Windows with World’s Tiniest Working Solar Cells

Tinted see-thru coating for generating electricity on glass windows makes use of ultra-small solar cells - shown to produce electricity in recently published peer-reviewed study and able to generate electricity from natural and artificial light.

New Energy Technologies, Inc. (Symbol: NENE) - Burtonsville, MD , today announced that, in addition to the active development of its MotionPower™ technologies for generating electricity by harvesting the kinetic energy of moving vehicles, the Company is continuing to further advance the development of its tinted transparent glass SolarWindows™ capable of generating electricity by coating glass surfaces with the world’s smallest known organic solar cells.

New Energy’s SolarWindow™ technology uses an organic solar array, which achieves transparency through the creative use of conducting polymers which have the same desirable electrical properties as the world’s most commercially popular semiconductor, silicon, yet boast a considerably better capacity to ‘optically absorb’ photons from light and generate electricity.

The Company’s ultra-small solar cells measure less than ¼ the size of a grain of rice, are fabricated using environmentally-friendly hydrogen-carbon based materials, and successfully produce electricity, as demonstrated in a published peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy of the American Institute of Physics.


solar cells have demonstrated a special ability to generate electricity in both natural and artificial light conditions.”

Unlike other solar technologies, New Energy’s ultra-small solar cells generate electricity not only from the visible light spectrum found in sunlight but also by using the visible light found in artificial light, such as fluorescent lighting typically installed in offices and commercial buildings. Commercially, while the majority of today’s solar cells can only be installed where direct sunlight is available, New Energy’s ultra-small solar cells can be installed anywhere that direct sunlight or artificial lighting such as fluorescent systems emit visible light.