In The Field

ACS Washington 2009: Fabrication

pro.jpgToday I started with a talk by Jack Szostak from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard. I’d originally heard of Szostak because he co-discovered telomerase, but discovered he was no one-trick pony when he was name-dropped all over last week’s NSF Minimal Life workshop for his work on artificial cells. He’s trying to figure out the most basal brew of molecules capable of growing and dividing and even evolving.

He spent most of his time talking about a very pretty paper he published a year ago, where he created a super-stripped-down version of a cell that consisted of nothing but a self-assembling membrane and genetic material. His impressive protocells cells could grow and divide, and when he modified the nucleic acids he was able to get them to self-replicate within the membrane. Great stuff, but unfortunately he didn’t present much of anything new.


In the afternoon I went to learn about a new type of nanostructured solar cells, presented by Yi Cui from Stanford University. Nanostructured solar cells — made from semiconductor nanoparticles — are very hot because they can be manufactured much more cheaply than semiconductor films, and offer finer control over their electrical properties, meaning they can potentially be much more efficient. Early this year Cui created an array of nanocones, which are dramatically black, compared with the flat films that look more like a mirror. Now he’s made solar cells with the array, and they draw an impressive amount of current per unit area. Cui claimed it set a new record for current density — 17.5 mA/cm^2 — but turns out it merely ties the world record. Still, not too shabby.

These incremental increases (and ties) are certainly important, as people are still trying to work out the best way to make nanostructured solar cells — quantum dots, nanotubes, nanodomes, etc. Later, symposium organizer Stan Wong from SUNY Stonybrook told me that while he’s “sure they will work in the future,” nanostructured solar cells are “nowhere close to real commercialization or practicality”.

Image: protocells, LANL.gov

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