treehugger.com: self cleaning solar panels/windows

[Thiebear]

THIS is exactly why you can't SKIMP of the FREAKING research.

you never know where the next huge thing is going to come from.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/self-cleaning-solar-panels-windows-supercapacitor-peptides-tel-aviv.php

From Bionanotech to Cleantech

69diggsdiggA group of researchers under prof. Ehud Gazit (pictured above) at the Tel Aviv University were looking for a cure for Alzheimer's Disease when they discovered a new way to get peptides to self-assemble at high-temperatures in a vacuum. The resulting structure, pictured above, had some interesting physical properties that could make it useful not only for solar energy production, but also for electric car batteries. Read on for more details.

Main Ingredient as Cheap as Soda Sweetener

The team's paper was just published in Nature Nanotechnology (you can see the abstract here). Part of the appeal is that no exotic materials are used. In fact, the peptides used are said to be as "inexpensive to produce as the artificial sweetener aspartame."

What makes this "peptide forest" so useful is that it repels both water and dust. So if solar panels were coated with it, they would be self-cleaning so often and could produce more clean energy. They could also be used to make self-cleaning windows (particularly useful on skyscrapers), though at first they would probably be used on solar panels since there would be a bigger economic benefit there.

But that's not all! As if this material wasn't useful enough, it can also be used as a

supercapacitor (because of it's large surface area). It could potential be used in electric vehicles in combination with a regular lithium-ion battery to more efficiently capture the short bursts of electricity produced by regenerative braking, and to provide more instant-power during hard acceleration.

The lab has already been approached to develop a commercial version of its coating technology.

I was researching solar cells for the house as my roof needs replaced in the next year and was hoping i could come up with something better than straight asphalt. They have some coming out that roll out, paint on, etc. etc. that are 19% to 80% effective depeneding on how long your willing to wait/pay. IBM even found regular-ole materials that do 9%.

I figure next 10 years we will be able to paint the roof of your car or roll a thin plastic sheet, with self cleaning to increase the yield and we won't have to plug them in for 8 hours or be stuck to a 100mile range...