Recently, according to a news release from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, UK, the university team has found that sunlight can be used to drive lasers after research. Sunlight as is one of the most abundant renewable energy sources on earth, if can be used for laser drive, will become an important turning point in the future development of the industry.
The photosynthetic antenna complex collects energy from sunlight, converts it into electronic excitations and efficiently pools them into an H-dimer placed in the middle. Here, the excitation is absorbed into the bright, high-energy state and then rapidly relaxes to the dark, low-energy state. This mechanism prevents re-emission and allows population inversion between the |L⟩ and |G⟩ states, thus allowing the generation of lasers
Conventional lasers are powered by electricity from batteries or the grid. Even if renewable power is used, this requires additional infrastructure and there is always energy loss in the process. Using sunlight to drive 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, talks about how sunlight is abundant, but difficult to collect, store and use because it is thin and variable. Nature has found a way to do 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 lasers, but what has been demonstrated so far still requires complex systems and high levels of refrigeration. the team Gauger works with turned to purple bacteria, a photosynthetic organism found in ponds and lakes, to provide inspiration for their new system.
Purple bacteria have ring-like tentacles with a reaction center in the middle that converts sunlight into chemical energy, Gauge said, adding that if a way could be found to remove the reaction center and replace it with a simpler structure, 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 wrap-around lens. It would be lightweight and portable with completely natural organic components. It would constitute the ultimate source of green energy. Now that the team has all these components available, it just needs 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 enable chemical processes. This could address the carbon footprint of processes such as fertilizer production. It's very exciting that we can use solar energy resources to achieve a reduction in carbon emissions.
