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Green Energy - Greener Lights
We are beginning to realize that green light has the ability to break
codes within the DNA, in a sort of language of its own. The shamanistic
views have
often spoke of the power in plants in relation to photons and visual
perception. Yet man will attempt to take the power and create cell
phones with it instead of seeing the essence of meaning hidden behind
their eyes.
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We're talking real 'green' energy
18 September 2004 - Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff
MIT researchers join in project to harness
photosynthetic power of spinach in field of electronics.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have proved
what Popeye already knew -- spinach is an excellent energy source.
It's so good that in 10 years, our cellphones and portable computers
may be coated in a spinach-based material that provides their
electrical power.
"The phone is no longer red or blue; it becomes green. So what?"
said Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for
Biomedical Engineering. In exchange for the color makeover, users
would have electrical devices that would recharge themselves from
sunlight, using a process similar to the photosynthesis that keeps
all green plants alive. Zhang, assistant computer science professor
Marc Baldo, and recent MIT graduate Patrick Kiley helped develop the
technology, dubbed Photosystem 1. The MIT team joined forces
with scientists at the University of Tennessee and the US Naval
Research Laboratory. They isolated a set of spinach proteins that
produce energy when exposed to light. The proteins form clusters no
more than 20 nanometers in size, meaning that 100,000 would fit on
the head of a pin.
Next, they had to solve how to bond this material with electrical
circuitry. Zhang figured out how to use broken pieces of proteins,
called peptides, to attach the spinach protein to a piece of glass
coated with a thin layer of gold.
The resulting experimental chip is dark green, rather than silicon
gray. When hit with light from a laser, the chip produced a tiny
stream of electrical current -- not nearly enough to be useful, but
powerful enough to prove the idea works. "There's nothing wrong with
the science," said Zhang. Indeed, the Photosystem 1 experiment has
been written up in Nano Letters, a publication of the American
Chemical Society.
Zhang said that a spinach-based solar cell should have several
advantages over today's technologies. Billions of years of evolution
have taught plants to use sunlight efficiently, he said, so a
bio-solar device should be capable of higher efficiency than
present-day systems. Also, the bio-engineered materials are so thin
that thousands of layers of them could be compressed into the width
of a human hair. Spinach-based solar cells would use this technique
to provide enough juice to run a phone or computer. At the same
time, these multilayered cells would still be so thin that they
could be built into the outer skin of a device. "It's like a layer
of paint," Zhang said. A cell phone's own case, coated in spinach
cells, could recharge the battery constantly on sunny days.
How long before our phones turn green? It's just a matter of money
to transform the lab experiment into practical products, Zhang said.
"If you give me $10,000, it will take me 50 years. Forget about it,"
he said. "If you give me a million dollars, it will go faster." And
with a billion or two to play with, Zhang said our electronics could
be running on spinach power in a decade. Some of the money is
already on its way; Zhang said that the giant silicon chip-maker
Intel Corp. has recently agreed to provide additional research
funds.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. |
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The
The
Labors in the Spirits of
Science
Living on the Lost Planet 
