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- Synthetic solar cells can be grown in tobacco plants and E. coli bacteria.
- The method offers a cheap, environmentally friendly way to make electricity.
- Tapping the plants exploits an already efficient system, honed by millions of years of evolution.
Tobacco plants could help wean the world from fossil fuels, according to scientists from the University of California, Berkeley. In a paper in the journal ACS Nano Letters, Matt Francis and his colleagues used tobacco plants, infected with a genetically engineered virus, to produce artificial photovoltaic and photochemical cells. The technique is more environmentally friendly than traditional methods of making solar cells and could lead to cheap, temporary and biodegradable solar cells.
Trapped inside the plant, the tiny structures don't produce electricity or chemicals. To get at the synthetic chromophores, scientists harvest the plants, chop them up, and extract the structures. Dissolved in a liquid solution, the structures are sprayed over a glass or plastic substrate coated with molecules that secure the rods to the plastic.
Tobacco plants aren't the only organisms Francis and his colleagues have hacked. Skipping a virus entirely, Francis and his colleagues successfully added the chromophore-producing genes to E. coli bacteria, and harvested solar cells from them as well. Using live organisms to create synthetic solar cells has several advantages over traditionally made solar panels. No environmentally toxic chemicals are required to make biologically derived solar cells, unlike traditional solar cells. Growing solar cells in tobacco plants could put farmers back to work harvesting an annual crop of solar cells.
Bio-based solar cells wouldn't last as long as the average silicon solar cell, but they could act as a cheap, transportable, and temporary biodegradable power source. A solution of them could even be sprayed over plastic or glass to harvest energy.
Originally posted by Movhisattva
No environmentally toxic chemicals are required to make biologically derived solar cells, unlike traditional solar cells.
Bio-based solar cells wouldn't last as long as the average silicon solar cell, but they could act as a cheap, transportable, and temporary biodegradable power source. A solution of them could even be sprayed over plastic or glass to harvest energy.
... infected with a genetically engineered virus, to produce artificial photovoltaic and photochemical cells.