Capturing Solar Power With Antennae 190
necro81 writes "Researchers at the University of Missouri and the Idaho National Laboratory have demonstrated a new method of capturing solar power. Rather than using semiconductors to capture photons of sunlight, they fabricated small coiled antennae (several um square) that resonate with the wave nature of light. The antennae are tuned towards midrange infrared light (5-10 um), which is abundant on our cozy-warm Earth — even at night. They also demonstrated a way to imprint these coils on a substrate, like how CDs or vinyl records are produced, but could be scaled to roll-to-roll mass production. The usual caveat applies: it may be 5-10 years until this could hit the market."
And 5-10 years from now... (Score:4, Interesting)
It will still be 5-10 years away.
Re:Most important point not in summary (Score:4, Interesting)
Such a system would be yet another layer in the panel to deal with a specific frequency range. Perhaps several layers with different wavelengths in each. It's journalists that make the mistake of promoting this as a whole solar panel.
That said, the rectification issue is a deal killer. Not only are we talking THz, but IIRC from the last media go-round with this technology, voltages way below practical diode thresholds.