Funneling the Sun's Energy: New Way of Harnessing Photons for Electricity Proposed
ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2012) — The quest to harness a broader spectrum of sunlight's energy to produce electricity has taken a radically new turn, with the proposal of a "solar energy funnel" that takes advantage of materials under elastic strain.

"We're trying to use elastic strains to produce unprecedented properties," says Ju Li, an MIT professor and corresponding author of a paper describing the new solar-funnel concept that was published this week in the journal Nature Photonics.
In this case, the "funnel" is a metaphor: Electrons and their counterparts, holes -- which are split off from atoms by the energy of photons -- are driven to...

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