| Work Detail |
The team of researchers, from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University in Coimbatore, India, sandwiched macroalgae between a carbon-coated copper electrode and a fluorine-doped tin oxide electrode coated with titanium oxide. The 1 cm2 device showed a photocurrent of 1.25 mA and a photovoltage of 0.5 V under UV light.
A team of researchers from the Indian university Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham has developed solar cells from living algae.
The team fabricated the biophotovoltaic device using the freshwater filamentous macroalga pithophora as the photoactive material. The chosen algae belongs to the green algae family and usually grows at the bottom of aquatic habitats or forming dense mats on the water surface.
The researchers collected the algae from a pond, cleaned it and crushed it into small fragments. They then fabricated a device by sandwiching the algal biofilm between a top copper electrode coated with activated carbon and a bottom titanium oxide (TiO2) electrode coated with fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO). The compact TiO2 layer was used as the electron transport layer (ETL) and the carbon as the hole transport layer (HTL).
Their work is presented in the research article “ Sustainable power generation from live freshwater photosynthetic filamentous macroalgae Pithophora,” published in the Journal of Science: Advanced Materials and Devices . According to the article, this is “possibly the first reported work [in which] living freshwater macroalgae generate electricity by sandwiching them between two modified electrodes that collect charge carriers.”
The research work details that the device, with a surface area of ??1 cm2, generated an open circuit voltage of 0.35 V and a short circuit current of 10.19 µA. When the device was exposed to UV light with a wavelength of 365 nm, it showed a photocurrent of 1.25 mA and a photovoltage of 0.5 V, without any bias applied.
The device also operated under ambient conditions, including natural sunlight, when 10 devices connected in series supplied 5.53 V at a solar intensity of 0.6.
The research article states that the results suggest that the technology has potential for use in low-power IoT-based devices. Sudip Kumar Batabyal, one of the researchers and authors of the report, told pv magazine that biological photovoltaic technology has the potential to be a sustainable alternative to traditional solar cells, as it does not require the use of expensive or toxic materials and can be grown using renewable resources.
However, Batabyal explained that the technology still faces challenges such as low efficiency and scalability. In his opinion, “this is due to the presence of a liquid reservoir that must be overcome before it can be widely adopted as a viable energy source.”
“Although the current device provides little power compared to [silicon] technology, this green photovoltaic technology will be the future sustainable solution for solar energy generation,” he added.
In November, South Korean researchers developed a cell by fusing green algae with carbon nanofibers. Earlier this month, researchers from the Spanish University of Córdoba identified a bacterial community that could be used with microalgae for the commercialization of hydrogen produced through microbial metabolism. |
