If Marc Baldo has his way, we might be using spinach to power our future gadgets. He and other at MIT have developed a process that isolates photosynthetic proteins from spinach and puts them between two layers of conducting material, causing a small electric current to be generated when light was shone on it — the same proteins that form the chloroplasts inside the plant’s leaves, which convert light into energy via photosynthesis. The biological solar cells aren’t perfect, as they give up the ghost after around 21 days. Surprisingly, though, they’re already hitting a 12 percent efficiency of conversion — that’s as good as many conventional solar cells today.
I predict the biological stability of the spinach cells will increase when married to a fixed solution of olive oil.
Read [Nature]
