects address both the efficiency and manufacturability of the device they create.

Towards the end of these projects it is the EPSRC's intention to provide substantial further funding to the project or projects that offer the greatest promise of producing an impact. This second stage will be aimed at taking the proof of concept developed in this first stage towards scale-up.

Projects:

Self-organized nanostructures and transparent conducting electrodes for low cost scaleable organic photovoltaic devices

Engineered heirarchical nanostructures for optimised hybrid photovoltaic devices

Manufacturable nanoscale architectures for heterojunction solar cells

High-efficiency Block Copolymer Solar Cells: A Scaleable Prototype for Low Cost Energy Generation

Nanocrystalline Photodiodes: Novel Devices for Water Splitting