Today’s solar materials, which range from the rigid-silicon panels found on rooftops to the flexible, organic kind that can be coated like paint onto surfaces, all degrade over time when exposed to sun and oxygen. The result of this damage is that the material’s ability to turn sunlight into electricity decreases over time.
Strano and his team have built what they call a “dynamic” solar cell. The light-capturing material is a mixture of several chemicals, including a photosensitive protein, a fatty substance called a phospholipid and carbon nanotubes.
