Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Scientists turn gold to purple


Hissie Sola

Recommended Posts

A new way to harvest energy from sunlight has been found as gold turns purple in a new experiment.

Professor Richard Watt and his chemistry students suspected that a common protein could potentially react with sunlight and harvest its energy -- similar to what chlorophyll does during photosynthesis.

arrow3.gifRead more...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 
  • Replies 17
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • sepulchrave

    4

  • Mac E

    2

  • Copasetic

    2

  • Prab

    1

Top Posters In This Topic

I could be wrong, but this looks like "gold" fusion to me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting. If the electrode phase of the experiment works it could change the way solar cells are designed. Also it would drive the price of gold even higher.

There are many, many exotic ways to collect energy, the problem being in making it cost efficient. If this process, after refinement, still takes even twice as much resources... money... as conventional solar cell technology, then it will only be a footnote on a Wiki page.

Edited by DieChecker
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agree with #3, if this is to be viable, it has to be of better value then current solar cells. I think that is the biggest set back for all these types of discoveries. Either the inventor is greedy and is looking for the best deal, or it will just cost too much to develop. When we can get energy out of sand, that will be good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is important to point out that a solar cell using this technique would not require gold.

Gold was only used as an ``indicator'' material.

The protein absorbed light and created free electrons. The gold flakes absorbed the electrons and used that energy to self-assemble into nanoparticles.

Gold nanoparticles have been studied for decades, and are reasonably well understood.

By simply looking at the colour of the solution, the chemists could deduce the amount of gold nanoparticles formed and therefore calculate the energy yield from the proteins.

If they are successful in hooking up electrodes to the proteins then the electrical energy generated by photoabsorption will go into an electric circuit, so there is no need for gold (unless they make the electrodes out of gold, which is quite possible, but a totally different principle).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting. If the electrode phase of the experiment works it could change the way solar cells are designed. Also it would drive the price of gold even higher.

There are many, many exotic ways to collect energy, the problem being in making it cost efficient. If this process, after refinement, still takes even twice as much resources... money... as conventional solar cell technology, then it will only be a footnote on a Wiki page.

According to me even if this thing is twice as efficient as solar cells then also it would be damn expensive,

So in my opinion this is not going to work out at all unless its super duper efficient as compared to the typical Solar Cell technology so that it even pays for it's cost in some years then I could think about it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is important to point out that a solar cell using this technique would not require gold.

Gold was only used as an ``indicator'' material.

The protein absorbed light and created free electrons. The gold flakes absorbed the electrons and used that energy to self-assemble into nanoparticles.

Gold nanoparticles have been studied for decades, and are reasonably well understood.

By simply looking at the colour of the solution, the chemists could deduce the amount of gold nanoparticles formed and therefore calculate the energy yield from the proteins.

If they are successful in hooking up electrodes to the proteins then the electrical energy generated by photoabsorption will go into an electric circuit, so there is no need for gold (unless they make the electrodes out of gold, which is quite possible, but a totally different principle).

This.

I'm really excited to see solar powered energy using organic molecules instead of metals and could be more cost effective.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This.

I'm really excited to see solar powered energy using organic molecules instead of metals and could be more cost effective.

Absolutely. Photosensitive organics are very cheap to make.

The real hurdles are in attaching electrodes to the organics, and finding organics that are stable after prolonged exposure to light.

I believe there are several candidate molecules that are stable, I think the biggest problem is finding a means of having the molecules precipitate from a solution to form a self-ordered layer on a suitable substrate (gold, silicon, aluminum, etc.).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Absolutely. Photosensitive organics are very cheap to make.

The real hurdles are in attaching electrodes to the organics, and finding organics that are stable after prolonged exposure to light.

I believe there are several candidate molecules that are stable, I think the biggest problem is finding a means of having the molecules precipitate from a solution to form a self-ordered layer on a suitable substrate (gold, silicon, aluminum, etc.).

Can you translate that? :w00t: I was waiting for you response to be truth but I dont follow you. Please be kind and explain us amateurs in simple language. Maybe thats because my english is not so well. I dont know. :blush:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Basically if you take a polymer (a long string of molecules) and try to pack them really close together, it usually won't work out well. In order to increase the solar efficiency they need as many of the protein on a flat surface as possible. So stand them upright and crowd them together.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Can you translate that? :w00t: I was waiting for you response to be truth but I dont follow you. Please be kind and explain us amateurs in simple language. Maybe thats because my english is not so well. I dont know. :blush:

It is fairly easy to get organic molecules to absorb light and make electricity. But usually these molecules are floating around in water or something. For a usable solar cell, we need the molecules arranged so they dump the electricity into some conducting wire or surface.

This is the challenge of ``attaching an electrode''. Because these molecules are so small, you can't stick a wire into them.

What people mostly do is try to figure out how to get the molecules to stick to a surface (like a piece of metal). This is pretty easy as well.

The trick is to make sure that the light absorbing end of the molecule sticks up, and the electricity producing end of the molecule is stuck to the metal. (Like Mac E says.) That part is a lot harder.

Getting molecules to do this on their own is called ``self assembly''. There are a few tricks that work fairly well (slowly drying out the water-molecule mixture in a magnetic or electric field, or dropping the mixture onto a spinning surface and letting the water part spray off), but nobody has figured it out completely.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is fairly easy to get organic molecules to absorb light and make electricity. But usually these molecules are floating around in water or something. For a usable solar cell, we need the molecules arranged so they dump the electricity into some conducting wire or surface.

This is the challenge of ``attaching an electrode''. Because these molecules are so small, you can't stick a wire into them.

What people mostly do is try to figure out how to get the molecules to stick to a surface (like a piece of metal). This is pretty easy as well.

The trick is to make sure that the light absorbing end of the molecule sticks up, and the electricity producing end of the molecule is stuck to the metal. (Like Mac E says.) That part is a lot harder.

Getting molecules to do this on their own is called ``self assembly''. There are a few tricks that work fairly well (slowly drying out the water-molecule mixture in a magnetic or electric field, or dropping the mixture onto a spinning surface and letting the water part spray off), but nobody has figured it out completely.

They just need to think bigger. Get all multidisciplinary and bring in some phys-bio guys, some micro guys and some mol gen guys. Lawns of engineered cells are cheap, easy to maintain and are just the best little slave-factories money can buy!

I think as our ability to manipulate everyone's favorite model (Mr. E. Coli) grows, you're really gonna see (in the next few years) massive application expansion for manufacturing at the protein or even nano scale.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why dont they layer it into a film and so become able to make into a wearable suit,and we could all walk around with our everlasting power supply,unless it rains.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why dont they layer it into a film and so become able to make into a wearable suit,and we could all walk around with our everlasting power supply,unless it rains.

Well ``they'' would do that, if they could properly assemble a stable organic photovoltaic molecule layer on a flexible, stable, and durable conducting substrate.

And ``they'' are definitely trying. (``They'' being the physicists, chemists, engineers, etc. doing this sort of research.)

It is definitely a very exciting field of study though. I was at a photonics conference last week and managed to hear a talk where a group in Portugal had succeeded in building a battery on a piece of paper (this is the research group's webpage but the site is pretty useless). These guys were using paper as the substrate because:

  • It is cheap,
  • It is light, thin and flexible,
  • It is easily biodegradable, and
  • It has useful dielectric properties which means it can also be an important part of the electronics, and not just the supporting layer.

They had already been able to put transitors (logic units) and LEDs (display units) on paper as well, so they pretty much have the ability to make printed electronics on paper (it has previously been demonstrated on silicon wafers and on plastic films).

It is my understanding that there are two major hurdles from this sort of technology reaching the market:

  • Making the electronic layer stable enough to withstand all the bending and other stresses that actual practical use would put on it, and
  • Making the power source equally portable and stable.

Making a stable photovoltaic combined with rechargeable battery cell part of the same paper/plastic sheet that the rest of the electronics is on would be a huge step forward.

---------

Copa: I don't know much about the bio side of the field, but I really hope there is active research into using microbes and such in optoelectronics. It seems to me that nature is the ultimate ``self assembler'' and there is no point in reinventing the wheel.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

---------

Copa: I don't know much about the bio side of the field, but I really hope there is active research into using microbes and such in optoelectronics. It seems to me that nature is the ultimate ``self assembler'' and there is no point in reinventing the wheel.

There is, I've got to witness some of it in another life. The problem right now is really twofold though. The limitation of our ability to program genetically (which is actually quickly being solved) and the larger problem of predicting tertiary protein structure from analogous DNA code.

Turns out proteomics was a lot more complicated than anyone thought possible (or so we've learned over the last few decades). People really thought that once dogma of molecular biology was cracked, we'd just walk into this new age custom ordering proteins--Turns out that didn't happen.

What is happening though is computing power for protein modeling. Supposing we could build a computer that could calculate all the intermolecular forces acting on the different amino acid residues, then said computer could be used to custom order a protein; that DNA synthesizers could easily (they do now) polymerize, that restriction enzymes could cut on a plasmid, that we could insert into our little bacterial slaves and out the other end pops ready protein machinery.

That's a big if right now though. I've seen some really advanced networks turned toward protein modeling (thanks defense contracts at Battelle) and while its nice to remain positive, its a whimper at best. Its really going to take next generation computers to see the fruition of what we know about all those pesky Van Der Waals, hydrophobic, hydrogen bonds, etc.

I think once the computer guys get us there, then you'll really see the marriage of biology, physics and manufacturing. Specifically for the age of nano-tech. Whether that will be a new golden age or the doom of mankind remains to be seen of course :tu:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.