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Solar panels with human hair

17.09.2014

Milan Karki, a teenager from rural Nepal, has come up with a new type of solar panel using a human hair.

Hair may well serve as electrical conductors in solar panels. The use of such an unusual material can lead to cheaper sources of clean energy.

“First, I wanted to power my home, then my village. Now I’m already thinking about electricity for the whole world,” says the 18-year-old inventor. “Hair can replace silicon, an expensive component that is traditionally used in solar panels, which means that new panels can be made at a low cost for those without access to electricity."

Milan's solar panel generates 18 watts of energy and costs only $38. The teenager is currently trying to commercialize the new panels.

Thanks to mass production, the cost of new panels could be significantly reduced. The development allows you to charge a mobile phone or a couple of batteries that provide lighting in the room for a whole evening.

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Transistor of one molecule and several atoms 29.07.2015

An international team of researchers, including representatives from Germany, Japan and the United States, has created a transistor from one molecule and several atoms using a scanning tunneling microscope.

The resulting sample consists of one organic phthalocyanine molecule, which is surrounded by a ring of 12 positively charged light metal (indium) ions. The entire structure was placed on a crystal of a semiconductor chemical compound (indium arsenide). The molecule is weakly bound to the substrate crystal. When the tip of a microscope probe is brought very close to it and a charge is applied, the electrons move between the tip and the substrate. Indium ions act as regulators of this process, ensuring the successive migration of single electrons and thereby guaranteeing the uninterrupted operation of the transistor.

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Each ion is approximately 167 picometers in diameter, 15 times smaller than the thickness of a DNA strand and 600 times thinner than a human hair. The transistor operates at room temperature, and not at ultra-low, like early options.

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