By Avery Thompson for Popular Mechanics
Researchers at the University of British Columbia have developed a new kind of solar cell that can convert sunlight into electricity, but instead of using electronics like most solar cells, this particular invention relies on bacteria.
Many bacteria are already capable of turning sunlight into energy using photosynthesis. This is thanks to a chemical that the bacteria produce, although the specific chemical varies based on the species of bacteria. Some groups of researchers in the past have attempted to isolate these chemicals and use them inside solar cells, but the process of isolating them is difficult and tends to destroy the photosynthetic chemicals.
The University of British Columbia researchers instead left the chemicals inside the bacteria, and used those bacteria themselves to generate electricity. The researchers bred E. coli bacteria to grow large amounts of the photosynthetic chemicals and then covered those bacteria with semiconducting materials to produce electricity.
This new method allowed the researchers to gain a big advantage over other bacteria-based solar cells, nearly doubling the amount of electricity collected. That’s still not quite enough to compete with traditional solar panels, but this new bacteria-powered solar cell does have other advantages as well.
