A collaboration that includes a University of Missouri
engineering professor is aiming to revolutionize how solar
energy is collected and converted into electricity. Tapping
solar energy now relies on photovoltaic panels, but that
technology can take advantage of only about one-third of the
radiation spectrum in sunlight. But the research group that
includes MU is taking a different approach that uses 90 percent
of the spectrum, by using tiny antennas in paper-thin film. The
approach is still in development, but the group is far enough
along in the work, which began in 2005, that its members are
confident it will perform as expected and eventually be
commercially successful. "This isn't evolutionary, it's
revolutionary," said Patrick Pinhero, an associate professor of
chemical engineering at the University of Missouri in Columbia,
Mo. "Ten years out I think we replace photovoltaics." The
collaboration making the effort includes the federal Idaho
National Laboratory, where Pinhero once worked, and MicroContinu