Surrey Nanosystems is to supply Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) with an advanced spluttering tool, to aid its research into the fabrication of hybrid solar cells.

The tool will be used by researchers in LMU’s Department of Physics and Centre for NanoScience, to develop production techniques that utilise precisely ordered nanowire structures as templates for organic material.

Compared with conventional silicon-based solar energy systems, such new generations of hybrid solar cells have the potential to dramatically lower costs, and provide ‘free’ power for consumer electronics products. By building arrays of organic solar cells on a low-resistance nanowire interconnection substrate, LMU expects to increase the efficiency of the energy conversion process.