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Self-Assembling Photovoltaic Tech From MIT
telomerewhythere writes "Michael Strano and his team at MIT have made a self-assembling and indefinitely repairable photovoltaic cell based on the principle found in chloroplasts inside plant cells. 'The system Strano's team produced is made up of seven different compounds, including the carbon nanotubes, the phospholipids, and the proteins that make up the reaction centers, which under the right conditions spontaneously assemble themselves into a light-harvesting structure that produces an electric current. Strano says he believes this sets a record for the complexity of a self-assembling system. When a surfactant is added to the mix, the seven components all come apart and form a soupy solution. Then, when the researchers removed the surfactant, the compounds spontaneously assembled once again into a perfectly formed, rejuvenated photocell.'"
Now all we need is to mimic Chlorophyll F and start capturing everything from beginning IR (720nm) on down. I'd love to see a solar cell that can respond to all of the wavelengths currently covered by terrestrial and marine plant life.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"The article doesn't answer the question of how much energy is needed to remove the surfactant."
However much it takes to push it through the filter membrane, per the article.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The nice things about plant cells or structure is that you can grow them. In this case I can only guess that it would probably even be more efficient than to "mine" forest. Also you wouldn't need so much of it because you don't use it for its energy content, but for its energy conversion capacity. That's huge difference.
Per the article it's not nearly as biological as "plant-inspired" makes it sound.
They are using the photovoltaic effect to generate electricity on some set of proteins. Then carbon nanotubes conduct the electricity from the proteins to a common circuit. They are using phospholipids (whatever phospholipids are) along with the nanotubes to coerce proper alignment between the nanotubes and the proteins in the photovoltaic reaction sites.
The combination works pretty well (40% efficiency with sparsely populated functional structures in the solution for the prototype) until it starts to break down. The inspiration from plants is mainly that they can introduce a substance (a surfactant more specifically, although the blurb doesn't specify which) that breaks the stuff down fast, then filter the surfactant out through a membrane and the working portion self-assembles again at full efficiency.
It's this repeatable self-assembly that was biologically inspired, and it's probably necessary for high-efficiency photovoltaic solar cells since pretty much everything more efficient than silicon does break down over time. By not just accounting for the breakdown, but doing it early and often and performing a repair phase through self-assembly, it is hoped they can have high efficiency solar cells with long lifespans.
That's gleaned from TFA, which isn't much longer than what I wrote.
FAIL. She's not his female instance, she's a derived class.
is at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/self-healing-solar.html
Just let me know when I can plug my TV directly into my ficus.
Phospholipids are little cute guys that make up your cellular membrane (a phospholipid bi-layer). They look something like this (in as much justice as ascii can do):
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They have a phosphate head (that's the round bit) with two lipid tails, one saturated fat, and one unsaturated fat.
The phosphate side is hydrophilic (it likes water) and the lipid side is hydrophobic (doesn't like water). So a whole bunch of them will collect together tail-to-tail and side-to-side to make your semi-permeable cellular membrane.
It was amazing how early mine started using decorators.
"Ficus Benjimina" - latin for "tree that dies in your house"