Solar nanowires

Building off of Tomas’ post on nanowires and the cool stuff they can do, we see a letter to Nature discussing the possibility of nanowires that can be powered by the sun, thereby requiring no external power source.  Supposedly, these nanowires would be more efficient than a crystal in creating electricity from solar energy. 

(via Ars Technica) (image from Inexpressible is possible)

4 thoughts on “Solar nanowires”

  1. a really fascinating possible use for nanowires! It makes sense based on how semiconductors work but imagine a macro-sized net of nanowires absorbing sunlight – a huge amount of potential power. Even if you couldn’t scale it up, combining this development with simple nano interfaces and devices could be a great saving of energy – it wouldn’t work for human sized stuff but certain use gadgets would be excellent.

  2. I think the biggest problem would be the same as with solar calculators – in a dim room or at night, they don’t work so well.

    The article discusses applications like generating electricity in solar arrays, or sun-powered computers.

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