Nanotubes May Improve Solar Energy Harvesting

eldavojohn writes "Scientists are hoping that the 'coaxial cable' style nanotube they developed will resolve energy issues that come with converting sunlight to energy. The plants currently have us beat in this department but research is discovering new ways to eliminate inefficiencies in transferring photons to energy. Traditional methods involve exciting electrons to the point of jumping to a higher state which leaves 'holes.' Unfortunately, these electrons and holes remain in the same regions and therefore tend to recombine. The new nanotubes hope to route these excited electrons off in the same way a coaxial cable allows a return route for electrons. End result is fewer electrons settling back into their holes once they are elevated out of them yielding a higher return in energy."

Nanowires (not nanotubes)

[pmosh]

This could really be a fascinating technology -- although technically it's "nanowires" and not nanotubes. As an experimentalist, I really hope that when it comes to actually growing these things it is feasible; it also might be difficult to make contact to the nanowires after you've made them to collect the electricity. Nonetheless, I think that nanostructured devices (while expensive at the moment) may be the solution to making high efficiency photovoltaics possible. Sometimes it's surprisingly easy to grow nanowires/nanorods just by flowing gas over a material and a substrate in a tube furnace, so cost may turn out to be fairly low. Patterning these by photolithography (how computer chips are made) would definitely be too expensive, along with molecular beam epitaxy or atomic layer deposition. My hope is that a simple inexpensive thermal process would work to grow these or other photovoltaic nanorods. The reason that so many stories are posted about solar energy is that it's our one scaleable renewable energy that could eventually displace a significant fraction of the fossil fuel energy that we currently use and spew CO2 into the air. For a really interesting lecture about world energy and alternatives check out Dr. Nate Lewis' presentation at http://nsl.caltech.edu/energy.html [caltech.edu] (the video is probably the best). Who knows, one of these breakthroughs if it works well could change a lot for us.

Re:shitty solar panels

[mdsolar]

Definitely not a jump start! That takes the highest current draw of all. These things are good if you leave a vehicle parked for a long time. They keep the battery topped off.