A solar cell at Ambient Photonics in Scotts Valley, California.
Photographer: Rachel Bujalski/BloombergCleaner Tech
High-Powered Solar Cells Are Poised to Replace Batteries
Lenovo is using startup Ambient Photonics’s technology to get rid of batteries in a keyboard.
The basic technology behind Ambient Photonics’s solar cells is so simple that it’s routinely assembled as a high school science experiment. In labs across the US, students sandwich blackberries’ potent pigment between glass to create dye-sensitized cells capable of harnessing energy from the sun.
Ambient Photonics’s process is more high-tech, with an automated assembly line that moves window pane-sized glass sheets through a gleaming factory in Scotts Valley, California. And the cells it makes can harvest enough energy from the sun to replace coin and other types of small batteries.