UNSW engineers have made a major step forward in the development of a new type of solar cell that could help make future solar panels cheaper, more efficient and more durable.

The research team has improved the performance of solar cells made from antimony chalcogenide, which is an emerging photovoltaic material regarded as a strong candidate for next-generation solar technology.

Antimony chalcogenide has several advantages that make it attractive for use as that top solar cell.

Firstly, it is made from abundant elements that cost relatively little to produce, unlike some high-performance solar materials that rely on scarce or expensive materials.

Secondly, it is inorganic, which means it is inherently more stable than some newer solar materials that can degrade over time.

Thirdly, its high light absorption coefficient means a layer only 300 nanometres thick — about one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair — is enough to harvest sunlight efficiently.

Another benefit is the fact the material can be deposited at low temperatures, reducing energy usage during manufacturing and opening the door to large-scale, low-cost production.

It's great to see Australian researchers making such valuable contributions to the renewable energy sphere.

oh, it must be research grant season again.

Meanwhile.... "The World's Great Climate collapse"... http://www.axios.com/2026/01/13/climate-change-trump-collapse-world

Yep, this is what incremental progress in energy technology actually looks like.

No magic wand, just steady improvements in materials that matter at scale: abundance, stability, manufacturability and efficiency. Antimony chalcogenide is interesting precisely because it avoids the usual traps critics fixate on: rare inputs, exotic processing, or lab-only fragility.

It's also not about replacing silicon overnight. New materials complement existing tech. Tandem cells, thinner layers, lower-temperature deposition and cheaper manufacturing compound over time. That's how costs fall and performance rises.

And it's good to see this coming out of UNSW. We've quietly punched above our weight in photovoltaics for years, even if that only gets noticed when something breaks.

Progress often looks dull right up until it isn't.
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I see you have your tinfoil hat on already, mhaze.

//oh, it must be research grant season again.//

Calling it "grant season" doesn't really engage with either the UNSW research or the article you linked.

The Axios piece isn't about climate physics "collapsing". It's explicitly about a political and policy pullback, driven by geopolitics, Trump's withdrawal from multilateralism, and short-term political risk aversion. The article is quite clear that the planet is still warming and that this shift is about ambition and coordination, not evidence suddenly changing.

In fact, Axios goes out of its way to say this is a retreat from maximalist net-zero timelines, not a wholesale retreat from climate action. Europe is still targeting a 90% reduction in tailpipe emissions, China is expanding cleantech investment, and even Trump's own legislation preserved support for storage, geothermal and nuclear technologies.

Which brings us back to UNSW. Materials research doesn't stop because Washington has a mood swing. Lower-cost, more durable photovoltaics aren't about virtue signalling or treaties, they're about engineering economics. If anything, a more fragmented, competitive world makes cheaper, more robust energy technologies more relevant, not less.

Political headwinds come and go. The underlying physics and the incentive to produce energy more cheaply and efficiently tend to stick around.