Solar Energy Nano Particles
Remember the big hoopla a few years ago about the nanotechnology revolution? Well, we’re still waiting, but solar energy nano particles are starting to cause some excitement.
Nano
Nanotechnology is an old approach with a new twist. Think of the idea of a networked computer system. The more computers there are, the more total computing power they can bring to any task. While a piece of junk Dell Computer can’t run climate change model, 10,000 networked junk Dells can do it without any problem. In fact, this is being done now through the web, but not on Dells!
Regardless, nanotechnology is based on this very concept. The idea is to make millions of tiny robots on the molecular level. One robot can’t do much of anything, but millions can do just about anything. Alas, the wonderful world of nanotechnology ran into a rather significant problem. Essentially, it is impossible at this time to communicate with the robots and thus tell them what to do. It is, however, to engineer static nano units that perform a single static task. This might sound boring, but it is going to lead to a huge breakthrough in solar energy.
The sun produces a huge amount of energy. One day of sunlight on the earth has enough energy to more or less meet our energy needs for an entire year. The problem is we haven’t figured out a way to harness this energy. Solar panels have traditionally converted the energy that hits them with about a 10 percent efficiency rating. That number is going up, but is still woefully low. Nano particles may change that.
Nano particles are structures created at the molecular level. Chemist David Kelley at Kansas State University has created gallium selenide nano particles that do something very interesting. They harvest the part of the sunlight spectrum that contains the most usable energy. A single particle can barely harvest anything, but billions of them can convert a massive amount of the energy. How big would a billion of these particles be? Try less than the size of a golf ball.
This is really only the beginning. The existence of solar energy nano particles is only a matter of time. Think of the possible applications! You could paint your home with paint that has solar nano particles that provide all the power you could ever need. The same goes for your car, laptop…the possibilities are nearly endless and that is pretty amazing, don’t you think? You might want to do a Google Alert to get news of any breakthroughs sent directly to your inbox or just watch for updates here.
