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Creating Electric Power From Light Using Gold Nanoparticles

Posted by Soulskill on from the nanite-power-supply dept.

cyberfringe writes "Professor of Materials Science Dawn Bonnell and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered a way to turn optical radiation into electrical current that could lead to self-powering molecular circuits and efficient data storage. They create surface plasmons that ride the surface of gold nanoparticles on a glass substrate. Surface plasmons were found to increase the efficiency of current production by a factor of four to 20, and with many independent parameters to optimize, enhancement factors could reach into the thousands. 'If the efficiency of the system could be scaled up without any additional, unforeseen limitations, we could conceivably manufacture a 1A, 1V sample the diameter of a human hair and an inch long,' Prof. Bonnell explained. The academic paper was published in the current issue of ACS Nano. (Abstract available for free.) The significance? This may allow the creation of nano-sized circuits that can power themselves through sunlight (or another directed light source). Delivery of power to nanodevices is one of the big challenges in the field."

6 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. No by sakdoctor · · Score: 3, Funny

    If the efficiency of the system could be scaled up without any additional, unforeseen limitations

    No

  2. Re:"Self-powering" by jeffmeden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Although it is misleading, I think they meant that the actual structure of the circuit (the leads that run between devices) could actually generate the power, as opposed to having a PV cell somewhere to generate it and then carry it to the load through conventional means. The thought that you can get a watt (1A @ 1V) from a one inch piece of this stuff is really stunning. Considering how many useful things can run on a watt or less, it seems like an absolutely trivial physical package for providing power, the comparable PV cell would be a thousand times larger/heavier, if not more.

  3. Plasmons Surfing ... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 3, Funny

    They create surface plasmons that ride the surface of gold nanoparticles on a glass substrate.

    Boy, does that take me back to my days in the college dorms ... good times.

  4. Re:"Self-powering" by ircmaxell · · Score: 4, Interesting
    That kind of density is amazing. If they could produce it cheap enough, it could have applications on the macro scale as well. 1 hair width is 100 m, so you could fit about 2540 of these wires side by side in 1 inch. So your power generation would be around 2.5kW per square inch. That means a 4 foot by 8 foot panel would be able to generate around 11.7 mW (yes, that's megawatts). So, that means one of four things.
    • This is a gross exaggeration of its capabilities
    • This is exactly what they are capable of
    • They cannot be placed right next to each other (or at least efficiency suffers if you do)
    • Efficiency won't scale well at all (with length)

    Still, it's a cool concept...

    --
    If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
  5. Re:"Self-powering" by Chris+Burke · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They have their own on-board power generation. Ergo, self-powered.

    Any other definition means that nothing was self-powered except possibly and extremely hypothetically the Big Bang.

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  6. more science PR nonsense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I know Dawn, and I have no idea if the reporter is taking statements out of context or what...

    1) This isn't photovoltaic (power generating), and nothing like photovoltaics was demonstrated. Instead, what they showed was that the resistance of a film of gold nanoparticles can be modulated by shining light on it. This isn't overstated in the actual paper, and the explanation they give is good (surface plasmons creating excited states in the polymer between the particles, in the case of red and green light). They used low power diode lasers to see the photoresponse.

    2) Scaling of the system: in the paper, they tried a few different sized devices, and say they saw the same response from each of them. This is actually really bad, as you would hope to get more of this kind of response from a larger system.

    3) The 1V, 1A comment: Totally crazy. They're seeing less than 1pA at 1V right now, and as they pointed out, are not seeing any scaling behavior, let alone good scaling. It's irresponsible to make (or print) this comment. If doubling the size of the device doesn't change the photoresponse, you should not assume a device 1000 times as big gives 1000 times more response.