James Gossling

Reading and Writing 1 EN 1100 06

Craig Santer
17 December 2014

Introduction
Global warming and pollution have long been known and studied. Simultaneously,
solar energy has long been idealized as the final solution to civilizations energy problem.
The sun sheds more solar energy in one minute than all of humanity can use in one year.
Unfortunately, this macro-scaled mind set has led to expensive and inefficient solar cells. It
is through the application of the quantum physics of solar power that this energy can be
made humanitys primary or sole source of energy. A clear understanding on the
transference and storage of one unimaginably small electron can create a system that can
power the entire human race.
The History of Light
Although gathering much media attention lately, solar energy is the oldest energy
there is. It has allowed life on Earth to form and has been used by plants and animals for
billions of years to live and grow. During ancient times it was used to light buildings, and
torches and to cook food. Reflecting a concentrated beam of light off of a large copper
shield, ancient Greeks were allegedly able to set fire to ships and win naval battles using
the suns energy. Though humanity has been using light for millennia, it remained a
mysterious power for much of history.
It was not until the 1800s that scientists began to figure out what light was actually
made of. It has long been thought of as being composed of small particles due to the
physics of Isaac Newton, which states most everything is made of physical objects of
varying sizes, all interacting with one another. This particle description cannot account for
the refraction and diffraction properties of light, like its splitting into different colors of

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after moving through a crystal. And with the discovery of radio waves by Heinrich Hertz in
1888, it seemed that light was actually a wave.
This was also an incomplete description of light. It was assumed by Hertz and many
other scientists in the 1890s that lights only form was a wave, and as a wave it interacted
with matter through its intensity: the more light there was being thrown at an object, the
more the light changed that object whether through melting, burning, or irradiating it. A
scientist by the name of Max Planck, the de facto father of the Quantum Theory, had an
issue with Hertzs theory and sought to reconcile the nature of light once again.
In 1900, Planck was researching how light actually interacted with matter through
radiation. Going on Hertzs theory the sun, the most intense source of light in the solar
system, should make pretty much everything on Earth emit radiation, yet that was not at all
what was observed. It was found that the different kinds of radiation emitted by objects
corresponded not to the intensity, but the frequency of the light: how close or far the
individual hills and valleys in the wave graph are. This enabled him to understand what
was actually being seen when light was refracted through a prism and split up into
separate colors, or frequencies. Not only did Planck uncover how light interacted with
matter through its frequency, he found that these frequencies did not shift from one to the
other smoothly. There were jumps in energy value from one frequency to another, shown
as dark lines between the wave-forms in Fig. 1. This observation showed that light was
emitted and absorbed in distinct quantities, or quanta. This knowledge, coupled with
Albert Einsteins later revelation of light also being a particle, explained in-depth in his
1905 paper on the photo-electric effect of moving bodies, has led to the concept of the

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photon and modern Quantum Theory: an unimaginably small world where things move so
fast that they are both particles and waves.

Fig. 1. 3D photon map, showcasing the wave nature and the energy levels on the spectrum
where the photon can be found.
Belthangady, Chinmay. Kolchin, Pavel. Du, Shengwang. Yin, G. Y. Harris, S. E. 2008. 22
October 2014.
Albert Einsteins discovery of the photon as a tangible entity immediately began to
spawn ideas on how to capture it. By 1908, the first solar cell was invented, and only ten
years later silicon solar cells began to be produced, which are roughly the same design as
modern cells. In 1954, though efficiencies were only around 4-11%, solar cells had become
effective enough to power every day devices.
After this crucial point the race had begun, companies on a private and government
level began researching ways to increase efficiency and design innovative ways to
incorporate this new energy source into everything ranging from highway lights to
buildings, and even aircraft. Though we are still quite a way from powering civilization off
of the sun, these 20th century discoveries and inventions have transformed light from an
invisible enigma into a concrete form of energy.

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The Current Situation
With Quantum Theory being over one hundred years old at this point, one of the
biggest questions is: where is it all? Where are all the monumental advances that this field
of study should bring? James Kakalios book The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics
answers this question very simply: everywhere. From radios to TVs to lasers, all modern
technology stems from the discovery and manipulation of little points of fast-moving light.
But if this theory of capturing and moving light is a century old, why are we still using fossil
fuels? The answer: ease.
According to A Brief History of Coal from the U.S. Department of Energy, coal was
first commercially mined in the 1740s, and humanity has been burning it continually ever
since. It came in large tangible quantities and was very easy to burn. It must also be
mentioned that this was a time before the environment mattered to humanity the way it
does today. Trees were chopped down for homes, animals and humans who got in
civilizations way were exterminated, and pretty much every kind of waste was dumped
into the water supply. It was a time long before global communication and people simply
didnt know any different, so they kept burning.
Even moving into the modern age, long after the ominously negative effects of fossil
fuels have been realized, large quantities, cheap prices and ease of use have kept oil and
coal as the frontrunners of energy production. Solar power has been kept in the corner for
some time for a few reasons. For instance, unlike coal being a large static piece of fuel,
photons are amazingly fast and so small that it requires large amounts of theoretical
calculation to even begin to visualize how to capture and move one of these particles.
Another problem comes from the fact that certain materials absorb certain wavelengths of

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light; any particular kind of material can grab only a certain frequency of the light that
comes down to Earth. While these challenging concepts bring about innovation, this
innovation comes with a large price tag.
Another long-standing downside to solar energy is its inability to be stored. Coal
and gasoline can simply be put in a container and set in a safe area and will still be usable
for an indefinite amount of time. Electrons are much more dynamic and unstable energy
sources. The electron produced by a material absorbing photons can do one of two things:
it can release the extra energy as heat and return to its unexcited state, or it can move
down the circuit to an electrode to be collected. Heat release is what happens when the
electron cannot make the jump to the circuit. One of the principals outlined in Max
Plancks essay on Quantum Theory states that energy, and the electrons that carry it, can
only change in distinct quanta, or values. If the physical circuit that the electron is meant to
jump onto does not correspond to the current frequency and electrical energy of that
electron, it will be unable to move. And because a particle always tries to move back to its
original energy state the extra electrical energy is shed as thermal energy and no energy is
gained in the system.
It is a delicate enough process to store the extra energy of the electron long enough
to move down a wire. It is harder still to keep that energy if the electron is not used as soon
as it reaches the electrode at the end of the circuit. Any energy not used immediately needs
to move passed the electrode onto another circuit. If electrons are not able to pass the
electrode they tend to clump together and begin changing each others energy states,
which will lead to energy loss through heat. Even in a perfectly working battery of any
kind, the flow of electrons and heat will begin to contract and expand the materials the

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electrons move through. This movement will eventually cause tiny cracks to form, which
reduces the amount of energy the battery can store, and eventually the cracks will become
large enough that current can no longer flow and the battery must be replaced.
The Solar Future
For all of its shortcomings, solar energy is still in the fight for major energy
production, and with the help of some new developments in the field, it may just come out
on top before our planets climate starts to spin out of control from greenhouse gases. Not
only is the general capture of solar energy a quantum process, the newest improvements in
solar cell function have been directly related to a further understanding of Quantum
Theory and atomic manipulation. One of the more difficult problems with solar cell
efficiency is gathering photons not only from the visible light we see and feel, but also from
the entire spectrum of light energy that the sun sheds. The response to this issue came
about with the discovery and production of the Quantum Dot.

Fig. 2. A Quantum Dot solar cell, where each dot collects a specific frequency of light.
University of Toronto. 2011. 22 October 2014.
A Quantum Dot is essentially a small crystalline circle that absorbs light. The
newest kind being made by scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory range
in size from 2-10 nanometers and contain only hundreds or thousands of individual atoms.

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To put that in perspective, a single cell of skin contains millions or even billions of atoms.
These dots are grown in a vacuum chamber by releasing gaseous ions of a certain
crystalline materials onto the hard surface of another crystalline material. These two types
of ions cling to one another and self-assemble into a tiny sphere that is the Quantum Dot.
The band gap of the dot, or area of energy levels where no electrons are permitted to be, is
easily tuned by changing the dots size. This is done simply by timing the reaction; the
longer the reaction the bigger the dot. What makes these dots even more appealing is that
they can be grown with simple chemical reactions at room temperature, which greatly
reduces the manufacturing cost.
After these differently sized dots are grown they are simply painted on a conductive
material in equally spaced circles, as shown in Fig. 2. The conductive material then moves
the captured electrons to circuits to be used or stored in batteries. They can be stacked on
top of each to aid in efficiency of space, which allows for more light to be captured per area
of material. A photon will come into contact with the first dot on the stack and if the dots
band gap or size, matches the photons band gap or wavelength, it becomes trapped inside
the dot and splits into multiple electrons, with the exact amount of electrons produced
determined by the frequency of the light. If the band gaps do not match, the photon passes
right through the dot and down the stack until it comes into contact with the correctly sized
dot.
In a conventional solar panel, the size of material is measured on the macro level
and there is little to no tuning, so the photons energy is never fully captured. In this case,
one electron is produced and the rest of the energy in the wave function either passes
through the material or is lost as heat. The greatest feature about these dots is that,

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because their size can be controlled on the quantum level to match a photons wave, it can
be fully captured. This allows multiple electrons to be produced, which on the macro
scale means efficiency reaching close to 100%.
Now that we are starting to be able to use the sun more efficiently by gathering
energy from its full spectrum, the next step is to hold onto that high efficiency as the
energy is moved and consumed. A long-standing issue with this has been that moving
electrons from one system to another always leads to a loss of energy through waste heat.
To understand this process completely it too must be viewed in the quantum sense.
Going off of information given by Keith Welch and regarded as fundamental
electrical science, a current of electrons moves through a material very simply by jumping
from one atom to another. Materials such as metals are arranged in a very precise lattice
structure, which allows the electrons to move very easily. Yet, even in very pure metals,
the omnipresence of heat adds energy to the system and disrupts the electrons movement
by giving them too much energy, at which point they essentially dissipate out of the wire
and are lost; this can be seen in the corrosion of wires and other electron-carrying
equipment. There are only two ways to eliminate this energy loss or resistance: one is to
attempt to cool the system to absolute zero Kelvin, which is currently unattainable. The
other, more promising remedy, is to eliminate the wire that carries the energy, turning the
system into one singular device.
A team of scientists at the Ohio State University led by Yiyang Wu has done just that.
Their invention combines both the solar cell and battery into one energy-producing device:
the KAir Solar Battery.

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Fig 3. Close up of a KAir solar cell battery, The light collecting molecules(left) are grown on a
metal mesh(right) allowing for oxygen to be cycled in the system to move the electricity to the
lower battery portion.
Wu, Yiyang. 2014.
The battery, while sophisticated in its design, simplifies the solar energy capture
system, which reduces manufacturing cost and heightens efficiency. While most solar
collection devices are solid surfaces, this concept uses a titanium mesh on which titanium
dioxide rods are grown, shown in the close-up of Fig. 3. The battery charges as rods collect
photons that then split into electrons. The electrons then travel down the mesh and
decompose a sheet of lithium peroxide. The oxygen part is released into the air and the
electrons bond to the lithium creating metal lithium ions. The battery then discharges by
breathing in oxygen and reforming the lithium peroxide. At this point, the electrons that
have traveled down the battery and formed the lithium metal are now free to be moved
into any other electrical device. This allows for a constant stream of electrons to be moved
from the sun to a powered device without the use of long wires, which lose about 20% of
the energy before they make it to the device on the other end.

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What is perhaps the most undernoted yet most important feature of these new
discoveries, is the fact that all of these materials are considered non-toxic and can be found
in abundance all over the planet. Not only are these Third Generation solar materials
breaking records of efficiency, but in eco-friendliness as well.
Conclusion
The age of fossil fuel is ending, whether the human race wants it to or not. Oil and
coal deposits are beginning to run low and are becoming harder to extract. And before they
run out, the atmosphere will have been altered too much for most life forms to exist. The
only place to solve this compounding problem is at its source: humanitys energy source
must change from Earth to the sun. The suns energy is virtually infinite, but it comes in
almost unimaginably small amounts. It cannot be harvested it like fossil fuels. It is only
through studying the quantum physics of photons and electrons that this energy can be
made humanitys primary or sole source. A clear understanding on the transference and
storage of one unimaginably small electron can create a system that can power the entire
human race.

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WORKS CITED
Jones, Andrew Zimmerman. Quantum Physics Overview. 2014.
http://physics.about.com/od/quantumphysics/p/quantumphysics.htm
Harbold, Jeff. Plisch, Monica. Quantum Dots.
http://www.cns.cornell.edu/documents/QuantumDots.pdf
Kakalios, James. The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics 1st Ed. New York, New York:
Gotham Books 2010. Print
Barksdale, Martha. 10 Ways Quantum Physics Will Change the World. 2014.
http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/10-ways-quantum-physicswill-change-world.htm
National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Quantum Dots Promise To Significantly Boost
Photovoltaic Efficiencies. 2010.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/47571.pdf
Honsberg, C.B. Approaches for Ultra-High Efficiency Solar Cells. 2004.
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Gorder, Pam Frost. 2014. Batteries Included: A Solar Cell that Stores its Own Power.
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Lafo, Susan, and the Mountain Empire High School physics class. Particle Physics Timeline.
1996 .
http://www.particleadventure.org/other/history/index.html
U.S. Department of Energy. The History of Solar. 2001.

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https://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/pdfs/solar_timeline.pdf
Commissariat, Tushna. Quantum Microscope Peers into Hydrogen Atom. 2013.
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U.S. Department of Energy. A Brief History of Coal Use. 2013.
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Welch, Keith. How Do You Explain Electrical Resistance?
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Einstein, Albert. On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. June 30th, 1905.
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