Leaves of plants are tiny factories in which sunlight converts carbon dioxide gas and water into carbohydrates and oxygen. They are not very efficient however but are very effective over a wide range of sunlight conditions. In spite of the low efficiency and the fact that the leaves must be replaced, the process has worked for hundreds of millions of years, and forms the primary energy source for all life on earth.

Since the 1970's, attempts have been made to create a better solar cell based on this principle. There were early attempts to cover crystals of semiconductor titanium dioxide with a layer of chlorophyll. However, the electrons were reluctant to move through the layer of pigment, so the efficiency of the first solar cells sensitised in this way was about 0.01%.

Then in 1988 at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, Michael Graezel discovered that nanotechnology could overcome the problem. Instead of using a single large titanium dioxide (titania) semiconductor, he worked with a sponge of small particles, each about twenty nanometres in diameter, coated with an extremely thin layer of pigment. This method increased the effective surface area available for absorbing the light by 'many times'- now the sunlight was efficiently converted into an electric current.

 

Dyesol became a pioneer licensee of the dye solar cell (DSC) technology developed at EPFL, and since 1994, Dyesol's team has been developing this invention to a range of commercial product solutions. Now, less than 15 years after the DSC effect was successfully demonstrated in Switzerland, materials, manufacturing, prototyping and research equipment and laboratory solutions for 3^rd Generation DSC is available from the Australian company Dyesol.

DSC has been identified in the Japanese and EU Photovoltaic Roadmaps as the emerging solar technology, and has also been called the most promising advance in solar cell technology since the invention of the silicon cell.