Open Access Strategy

“I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way” -- Mark Twain (American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer. 1835-1910)

You've heard of OPEN ACCESS articles, but how do find them?  Here is one way ... let's assume that you are interested in the use of sulfur in solar panels. At this stage, you want to read some scholarly articles, but you are not yet ready to pay for anything.  You just want to get a feel for the subject.

Go to Google® Scholar (www.scholar.google.com) and enter the following search string:

sulfur AND solar AND "open access"

ONE RESULT:
DOI: 10.1039/C5CC04822B (Communication) Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 14660-14662
Solution processable, cross-linked sulfur polymers as solid electrolytes in dye-sensitized solar cells†
Peng Liu ,  James M. Gardner * and   Lars Kloo *
Applied Physical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Teknikringen 30, SE-10044 Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail: jgardner@kth.se; larsa@kth.se
Introduction
Inverse-vulcanized polymeric sulfur has been prepared and utilized for solid-state dye sensitized solar cells. A power conversion efficiency of 1.5% was recorded with a short-circuit current of 4.1 mA cm−2 and an open-circuit voltage of 0.75 V under standard AM 1.5G illumination (1000 W m−2). The results in the present study qualify the new polymeric sulfur material as a future candidate as low-cost, hole-transport material for solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells.

It is the overall cost of making, installing, and using photovoltaics that will determine if they become the future, primary renewable energy source. The important factors for reducing cost involve an increase in conversion efficiency, an increase in usable lifetime, as well as a decrease of inherent material costs for the production of the solar cells. The identification of inexpensive and abundant materials that are easily processed represents a major challenge. Exactly this challenge is the main objective of the present work. Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have emerged as a promising alternative to traditional solar technologies.1,2
Read the full text source at: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2015/cc/c5cc04822b