A new composite material for plastic solar cells, formulated at Ohio State University, offers what researchers there claim is the best bet yet for beating the relatively high cost of grid-supplied electricity. Building on the best aspects of previous attempts to construct organic dye-sensitized solar cells, these researchers promise to best today's inorganic silicon-based solar cells, and beat the cost of traditional electricity generation sources in just a few years.

"The manufacturing cost of our dye-sensitized solar cells is much lower than that of today's polysilicon solar cells," said the inventor of the new method, Professor Yiying Wu, at Ohio State University.

Today, amorphous polysilicon solar cells typically achieve 10 to 15 percent efficiencies. The organic dye-sensitized solar cells Wu's group is working on, achieve just under 9 percent, but at a quarter of the manufacturing cost.