Recently, according to a news release from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK, a team from the university has discovered that sunlight can be used to drive lasers. Sunlight as is one of the most abundant renewable energy on earth, such as can be used for laser drive, will become the future of the industry development of an important turning point.
The photosynthetic antenna complex harvests energy from sunlight, converts it into electronic excitations and efficiently converges them into an H-dimer placed in the center. Here, the excitation is absorbed into a bright, high-energy state and then rapidly relaxes to a dark, low-energy state. This mechanism prevents re-emission and allows for population inversion between the |L⟩ and |G⟩ states, thus allowing for the generation of lasers
Conventional lasers are powered by electricity from batteries or the grid. Even if renewable electricity is used, this requires additional infrastructure and there is always a loss of energy in the process. Using sunlight to power lasers to start chemical processes instead of fossil fuels has a lot of scope for the future, the research team says.
Dr. Erik Gauger of the Heriot-Watt Institute for Photonics and Quantum Science, who previously outlined how sunlight-driven lasers work in a study published in the New Journal of Physics, talked about how sunlight is plentiful but difficult to collect, store, and utilize because it's thin and variable. Nature has found a way to accomplish this through photosynthesis, in which plants convert sunlight, water and carbon into food and energy.
The team has designed a bionic blueprint for a new laser system that upgrades natural sunlight into a coherent laser beam. Other scientists have begun working on solar-powered lasers, but what has been demonstrated so far still requires complex systems and high levels of refrigeration.The research team Gauger was working with turned to purple bacteria, a photosynthetic organism found in ponds and lakes, to provide the inspiration for their new system.
Purple bacteria have ring-like tentacles with a reaction center in the middle that converts sunlight into chemical energy. if a way could be found to remove the reaction center and replace it with a simpler structure, Gauge says, a bunch of modified photosynthetic structures could be used to convert sunlight into laser beams under ambient conditions.
Specifically, this design would require neither an external power source nor a large, complex surround lens. It would be lightweight and portable with completely natural and organic components. It would constitute the ultimate source of green energy. Now that the team has all of these components available, they just need to find the best way to play with the molecular "Lego" and assemble the structure.
The end result could be a low-energy solar laser that could still be used for a range of applications, Gauger said. Solar lasers could be used to generate green energy or to realize chemical processes. This could address the carbon footprint of processes such as fertilizer production. It's very exciting that we can utilize solar energy resources to achieve a reduction in carbon emissions.
