Discarded car batteries

If we could recover the lead in [car] batteries and use it to make perovskite solar cells, it’d be a win-win situation.

Angela Belcher, professor

Angela Belcher of biological engineering and materials science and engineering, Paula Hammond of chemical engineering, Po-Yen Chen PhD ’15, and others have shown that a novel, high-efficiency, low-cost solar cell can be made using lead recovered from an abundant, old-technology source: lead-acid car batteries.