With a $10.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, UNC’s Energy Frontier Research Center plans to continue its research into producing power directly from sunlight. Meyer, a chemistry professor, pioneered and continues to lead the research.
“Solar energy is great,” said Ralph House , a research manager at the Energy Frontier Research Center. “The sun puts more energy on Earth in an hour than the world uses in 365 days.”
With this latest grant, researchers at the Energy Frontier Research Center plan to begin the next phase of research. In phase two, the results from a previous study will be used to design solar cells that operate with energy directly from the sun. These cells will function without any external sources added to the chemical reactions that led to water splitting into hydrogen and oxygen.
“Because of the importance of the topic and its possible relevance, this area has been an underlying and constant theme,” Meyer said about solar energy conversions into fuel.
This advance could make plugs irrelevant, as electricity would no longer be a necessity, House said.
Phase one, which was completed in five years, received $17.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2009. This phase focused on the underlying research needed to create an energy cell that would use light to split water molecules in order to produce fuel.
Research in the center is based on specialized teams which meet biweekly in Murray Hall.
The Energy Frontier Research Center was the first center to use this concept to create an artificial leaf that uses molecules to absorb light, split water and produce fuel simultaneously.
