Solar power has emerged as the biggest source of clean energy the world over. However, it has a limitation, the sun is now always out. A new technology developed in Australia is claiming to solve the problem by generating power from solar energy, even at night.
Researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney have generated electricity from heat radiated as infrared light by a semiconductor device called a thermoradiative diode. This “night-time” solar power equipment is composed of materials found in night-vision goggles.While the power generated at this stage is very small around 1,00,000 times less than that supplied by a solar panel, the team is hopeful of ramping up the capacity in the future. The research has been published in the journal ACS Photonics.“We have made an unambiguous demonstration of electrical power from a thermoradiative diode. Using thermal…