It doesn't take much for a photovoltaic cell to not work quite as well as it used to.

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Under a defence contract, Dr Claus's laboratory is testing a photovoltaic cell constructed from films of polymer and ceramic which feels as flexible and hardy as cloth.

ECONOMIST: MONITOR

And in another exciting solar development, the company Solar3D just unveiled a prototype for a three-dimensional photovoltaic cell that could be dramatically more efficient than existing technology.

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Current techniques aren't exactly cheap, but researchers from Stanford University think they've made a bit of a breakthrough by producing a relatively inexpensive photovoltaic cell using nothing but carbon.

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Dr Claus has already used this process to make a flexible kind of photovoltaic cell, made from alternating polymer and ceramic layers, that can be sewn on the outside of a tent.

ECONOMIST: MONITOR

"The polarizing organic photovoltaic cell demonstrated by Professor Yang's research group can potentially harvest 75 percent of the wasted photons from LCD backlight and turn them back into electricity, " said Youssry Boutros, program director for the Intel Labs Academic Research Office, which supported the research.

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Applied intends to trim the industry's costs in four ways: boost solar factory throughput, improve the productivity of every tool, cut materials costs by using photovoltaic materials more sparingly and raise solar cell efficiencies.

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