Still generate power even in dark: Scientists develop nighttime solar power

Still generate power even in dark: Scientists develop nighttime solar power

Still generate power even in dark: Scientists develop nighttime solar power

As one of the most well-known clean energy sources, solar energy has a wide range of applications, but because of its characteristics of converting sunlight into electricity, there has always been an insurmountable gap in the power supply time.

Recently, researchers from the University of New South Wales, Australia, successfully developed a solar power generation technology that can be used at night, and published the research results in the journal ACS Photonics.

The team used the same material as night vision goggles to create a semiconductor device called a thermal radiation diode, which can use infrared radiation at night to generate electricity.

At this stage, the semiconductor produces a tiny amount of electricity, 100,000 times less than conventional solar panels, but the researchers believe it can be improved in the future.

The research team believes that this new technology could have quite a wide range of uses in the future, as well as being able to generate electricity from other similar sources of energy in addition to using infrared radiation from the environment at night.

According to team leader, Ned Atkins-Dawkes, the technology could in principle also harvest heat from the human body to power implantable devices such as artificial hearts.