Graphene's awesomeness can also be applied to solar panel technologies. The article is a little. . . chewy, but the basic gist is that a single layer of graphene applied to a panel creates somewhat of self-fueling system to power the "self-gating configuration, in which the gate was powered internally by the electrical activity of the cell itself."
Under the SFPV system, the architecture of the top electrode is structured so that at least one of the electrode’s dimensions is confined. In one configuration, working with copper oxide, the Berkeley researchers shaped the electrode contact into narrow fingers; in another configuration, working with silicon, they made the top contact ultra-thin (single layer graphene) across the surface. With sufficiently narrow fingers, the gate field creates a low electrical resistance inversion layer between the fingers and a potential barrier beneath them. A uniformly thin top contact allows gate fields to penetrate and deplete/invert the underlying semiconductor. The results in both configurations are high quality p-n junctions.
http://theenergycollective.com/energyrefuge/98631/researchers-develop-method-create-photovoltaic-solar-cells-any-materials
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