Washington University scientists have measured key processes which could be utilised in the next generation of solar cells.  The work involves the spectroscopic analysis of oxidized multiporphyrin arrays and incontrovertibly proves one factor: these scientists ought to be actually excellent at Scrabble.

A porphyrin is an organically-based chemical.  A “multiporphyrin array” is just a chain of these molecules strung together.  It has been identified that electrons can be passed down such chains when they’re exposed to light, or in other words, sunlight in and electricity out.  It turns out there’s a large market for stuff like that.  In fact, they found that the electrons have a transfer rate of 1.25 Gigahertz, meaning  the electron can make over 1 billion transfers a second.

What does this mean to you?  Not extremely much just however.  But this type of advance in the simple science is what will make the next generation of solar technologies possible.  Some folks ask what the point in this sort of work is – what’s the bottom line?  What do we get for our dollar?  But if we usually acted like that, humans would still be living in caves eating raw meat due to the fact it wasn’t cost-effective for anyone to attempt rubbing sticks together.  Or food-successful, in fact, given that that’s the only currency we’d have.

Plus this sort of research is covered under simple funding for science and education, meaning that there are no dollars dependent on a hard item.  When an idea reaches the marketable stage is when that occurs, with companies like MIT spinning off technology begin-ups to commercialize the scientific breakthroughs.  That is where the millions of dollars in capital have to be used, that’s where the goods that will revolutionize energy will come from – and that is the kind of function that is utterly impossible unless people are performing the standard investigation.

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