Despite the advances made in recent years, we humans are still far less efficient at harvesting energy from the sun than our distant cousins, the trees. That fact was apparently not lost on David Carroll and his research team at Wake Forest University, who took some cues from the botanical world when they designed their new solar cell: it resembles a microscopic tree, moving electric charge from limbs to trunk. If their experiments are verified, their “trees” would set a new world record in solar cell efficiency. The cells can even be made into a film that can coat fiber optics, a “super-efficient” design that Scientific American says “would transform the world of energy.” According to Lawrence Kazmerski, director of the Department of Energy’s National Center for Photovoltaics in Colorado, “If they can have a breakthrough it could kill everything else . . . It could be the killer technology.”
Source: David Biello, Nanoscale ‘Trees’ Improve Efficiency of Cheap Plastic Solar Cells. Scientific American, April 21. Photo by Jon Sullivan.
