A method that aims to replace solar panels: Nanoparticles self-assemble to harvest energy

Occasionally the cinema shows us through its stories where technological advances are going. It is not that they are premonitors of the future. It is that they simply inquire into the beginnings of the scientific investigations and when they prosper, it remains as a particularity that they became popular on the big screen.

This is what is about to happen with a study led by researcher Ying Li, from Zhejiang University (China). His research team, made up of scientists from the University of Harbin, the Changchun Institute of Optics and the National University of Singapore, focused on energy through renewable resources, wants to retire solar panels.

Something similar was already seen in the movie Transcendencestarring Johnny Depp in 2014. Dr. Will Caster wanted to transfer his consciousness to a PC to never die and part of the mechanism they used was energy through nanotechnology.

In real life they don’t want to mess with transcending consciousness by means of a computer.

But if they are working on solar energy through a nanoparticle mechanism, which not only gains in terms of the use of space occupied by the “old” panels, but also have the particularity of self-assembling while collecting radiation to convert it into electricity.

What is this solar thermal technology?

In a simple and generalized concept, the method transforms sunlight into thermal energy (use of the solar resource to heat a liquid). The problem with this is that there was no system capable of suppressing collection while maintaining high radiation absorption.

How did they fix it? They made a device that executes patterns at the nanoscale. What’s that? As Professor Ying Li explains: “Solar energy is transferred as an electromagnetic wave within a wide range of frequencies.”.

“A good solar thermal collector should be able to absorb the wave and heat up, thus converting solar energy into thermal energy. The process requires high absorbance (100% is perfect), and a solar collector must also suppress its thermal radiation to preserve thermal energy, which requires low thermal emissivity (zero means no radiation),” he explained.

The scientist says that its “quasiperiodic nanophoton structure self-assembles by iron oxide (Fe₃O₄) nanoparticles, rather than cumbersome and expensive nanofabrication.”

Said structure achieves an absorption level of 94%, which is the closest to 100 that has been achieved. Its manufacture would be through transparent fiber tubes that would not fill your roof with panels, and a greater amount of energy would be generated than the current sustainable system, according to a review. EurekAlert.