Friday, October 3, 2014

Solar Battery

Researchers at The Ohio State University have invented a solar battery -- a combination solar cell and battery -- which recharges itself using air and light. The design required a solar panel which captured light, but admitted air to the battery. Here, scanning electron microscope images show the solution: nanometer-sized rods of titanium dioxide (larger image) which cover the surface of a piece of titanium gauze (inset). The holes in the gauze are approximately 200 micrometers across, allowing air to enter the battery while the rods gather light. Image courtesy of Yiying Wu, The Ohio State University.


This may be yet another major step towards solving our energy problem. Researchers at the Ohio State University have now invented a solar battery. That's right - a solar battery. A combination of a solar cell and a battery that works independently to produce its own energy using only air and light. It literally stores its own power, as the title of the article suggests. Using a solar cell, this device captures light and the battery inside stores the energy. It is capable of storing nearly 100% of all electrons it captures, which means that using only light and air, this device becomes a source of clean, renewable energy. 
More information can be found here: http://news.osu.edu/news/2014/10/03/batteries-included-a-solar-cell-that-stores-its-own-power/

6 comments:

  1. This is great because currently the demand for solar powered energy has been increasing. There was even a march a while ago in Wall Street concerning this topic.

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    1. Correction: The People's Climate March did not take place on Wall Street. On September 21, 2014, environmental activists marched from Columbus Circle down to the Javits Center on 34th St to accentuate their opinion on action towards climate change for the UN Climate Summit.

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  2. Hi Gui, is this technology is cost effective? How is the battery capable of storing nearly 100% of the electrons it captures?

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  3. Honestly, this is extremely groundbreaking. I imagine this will have a major impact on energy generation in the future because of its usefulness. Especially if our oil and coal supplies dry up, which is inevitable.

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  4. This would be very useful since we are exposed to light quite often and people are always running into that problem of a dead phone. Do you believe this technology would be costly?

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  5. It would be great if they could incorporate this battery for big use like running a car. Cars would be more environmentally friendly and it would help us move away from using scarce resources.

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