A Tree With Solar-cell Leaves
Well, this is pretty cool! I could see owning a few of these plants to power small electronics and whatnot. Found this article via Engadget. From Tech-On of Japan:
“A Japanese institute and firms prototyped a foliage plant-like solar cell module by using organic thin-film solar cells.
A leaf-like module featuring bright green solar cells was developed by National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Mitsubishi Corp and Tokki Corp.
The organic thin-film solar cell consists of a plastic substrate, phthalocyanine layer, fullerene layer and so forth. And eight 7.5cm2 solar cells connected in series constitute about 60cm2 solar cell module. “
So, pretty neat! Organic film with solar cells inside of it. Won’t be long until our coats and hats have solar cells all over them, eh? Maybe the roofs of our cars could have many layers of these organic cells? At any rate, it’s interesting. You see fake plants all over the place, so maybe someday soon those fake plants will have a use other than decoration and collecting dust!
June 5th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
I love it. One more step towards our cyberpunk future!
June 5th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I want WiFi implants in my head so I can have instant access to the Brainternet!
June 6th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Oh hells yeah. I was just talking about that at work, hooking our brains up to computers.
Here’s an Engadget article I found regarding development of brain-computer interfaces. Which is, I guess, Step 1 to the inevitable “wireless brainternet” that we’re talking about, a la Ghost in the Shell.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/22/researchers-develop-robotic-brain-computer-interface/