Tiny solar cells fix themselves
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Researchers have demonstrated tiny solar cells just billionths of a metre across that can repair themselves, extending their useful lifetime.
The cells make use of proteins from the machinery of plants, turning sunlight into electric charges that can do work. The cells simply assemble themselves from a mixture of the proteins, minute tubes of carbon and other materials. The self-repairing mechanism, reported in Nature Chemistry, could lead to much longer-lasting solar cells.
The design and improvement of solar cells is one of the most vibrant areas of science, in part because sunlight is far and away the planet's most abundant renewable energy source. More than that, nature has already proven that sunlight can be captured and turned into other forms of energy not only with extraordinary efficiency but also with a self-repair mechanism that counteracts the ravages of sunlight.
"It's the reason why we age, and the reason why when we leave paper or plastic out in the sun, it fades."
Now Professor Strano and his colleagues have made novel use of the photosynthetic reaction centre, one of the plant parts nature has developed for the task, in a bid to increase the lifetimes of solar cells. The nanotubes are scaffolds on which the light-sensitive proteins can build.
They also employed lipids, the molecules that pair up end-to-end form much of the walls of all living cells, and carbon nanotubes, tiny "straws" of pure carbon that are renowned for their electrical properties.
Lastly they added a surfactant - a molecule that, like soap on grease, breaks certain molecules apart and keeps them separate.
To the team's surprise, this cocktail of disparate parts, when the surfactant was pumped out, assembled itself into a suite of working solar cells, each just a few nanometres - billionths of a metre - across
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11181753
The cells make use of proteins from the machinery of plants, turning sunlight into electric charges that can do work. The cells simply assemble themselves from a mixture of the proteins, minute tubes of carbon and other materials. The self-repairing mechanism, reported in Nature Chemistry, could lead to much longer-lasting solar cells.
The design and improvement of solar cells is one of the most vibrant areas of science, in part because sunlight is far and away the planet's most abundant renewable energy source. More than that, nature has already proven that sunlight can be captured and turned into other forms of energy not only with extraordinary efficiency but also with a self-repair mechanism that counteracts the ravages of sunlight.
"It's the reason why we age, and the reason why when we leave paper or plastic out in the sun, it fades."
Now Professor Strano and his colleagues have made novel use of the photosynthetic reaction centre, one of the plant parts nature has developed for the task, in a bid to increase the lifetimes of solar cells. The nanotubes are scaffolds on which the light-sensitive proteins can build.
They also employed lipids, the molecules that pair up end-to-end form much of the walls of all living cells, and carbon nanotubes, tiny "straws" of pure carbon that are renowned for their electrical properties.
Lastly they added a surfactant - a molecule that, like soap on grease, breaks certain molecules apart and keeps them separate.
To the team's surprise, this cocktail of disparate parts, when the surfactant was pumped out, assembled itself into a suite of working solar cells, each just a few nanometres - billionths of a metre - across
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11181753
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- groups:
- Community, Tech, Green, Earth and Science, 7 more
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- tags:
- Solar Power, Solar Energy, Photosynthesis, nanotubes
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diode
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yet we still aren't using these efficiently/effectively. damn slow ass people
- 1 year ago
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diode
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artemis6
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Ooooo , I love science .
- 1 year ago
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artemis6
