Nobel-winning physicist Alan Heeger will discuss low-cost, highly efficient plastic solar cells at the University of Utah's Frontiers of Science lecture on Jan. 29. The cells, made from organic materials, have the highest energy-conversion rating for devices that harvest abundant solar energy and could provide an important energy source in the future, according to research by Heeger, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"The challenge is clear: we must create the scientific foundation and develop the technology to enable the low-cost fabrication of large areas of high-efficiency solar cells," Heeger said in a U. news release.

Development of renewable energy sources is one of the greatest challenges facing society as the supply of fossil fuels dwindles at a time when the global demand is growing and greenhouse emissions warm the planet.

"I am excited to have led a research team that created a new low-cost 'tandem' organic solar cell with 6.5 percent efficiency, the highest record for solar cells made with organic materials," Heeger said.

Heeger, who shared the 2000 Nobel prize in chemistry for discovering and developing conductive polymers, holds four patents with nine more pending. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.

A joint enterprise of the colleges of Science and Mines and Earth Sciences, the quarterly Frontiers of Science lecture is in its 41st year. Thursday's lecture starts at 7:30 p.m. in the Skaggs biology building auditorium.