With the high demand of each priority list of alternative sources of energy, in every state of the engineer working with the hope to save the solar energy can provide the enterprises and individuals more gentle. Solar energy technology, and one of the most spectacular improvement is the introduction of carbon nanotubes (hollow tubes of carbon atoms) is a new solar power system. Carbon Nanotubes are not a recent discovery, they proposed a few years ago, they are their own strength promotion. People realize that they can be used in aircraft construction, lighter and stronger cars, buildings, and even soft ball. However, the fact that the new solar energy, carbon nanotube has launched in the solar system the system stored energy level increased in 100 times more common photovoltaic solar cells.
This finding is credited, for the most part, to a group of MIT chemical engineers. Through their research, they found that by using carbon nanotubes, solar energy can be super concentrated. Their studies showed that the nanotubes could form antennas that are capable of capturing and focusing light energy more effectively thus allowing smaller and more powerful solar arrays.
According to a recent study released in the Journal of Nature Materials by Michael Strano, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the associated research team, the carbon nanotube antenna, or as they call it the “solar funnel”, might also be useful for other applications that require concentrated light. Among these applications, they specifically made mention of night vision goggles and telescopes.
At the most basic level, the way this process works; solar panels generate electricity by converting photons (packets of light energy) into an electric current. The nanotube boosts the number of photons that can be captured and then transforms this increased level of light into energy that can be funneled into the solar storage cell.
What the MIT team accomplished was the construction a special antenna consisting of fibrous ropes, only 10 micrometers (millionths of a meter) long and 4 micrometers thick. Each fibrous rope contained about 30 million carbon nanotubes. These ropes or micro fibers were made up of two layers of nanotubes with different electrical properties or bandgaps*. The inner layer of the antenna contained nanotubes with a smaller bandgap than the outer layer. This is important because excitons flow from high energy to low energy or, in this specific case, from the outer layer to the inner layer where they can exist in a lower, yet still excited, energy state.
So, what does all of this mean? Well, when light energy strikes the antenna, all of the excitons flow to the center of the fiber where they are concentrated and stored. Better methods of energy storage translate to improved efficiency and improved efficiency means more economical energy resources. As solar power becomes more economical more people will migrate to solar panel installation and solar powered homes and businesses.
The electrons can exist at different energy levels of any material existence.When the excitation energy of the electron is more a photon hits the surface in the material level, to be specific, particular material. The interaction between the excited electrons and holes left called excitons. The band gap of the difference between the electron and hole energy levels of labeled.
Related reading: nano powders nano particles