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Saturday, August 3, 2013

Can Cobalt Make Solar Cells More Sustainable?

see also news in 20minutes.ch
Researchers at the University of Basel have successfully replaced the rare element iodine in copper-based dye-sensitized solar cells by the more abundant element cobalt, taking a step forward in the development of environmentally friendly energy production. The journal «Chemical Communications» has published the results of these so-called Cu-Co cells (University of Basel, 02.08.2013)

my personal notes:
Cobalt toxicity can be explained by its chemical properties and / or radiotoxic of its radioactive isotopes (28 in total), used for research and nuclear medicine. In addition, it can act synergistically with other metals that often accompany it in the nature (arsenic,copper, nickel, manganese). But in my opinion, danger is maybe most important on the panel production side or in their installation than in the customers side.

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