Remember telling your friends that in 10 years we'd all be driving solar powered cars?
Well, you might have been right.
Armed with part of a $22.7 million grant from the Department of Energy, Penn Chemistry professor Andrew Rappe and a team of researchers from the Penn Energy Research Group are looking to change the way we use our sunlight.
The grant is aimed at institutions that would focus on converting "sunlight into hydrogen or hydrocarbon fuels," according to the Department of Energy's Web site. It was also given to chemical research leaders such as the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
And with reduction of greenhouse gas emissions grabbing the national spotlight - to demonstrate his green credentials, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has even retrofitted his Hummer into a hybrid - the grant will help Penn remain at the forefront of such research, Rappe says.
Solar energy material now comes in two types: material that uses narrow-spectrum ultraviolet light efficiently and material that uses broader spectrum natural light less efficiently.
Rappe hopes to improve upon both of these materials through his research with ferroelectric semi-conductors.
The science goes something like this: Light shines on an electron and excites it to the point that it moves and leaves a "hole" in its atomic orbit.
Rappe and his team want to design a material that will harvest this electron before it returns from its excited state by running it through water.
In doing so, the electron should separate hydrogen atoms from the water molecules and create hydrogen gas, a possible source of fuel.
While Rappe and his team are still in the initial stages of research, he is very optimistic about the time frame of his work.
"I think we will have a promising lead candidate material within the next two years," he said.
So what about those solar-powered cars?
"I think powering cars is the number one need we have right now for chemical fuels," Rappe said.
What Rappe wants to see are hydrogen-generating station where cars can fill up with hydrogen instead of gasoline.
And the projected wait time for such a device?
A mere five years.
"I'm optimistic that this is not a long term project," Rappe said.
This might turn out to be a car that even the Gubernator would drive.
