Why is that important? Well, the sun’s rays can be highly destructive to many materials. And sunlight leads to a gradual degradation of many of the systems developed to harness it. So the MIT brains had an idea: to imitate the process whereby plants cope with the impact of sunlight.
Plants are always breaking down their light-capturing molecules and reassemble them from scratch, so the basic structures that capture the sun’s energy are, in effect, always brand new. This action all takes place inside tiny capsules called chloroplasts that reside inside every plant cell where photosynthesis happens.
The research was led by Michael Strano, a Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, and his team of graduate students and researchers. They have created a new set of self-assembling molecules that can turn sunlight into electricity; the molecules can be repeatedly broken down and then reassembled quickly, just by adding or removing an additional solution.
“We’re basically imitating tricks that nature has discovered over millions of years; in particular, reversibility, the ability to break apart and reassemble. I was really impressed by how plant cells have this extremely efficient repair mechanism,†says Strano. In full summer sunlight, “a leaf on a tree is recycling its proteins about every 45 minutes, even though you might think of it as a static photocell.â€
The resulting paper on the work was published on September 5 in Nature Chemistry and has been hailed a major breakthrough across the world. “MIT’s development paves the way for solar cells in the future that outlive the person buying themâ€, wrote Geek.com, in relation to the longevity achieved by the self-repairing cells.
To read more technical details about the research, please go here.
1 Comment