Copper Film Could Lower Touch Screen, LED and Solar Cell Costs

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://today.duke.edu/2011/09/coppernanowires

Copper Film Could Lower Touch Screen, LED and Solar Cell Costs

Nanowires of copper could eliminate busted cell phone screens and make solar cells more competitive with fossil fuels.

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Duke chemist Ben Wiley and his graduate student have developed a technique to organize copper atoms in water to form long, thin, non-clumped nanowires. The nanowires are then transformed into transparent, conductive films and coated onto glass or plastic.

The new research shows that the copper nanowire films have the same properties as those currently used in electronic devices and solar cells, but are less expensive to manufacture. The results were published online Sept. 23 in Advanced Materials.

The films that currently connect pixels in electronic screens are made of indium tin oxide, or ITO. It is highly transparent, which transmits the information well. But the ITO film must be deposited from a vapor in a process that is a thousand times slower than newspaper printing, and, once the ITO is in the device, it cracks easily. Indium is also an expensive rare earth element, costing as much as $800 per kilogram.

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Copper, on the other hand, is a thousand times more abundant than indium or silver, and about 100 times less expensive, costing only $9 per kilogram.

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http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201102284/abstract

[MADem]

1. Copper will go up in price, abundance be damned, if this pans out! nt

[customerserviceguy]

3. The amount of copper used would be extremely small

It's the manufacturing process that would be more costly in this case. I doubt that the price of copper would be materially affected by this.

[Historic NY]

2. Ever time I go to the cell ph. store I see broken screens on phones...

I couldn't believe just how fragile they are. Might be a boon in lowering phone costs until the copper speculators get into the mix.