12-Year Old Boy Will Save the World! His Solar Cell Absorbs 500 Times the Light of Existing Cells

Where are these schools that let kids experiment with amazing technology?? All we had when I was in science class was a frog to disect and some baking soda experiments.

I am very eager to see more update on this.

Everything in me was screaming "not possible" until I read it. He utilizes some manor of extracting the non-visible, non-heat spectrum of light...err...somehow. If he can prove it in a computer simulation like stated in the prize package, he might actually be able to pull it off. I think that was the holy grail of solar technology if I'm not too far off. It was more or less considered impossible or at the very least too expensive to be commercially viable. Apparently he's solved this quandary which understandably would be kept under wraps so he can become insanely rich.

I have to agree with Cybercat: the skeptic in me says it is too good to be true. While I'm not overly skeptical of a technique, I am very skeptical of a viable method of production. That said, I'm praying for something like this to become commercially viable.

It's 12 year old's like William Yuan that
a) make me feel very dumb and
b) will probably save the world!

Considering that current solar cells are actually converting 10%-20% of sunlight hitting them to electricity this is complete BS.

Misleading. Solar cells already convert about 20% of the incoming solar energy to electricity. There is only five times more possible for efficiency. So, it can't be talking about efficiency (though there is also a 2x efficiency claim tucked in there, that is possible, and others have talked about similar efficiencies using multi-spectrum technologies.)

I'm guessing, given the mention of solar concentrators, that he imagines his design will work with 500 times the incoming light, say 500 dinner plate sized mirrors all focused on a dinner plate sized collector. You still use up as much space for collection, but you trade solar cells for mirrors, which can be a cost savings (though perhaps not against nanosolar's printed collectors, those might be cheaper than mirrors.) Traditional solar cells don't work well in this situation. There are technologies designed to work this way, but I don't think any of them are in widespread use. Collector plants all heat based to my knowledge.

i obviously would love to see it in production... if this is for real, maybe next he can work on a way to actually store the energy generated by these solar cells...

It could still cost 500 times more to produce

If current solar cells can reach up to 22% efficiency, how can you have a solution that is 500X more efficient? Perhaps 500% more efficient. Although perhaps we should note the difference between light absorbtion and energy conversion.

There might be something to this but it can't be 500 times the light absorption. At worst, at 10% efficient solar cell has to absorb 10% of the light hitting it (in practice I think it's upward of 90%). 500 times 10% is 5000%. Absorbing 50 times more light than what hits it doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

A team of Japanese researchers used the unique properties of buckyballs to 'overcome the barriers of electron movement' a while ago, thereby achieving massive gains in efficiency. (specifically, by utilizing the low reorganization energy of C60 to prevent back-electron flow) Carbon nanotubes are basically extended buckyballs, so this may just be an extension of a proven idea.

Having said that, I'm not sure what happened to those researchers or their research. . . maybe there is a problem that no one has yet solved?

Pretty amazing that some 12 year old kid came up with this, even if it is not new (or if it doesn't really work).

Last night at Green Drinks I had a representative of "solar freedom international" tell that they could produce electricity from solar for $0.36 / watt installed!

Yep, it seems like the solar energy scams are hot, hot, hot.

When stating that solar cells are 10% efficient, they are talking about conversion of light able to be converted into solar energy. Here the 12 year old allowed more light to be 'converted'. He (if explained correctly) allowed more of the light spectrum to be converted. Additionally, he allowed the converted energy to be more effiecently transfered from the cell to the toaster oven. Hopefully my toaster oven, with cookies in it. mmmm cookies.

In reference to the comment about 5000% of the light that touches it. Simply put, given it's 3-dimensional nature, it is not unlikely that he isn't using some form of focused solar. The issue that comes up is simply how does he get rid of the heat. Existing solar panels are limited by heat and many other factors. Is it wrong that I do not want to believe that a 12-year old could do what others with more education could not??

While still impressive for a 12-year old kid, it sounds like this idea has already been explored, by researchers at Georgia Tech. In fact the description sounds exactly the same: applying vertical stacks of nanotubes in 3D format to trap more photons and decrease the chances for electron recombination. I am not sure where the novelty is for William's idea, but it sounds surprisingly close to the research done at GTech...

http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=1763.php

I'm going to give this boy the benefit of the doubt and assume his claim is true. If so, than whatever "absorbs 500 times more light" means, we can be certain it is not directly proportional to the efficiency of the cells. As previous comments have already pointed out, that would imply the electrical energy the cells produce was greater than the solar energy hitting them, which just isn't how physics works.

I don't care how much of the spectrum they can use. Current cells on the market are 10-20% efficient at converting light to electricity, and that is a percentage of the TOTAL solar power hitting them, not just a percentage of the visible light.

It could mean that if used for concentrating solar, these cells can absorb the take in light from a much larger area than other cells (presumably without overheating or becoming damaged).

Depending on the original phrasing, it could mean that the fraction of light not absorbed (i.e. reflected) was 500 times smaller. In that case it may or may not be significant; a change from 50 to 99.9 percent absorption is probably important, but a change from 99 to 99.998 percent absorption probably isn't.

Or it could mean something else entirely, or it could be an error somewhere, by someone.

He is using more of the bandwidth then what current solar cells use. Think of current cells as converting just the red light that comes in, while his version is converting red, yellow, blue, infrared and ultraviolet.
He is also figure out how to make the entrie system more efficent (The equivalent of replacing aluminum wires with copper wires).
More raw material used more efficently.
Now to get it to be cheap and safe to make.

I hope he gets a chance to play ball.

His idea to increase efficiency by increasing the area of exposure by creating small 3D nano-structure . It look like it is multi directional too because of the 3D structure . Very clever, and for 12 year old...my hat off.

I thinking how to capture ambient heat as a Holly Groelle of renewal energy.
The Idea that I come out is to convert defused (random direction ) radiation (heat or other radiation) in to unidirectional ration. That is required to concentrate the ambient heat and create energy potential.
Let me remain you that in room temperature object emit around 340W/m2.. That a lot.
The way to do that is to used concentrator that look like vortex cone.
It is known that vortex cone can convert fluid or gas pressure (random movement of atoms) to velocity (linear movement of atoms) with remarkable efficiency. It was proven experimentally in 1950s (Viktor Schauberger). It can be observe each time tornado is reported. The vortex cone shape of tornado and black hole is not accidental.

I believe that same can be apply to concentration of ambient heat radiation.
I am ware that such system will validate second law of thermodynamic as we know. But I believe that that law can be only apply in to very small close loop system. When you think in the macro scale it do not apply as it not exactly apply in nano scale - quantum theory.

I wonder what the name of the poor graduate student or post-doc who really did the work is. I had the opportunity to mentor several high-school students who worked in our academic lab while I was earning my PhD. They were all very bright kids, but honestly, they were not the source of significant ideas. Those came from the head professors or the older students, who are the only ones who have had the time to read and understand the countless papers, books, and concepts you have to wade through before you can climb to the top of any field.

And of course, the technical aspects of this discovery are hyped, oh, about 500 times over. It is just another boring, incremental advance.

Nanotubes are on the forefront of chemistry, how is a 12 year old even understanding the physics involved?

sounds like this kid is on the path to being a nobel prize winner, unlike al gore this kid will actually Help the world

Hope he is successful with his discovery. Not that it will mean much to people like me. Any good technological advance in panels recently is only being made available to large power providers so people like me have to buy it from them instead of be able to make my own power. Same old same old.

i was reading that a Georgia Tech team have designed a 3D solar cells in 2006 ?

The 3D solar cell was invented more than 4 years ago at the Georgia Tech Research Institute by our team of world-class scientists and engineers.

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (www.gtri.gatech.edu) has been making 3D solar cell prototypes of this design since 2004. You can read about the work in our April 2007 news release online at http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/casestudy/3d-solar-cells-boost-efficiency. Our work has patents pending in the US and abroad. We have also published our research widely in an number of highly regarded research journals including the Journal of Applied Physics, Journal of Materials and Carbon.

The 3D Solar Cell has the potential to be breakthrough in the solar industry. The global and exclusive license to the 3D Solar Cell intellectual property is held by IP2BIZ in Atlanta http://www.ip2biz.com/Offerings/ProofCoProjects.asp The license is currently for sale to any firm that can further develop, manufacture and bring it to market.

It is wonderful to see a student taking a real interest in science and math. We are also happy to hear of William’s interest in 3D solar cells. We encourage him to contact the Georgia Tech Research Institute so he may be connected with our lead researcher (Dr. Jud Ready), who would love for him to visit our laboratories to see how we create our photovoltaic cells. Who knows – maybe William can contribute to our groundbreaking work.

The comments about current solar cell efficiencies being based on just visible light and not the entire solar spectrum are incorrect. Solar cell efficiency is based on the total amount of energy across the entire spectrum including UV visible and IR.

The sun is a black body radiator and as such a majority of its energy happens to fall within the visible spectrum, which if you think about it makes sense. Our eyes have quite naturally evolved to make use of the "brightest" part of the solar spectrum, i.e. the visible spectrum, so it is no coincidence that the visible spectrum happens to also be the most energetic.

The 500X claim is preposterous. The 9X claim is preposterous. The idea that it is concentrating may be true but if so that is one of the most misleading press releases I have every seen.

It is worth noting that several companies make solar cells expressly for concentrator applications, which are commercially available up to 30% efficient http://www.spectrolab.com/DataSheets/NeXtTJ/nxttj.pdf. The current record is over 40% of the total incident photon energy into electricity. Fundamental physical laws cap the upper limit of conversion at about 66% so the maximum possible improvement over current technology is about 1.5X.

The folks at the Davidson Institute have been taken for a $25,000 ride because they didn't do their homework. It's an impressive scheme for a 12 year old.

If you google search "3d solar cell" you will see that it is something they came up with at GA Tech over a year ago.

As thos of us in the industry know, it's a old idea and patented. But it's cool that the kid came up with the same idea.

This is perfectly true. You are only talking about visible light, not all the ultraviolet and whatever. I think this kid could save the economy with this cell. By the way, how does a kid make one of these? Remember this kid isin't a millionaire yet, so how could he get the funding to make this?

It says 500x the amount of energy compared to standard solar cells.

Yes this number is correct. Why? If you read the full article, it says it also absorbs UV rays and other forms of energy rather than just visible light.

im 14 and i thout i was smart untill i seen this!
good job i will look into solar cells and try new things good job man i thank you for makeing that cell and mayby saveing the planet lol.

Hey that sounds too cool. He should consider the solar power vehicles I think Japan is trying to make as they only go 40 miles an hou.r I think his invention would be a good asset to them. 12 years old? Kids are getting smarter ever 5 minutes maybe we will come again to the days when an 8 year old becomes a king like the bible days. With all the wisdom and knowledge that Daddy God has placed in them.

"out of the mouths of babes"

that boy is amazing. his invention is pure genius.

This hype over an already submitted idea BS. Several researchers have been working on this use of nanotubes to capture more of the spectrum.
already. Just because a kid had the idea or parroted. Did he make a working prototype? The nanotubes are near impossoble currently to make in quantity. Just ask the guy s doing the space elevator ribbon using nanotubes. I saw the guy pulling a tweezered mote as a result of hours of processing. Lets see that get to orbit legbth anytime soon.

It's easy to say wow I have a picture I've drawn of a waveguide that may work and submit it as a school paper, but media hype and the decreasing intelligence of the the population make these little media blips sensations to the stupid masses. I came up with the multiuniverse parallelism notion when I was 11 ( 1975 ). Big ffing deal.

i think this invention simply can create 500 X the power when compared to the watt per cm2 on traditional cells. focusing/redirecting the light onto it makes it possible. It shouldn't cost 500X to make when it gets mass produced. big concern could be that buckyballs and carbon nanotubes are extremely toxic to the environment and they don't break down easily. personally i think hyperbolic mirro arrays focused on heating a medium which then could drive a steam based power plant is the answer to our problem but we have to stop investing in these trillion dollar wars before we commit a third of it towards getting off the oil wagon...

Plural of Lego, is Lego.

"Saving the World" will take leadership and individual commitment to make a difference, not waiting for a saviour or miracle technological breakthrough.

If we don't stop our wasteful ways, all cheap "clean" energy will do is increase the overuse of other resources and environmental destruction caused by their extraction.

i suppose that this means he used the same type of full spectrum light absorption as the NASA satallites that the govt. says is too expensive for the civilian market.... Kudos Yaun .... may the force be with you! PS try with Sharp...Or pitch the idea to the Gates foundation.

If the UV light can make age spots / mask of old age on my face during a dark, cloudy day, why can't we use it for our power source?
I am willing to explore all possibillities, if it can help
us get off the limited resources that are left on our planet.
We need to explore any avenue that is presented to us to explore...
Our future is happening while we plan the rest of our lives. Let grab the brass ring to it.

For those of you that haven't looked at other articles on this subject, the increases aren't solely in what part of the spectrum the energy is from. Current solar cells are flat, while his are 3-D, I suppose enabling solar collection on all sides of the panels. The nano-tube construction greatly increases the energy/electricity efficiency ratio while the cell storage is optimized to allow greater electrical collection. The article is about how he has increased the design to over 500x the typical solar panel, not the cutting edge. Basically, the design would work, but would be economically unviable. Still amazing ideas from a 12 year old.

and he's 12?!
amazing :D

500 times even the minimum quality solar cell would make it more efficient than even a nuclear powereplant. This is because you lose energy just to resistance in the wiring or nano tubes. The resistance turns electricity into heat. Which is wasted energy. There is no material that can transfer energy that efficiently to allow near 100% returns. I'm not saying it is a complete hoax but someone really got there numbers messed up! Wind, Hydro-Electrical and Nuclear power are still the most viable options. Unless you are Hawaii with plenty of geo-thermal energy and sunlight. Where did this kid get his hands on carbon nano tubes anyway!