Tobacco Plants Tapped to Grow Solar Cells

Source from:  MSNBC 01/26/2010

Tobacco plants could help wean the world from fossil fuels, according to scientists from the University of California, Berkeley. In a paper in the journal ACS Nano Letters, Matt Francis and his colleagues used tobacco plants, infected with a genetically engineered virus, to produce artificial photovoltaic and photochemical cells. The technique is more environmentally friendly than traditional methods of making solar cells and could lead to cheap, temporary and biodegradable solar cells. "Over billions of years, evolution has established exactly the right distances to collect light from the sun and to do so with unparalleled efficiency," said Francis. "We are just trying to mimic these finely tuned systems." Enditem