Diatoms Enhance Solar Technology

 
Photo Credit: AlishaV

I must say, I thought I’d left Biology behind when I graduated high school. Actually, hoped is a better word: I hoped I’d left Biology behind long, long ago. But alas, marine biologists and solar technologists seem to have joined forces to hinder my no-science easy lifestyle. I mean, isn’t it bad enough I have to learn the basics all over again as each of my children require my assistance with homework and practice tests?

Ok, so I’m going to do my best here, but honestly the specifics are a little beyond me – there has been a new breakthrough in solar technology. (Yes, I know – you gasp with total shock at this weekly revelation, but hear me out.) Apparently there are ancient little algae microbes in the ocean that are like the cockroaches of the sea – they’ve been around for 100 million years. They are called diatoms and they are single-celled organisms with a rigid shell that somehow are able to create natural order on a nanotechnological level.

So, here’s the idea in a nutshell – well, ok, a diatom shell. Using dye-sensitized solar technology, which already exists, you take a bunch of these diatoms and allow them to “settle on a transparent conductive glass surface, and then the living organic material is removed, leaving behind the tiny skeletons of the diatoms to form a template.”
From there, tiny nanoparticles of titanium dioxide form a thin film to serve as a semiconductor for the dye-sensitized solar device.

Apparently by using the diatoms to create a template, the dye-sensitized solar power is achieved much more easily than with the former technology of using more expensive, non-biological materials.

What confuses me (and pardon my tree-hugging nature here) is what happens to the diatoms after this process? I think it’s the phrase “tiny skeletons of the diatoms” that I find a bit alarming. Are they martyrs for our cause or are they simply removed back into their natural habitat to find new shelly digs? The idea of finding cheap, plentiful, natural resources to enhance our solar technology is thrilling. But that’s what we originally thought of good old-fashioned electricity and petroleum supplies. Barring diatom genocide, I think any advances in technology that can be made with natural materials in a less expensive manner is fantastic. We need to learn from our societies naïve past mistakes, though, and really think things through to the distant future.

Posted on April 23rd in Solar Information by Jennifer.