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The blog has looked at several recent attempts to pull electricity from solar cells that have the ability to capture a broad range of light wavelengths.  These are based on everything from layers of graphene and zinc nano-wires, to an exotic subwavelength  plasmonic cavity, to straining solar cells to form wide bandgap funnels which capture light’s energy. Joining these efforts along with those of researchers in America and Germany, colleagues at the Vienna University of Technology are testing single atomic layers of oxide heterostructures, a new class of materials, to “create a new kind of extremely efficient ultra-thin solar cells.” Professor Karsten Held from the Institute for Solid State Physics at the University, explains, “Single atomic layers of different oxides are stacked, creating a material with electronic properties which are vastly different from the properties the individual oxides have on their own.”  Researchers used large-scale computer simulations to discover that these layered structures “hold great potential for building solar cells.” …