Tag Archives: solar energy

Cyborg bacteria to reduce carbon dioxide

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This video is a bit technical but then it is about work being presented to chemists at the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) at the 254th National Meeting & Exposition Aug. 20 -24, 2017,

For a more plain language explanation, there’s an August 22, 2017 ACS news release (also on EurekAlert),

Photosynthesis provides energy for the vast majority of life on Earth. But chlorophyll, the green pigment that plants use to harvest sunlight, is relatively inefficient. To enable humans to capture more of the sun’s energy than natural photosynthesis can, scientists have taught bacteria to cover themselves in tiny, highly efficient solar panels to produce useful compounds.

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“Rather than rely on inefficient chlorophyll to harvest sunlight, I’ve taught bacteria how to grow and cover their bodies with tiny semiconductor nanocrystals,” says Kelsey K. Sakimoto, Ph.D., who carried out the research in the lab of Peidong Yang, Ph.D. “These nanocrystals are much more efficient than chlorophyll and can be grown at a fraction of the cost of manufactured solar panels.”

Humans increasingly are looking to find alternatives to fossil fuels as sources of energy and feedstocks for chemical production. Many scientists have worked to create artificial photosynthetic systems to generate renewable energy and simple organic chemicals using sunlight. Progress has been made, but the systems are not efficient enough for commercial production of fuels and feedstocks.

Research in Yang’s lab at the University of California, Berkeley, where Sakimoto earned his Ph.D., focuses on harnessing inorganic semiconductors that can capture sunlight to organisms such as bacteria that can then use the energy to produce useful chemicals from carbon dioxide and water. “The thrust of research in my lab is to essentially ‘supercharge’ nonphotosynthetic bacteria by providing them energy in the form of electrons from inorganic semiconductors, like cadmium sulfide, that are efficient light absorbers,” Yang says. “We are now looking for more benign light absorbers than cadmium sulfide to provide bacteria with energy from light.”

Sakimoto worked with a naturally occurring, nonphotosynthetic bacterium, Moorella thermoacetica, which, as part of its normal respiration, produces acetic acid from carbon dioxide (CO2). Acetic acid is a versatile chemical that can be readily upgraded to a number of fuels, polymers, pharmaceuticals and commodity chemicals through complementary, genetically engineered bacteria.

When Sakimoto fed cadmium and the amino acid cysteine, which contains a sulfur atom, to the bacteria, they synthesized cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanoparticles, which function as solar panels on their surfaces. The hybrid organism, M. thermoacetica-CdS, produces acetic acid from CO2, water and light. “Once covered with these tiny solar panels, the bacteria can synthesize food, fuels and plastics, all using solar energy,” Sakimoto says. “These bacteria outperform natural photosynthesis.”

The bacteria operate at an efficiency of more than 80 percent, and the process is self-replicating and self-regenerating, making this a zero-waste technology. “Synthetic biology and the ability to expand the product scope of CO2 reduction will be crucial to poising this technology as a replacement, or one of many replacements, for the petrochemical industry,” Sakimoto says.

So, do the inorganic-biological hybrids have commercial potential? “I sure hope so!” he says. “Many current systems in artificial photosynthesis require solid electrodes, which is a huge cost. Our algal biofuels are much more attractive, as the whole CO2-to-chemical apparatus is self-contained and only requires a big vat out in the sun.” But he points out that the system still requires some tweaking to tune both the semiconductor and the bacteria. He also suggests that it is possible that the hybrid bacteria he created may have some naturally occurring analog. “A future direction, if this phenomenon exists in nature, would be to bioprospect for these organisms and put them to use,” he says.

For more insight into the work, check out Dexter Johnson’s Aug. 22, 2017 posting on his Nanoclast blog (on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website),

“It’s actually a natural, overlooked feature of their biology,” explains Sakimoto in an e-mail interview with IEEE Spectrum. “This bacterium has a detoxification pathway, meaning if it encounters a toxic metal, like cadmium, it will try to precipitate it out, thereby detoxifying it. So when we introduce cadmium ions into the growth medium in which M. thermoacetica is hanging out, it will convert the amino acid cysteine into sulfide, which precipitates out cadmium as cadmium sulfide. The crystals then assemble and stick onto the bacterium through normal electrostatic interactions.”

I’ve just excerpted one bit, there’s more in Dexter’s posting.

Trying to push past the 30% energy conversion ceiling for solar cells

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A Nov. 21, 2016 news item on Nanowerk describes some work in Japan which suggests that more energy conversion for solar cells is possible,

Solar energy could provide a renewable, sustainable source of power for our daily needs. However, even the most state-of-the-art solar cells struggle to achieve energy conversion efficiency of higher than 30%. While current solar-powered water heaters fare better in terms of energy efficiency, there are still improvements to be made if the systems are to be used more widely.

One potential candidate for inclusion in solar water heaters is “nanofluid,” that is, a liquid containing specially-designed nanoparticles that are capable of absorbing sunlight and transforming it into thermal energy in order to heat water directly.

A Nov. 20, 2016 (Japan) International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA) press release (received via email), explains further,

Nanoparticle Boost for Solar-powered Water Heating

Now, Satoshi Ishii and his co-workers at the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (WPI-MANA) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency have developed a new nanofluid containing titanium nitride (TiN) nanoparticles, which demonstrates high efficiency in heating water and generating water vapor.

The team analytically studied the optical absorption efficiency of a TiN nanoparticle and found that it has a broad and strong absorption peak thanks to lossy plasmonic resonances. Surprisingly, the sunlight absorption efficiency of a TiN nanoparticle outperforms that of a carbon nanoparticle and a gold nanoparticle.

They then exposed each nanofluid to sunlight and measured its ability to heat pure water. The TiN nanofluid had the highest water heating properties, stemming from the resonant sunlight absorption. It also generated more vapor than its carbon‒based counterpart. The efficiency of the TiN nanofluid reached nearly 90 %. Crucially, the TiN particles were not consumed during the process, meaning a TiN‒based heating system could essentially be self‒sustaining over time.

TiN nanofluids show great promise in solar heat applications, with high potential for use in everyday appliances such as showers. The new design could even contribute to methods for decontaminating water through vaporization.

90% is a very exiting conversion rate. Of course, now they need to make sure they can achieve those results consistently, get those results outside the laboratory, and scale up to industrial standards.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Titanium Nitride Nanoparticles as Plasmonic Solar Heat Transducers by Satoshi Ishii, Ramu Pasupathi Sugavaneshwar, and Tadaaki Nagao. J. Phys. Chem. C, 2016, 120 (4), pp 2343–2348 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.5b09604 Publication Date (Web): December 21, 2015

Copyright © 2015 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall and it’s almost a year old. I wonder what occasioned the push for publicity.

Solar and wind energy storage via food waste and carbon nanotubes

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Scientists are researching devices other than batteries for wind and solar energy storage according to an Oct. 27, 2016 news item on Nanowerk,

Saving up excess solar and wind energy for times when the sun is down or the air is still requires a storage device. Batteries get the most attention as a promising solution although pumped hydroelectric storage is currently used most often. Now researchers reporting in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry C are advancing another potential approach using sugar alcohols — an abundant waste product of the food industry — mixed with carbon nanotubes.

An Oct. 26, 2016 American Chemical Society (ACS) news release, which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

Electricity generation from renewables has grown steadily over recent years, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects this rise to continue. To keep up with this expansion, use of battery and flywheel energy storage has increased in the past five years, according to the EIA. These technologies take advantage of chemical and mechanical energy. But storing energy as heat is another feasible option. Some scientists have been exploring sugar alcohols as a possible material for making thermal storage work, but this direction has some limitations. Huaichen Zhang, Silvia V. Nedea and colleagues wanted to investigate how mixing carbon nanotubes with sugar alcohols might affect their energy storage properties.

The researchers analyzed what happened when carbon nanotubes of varying sizes were mixed with two types of sugar alcohols — erythritol and xylitol, both naturally occurring compounds in foods. Their findings showed that with one exception, heat transfer within a mixture decreased as the nanotube diameter decreased. They also found that in general, higher density combinations led to better heat transfer. The researchers say these new insights could assist in the future design of sugar alcohol-based energy storage systems.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Nanoscale Heat Transfer in Carbon Nanotubes – Sugar Alcohol Composite as Heat Storage Materials
by Huaichen Zhang, Camilo C. M. Rindt, David M. J. Smeulders, and Silvia V. Nedea. J. Phys. Chem. C, 2016, 120 (38), pp 21915–21924 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b05466 Publication Date (Web): August 30, 2016

Copyright © 2016 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

Making perovskite solar cells more stable and more humidity tolerant

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Living in what’s considered a humid environment the news of solar cells that are humidity-resistant caught my attention. From a July 18, 2016 news item on phys.org,

Widely known as one of the cleanest and most renewable energy sources, solar energy is a fast growing alternative to fossil fuels. Among the various types of solar materials, organometal halide perovskite in particular has attracted researchers’ attention thanks to its superior optical and electronic properties. With a dramatic increase in the power conversion efficiency (PCE) from 3% in 2009 to as high as over 22% today [according to my July 13, 2016 posting that efficiency could now be as high as 31%], perovskite solar cells are considered as a promising next-generation energy device; only except that perovskite is weak to water and quickly loses its stability and performance in a damp, humid environment.

A team of Korean researchers led by Taiho Park at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea, has found a new method to improve not only the efficiency, but stability and humidity tolerance of perovskite solar cells. Park and his students, Guan-Woo Kim and Gyeongho Kang, designed a hydrophobic conducting polymer that has high hole mobility without the need of additives, which tend to easily absorb moisture in the air. …

A July 18, 2016 Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) press release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, provides more information about the work,

Perovskite solar cells in general consist of a transparent electrode, an electron transport layer, perovskite, a hole transport layer, and a metal electrode. The hole transport layer is important because it not only transports holes to the electrode but also prevents perovskite from being directly exposed to air. Spiro-MeOTAD, a conventionally used hole-transport material, needs additives due to its intrinsically low hole mobility. However, Bis(trifluoromethane)sulfonimide lithium salt (LiTFSI), one of the common additives, is prone to suck in moisture in the air. Moreover, Spiro-MeOTAD forms a slightly hydrophilic layer that easily dissolves in water, and thus it cannot work as a moisture barrier itself.

Park’s team focused on an idea of an additive-free (dopant-free) polymeric hole transport layer. They designed and synthesized a hydrophobic conducting polymer by combining benzodithiophene (BDT) and benzothiadiazole (BT). As the new polymer has a face-on orientation, which helps vertical charge transport of holes, the researchers were able to achieve high hole mobility without any additives.

Park and colleagues confirmed that the perovskite solar cells with the new polymer showed high efficiency of 17.3% and dramatically improved stability — the cells retained the high efficiency for over 1400 hours, almost two months, under 75 percent humidity.

“We believe that our findings will bring perovskite one step closer to use and accelerate the commercialization of perovskite solar cells,” commented Taiho Park, a professor with the Department of Chemical Engineering at POSTECH.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Dopant-free polymeric hole transport materials for highly efficient and stable perovskite solar cells by Guan-Woo Kim, Gyeongho Kang, Jinseck Kim, Gang-Young Lee, Hong Il Kim, Limok Pyeon, Jaechol Lee, and Taiho Park. Energy Environ. Sci., 2016,9, 2326-2333 DOI: 10.1039/C6EE00709K First published online 28 Apr 2016

I wonder if the press release was originally written in April 2016? That would explain the difference in efficiency I noted earlier in the press release. Getting back to the paper, it is open access with three different means of accessing the material from the publisher, the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Back to the mortar and pestle for perovskite-based photovoltaics

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This mechanochemistry (think mortar and pestle) story about perovskite comes from Poland. From a Jan. 14, 2016 Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences press release (also on EurekAlert but dated Jan. 16, 2016),

Perovskites, substances that perfectly absorb light, are the future of solar energy. The opportunity for their rapid dissemination has just increased thanks to a cheap and environmentally safe method of production of these materials, developed by chemists from Warsaw, Poland. Rather than in solutions at a high temperature, perovskites can now be synthesized by solid-state mechanochemical processes: by grinding powders.

We associate the milling of chemicals less often with progress than with old-fashioned pharmacies and their inherent attributes: the pestle and mortar. [emphasis mine] It’s time to change this! Recent research findings show that by the use of mechanical force, effective chemical transformations take place in solid state. Mechanochemical reactions have been under investigation for many years by the teams of Prof. Janusz Lewinski from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) and the Faculty of Chemistry of Warsaw University of Technology. In their latest publication, the Warsaw researchers describe a surprisingly simple and effective method of obtaining perovskites – futuristic photovoltaic materials with a spatially complex crystal structure.

“With the aid of mechanochemistry we are able to synthesize a variety of hybrid inorganic-organic functional materials with a potentially great significance for the energy sector. Our youngest ‘offspring’ are high quality perovskites. These compounds can be used to produce thin light-sensitive layers for high efficiency solar cells,” says Prof. Lewinski.

Perovskites are a large group of materials, characterized by a defined spatial crystalline structure. In nature, the perovskite naturally occurring as a mineral is calcium titanium(IV) oxide CaTiO3. Here the calcium atoms are arranged in the corners of the cube, in the middle of each wall there is an oxygen atom and at the centre of the cube lies a titanium atom. In other types of perovskite the same crystalline structure can be constructed of various organic and inorganic compounds, which means titanium can be replaced by, for example, lead, tin or germanium. As a result, the properties of the perovskite can be adjusted so as to best fit the specific application, for example, in photovoltaics or catalysis, but also in the construction of superconducting electromagnets, high voltage transformers, magnetic refrigerators, magnetic field sensors, or RAM memories.

At first glance, the method of production of perovskites using mechanical force, developed at the IPC PAS, looks a little like magic.

“Two powders are poured into the ball mill: a white one, methylammonium iodide CH3NH3I, and a yellow one, lead iodide PbI2. After several minutes of milling no trace is left of the substrates. Inside the mill there is only a homogeneous black powder: the perovskite CH3NH3PbI3,” explains doctoral student Anna Maria Cieslak (IPC PAS).

“Hour after hour of waiting for the reaction product? Solvents? High temperatures? In our method, all this turns out to be unnecessary! We produce chemical compounds by reactions occurring only in solids at room temperature,” stresses Dr. Daniel Prochowicz (IPC PAS).

The mechanochemically manufactured perovskites were sent to the team of Prof. Michael Graetzel from the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne in Switzerland, where they were used to build a new laboratory solar cell. The performance of the cell containing the perovskite with a mechanochemical pedigree proved to be more than 10% greater than a cell’s performance with the same construction, but containing an analogous perovskite obtained by the traditional method, involving solvents.

“The mechanochemical method of synthesis of perovskites is the most environmentally friendly method of producing this class of materials. Simple, efficient and fast, it is ideal for industrial applications. With full responsibility we can state: perovskites are the materials of the future, and mechanochemistry is the future of perovskites,” concludes Prof. Lewinski.

The described research will be developed within GOTSolar collaborative project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Future and Emerging Technologies action.

Perovskites are not the only group of three-dimensional materials that has been produced mechanochemically by Prof. Lewinski’s team. In a recent publication the Warsaw researchers showed that by using the milling technique they can also synthesize inorganic-organic microporous MOF (Metal-Organic Framework) materials. The free space inside these materials is the perfect place to store different chemicals, including hydrogen.

This research was published back in August 2015,

Mechanosynthesis of the hybrid perovskite CH3NH3PbI3: characterization and the corresponding solar cell efficiency by D. Prochowicz, M. Franckevičius, A. M. Cieślak, S. M. Zakeeruddin, M. Grätzel and J. Lewiński. J. Mater. Chem. A, 2015,3, 20772-20777 DOI: 10.1039/C5TA04904K First published online 27 Aug 2015

This paper is behind a paywall.

Nanoscale device emits light as powerfully as an object 10,000 times its size

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The potential application in the field of solar power is what most interests me in this collaborative research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (US) and Fudan University in China. From a July 13, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily,

University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have created a nanoscale device that can emit light as powerfully as an object 10,000 times its size. It’s an advance that could have huge implications for everything from photography to solar power.

In a paper published July 10 [2015] in the journal Physical Review Letters, Zongfu Yu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his collaborators describe a nanoscale device that drastically surpasses previous technology in its ability to scatter light. They showed how a single nanoresonator can manipulate light to cast a very large “reflection.” The nanoresonator’s capacity to absorb and emit light energy is such that it can make itself — and, in applications, other very small things — appear 10,000 times as large as its physical size.

A July 13, 2015 University of Wisconsin-Madison news release (also on EurekAlert) by Scott Gordon, which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

“Making an object look 10,000 times larger than its physical size has lots of implications in technologies related to light,” Yu says.

The researchers realized the advance through materials innovation and a keen understanding of the physics of light. Much like sound, light can resonate, amplifying itself as the surrounding environment manipulates the physical properties of its wave energy. The researchers took advantage of this by creating an artificial material in which the wavelength of light is much larger than in a vacuum, which allows light waves to resonate more powerfully.

The device condenses light to a size smaller than its wavelength, meaning it can gather a lot of light energy, and then scatters the light over a very large area, harnessing its output for imaging applications that make microscopic particles appear huge.

“The device makes an object super-visible by enlarging its optical appearance with this super-strong scattering effect,” says Ming Zhou, a Ph.D. student in Yu’s group and lead author of the paper.

Much as a very thin string on a guitar can absorb a large amount of acoustic energy from its surroundings and begin to vibrate in sympathy, this one very small optical device can receive light energy from all around and yield a surprisingly strong output. In imaging, this presents clear advantages over conventional lenses, whose light-gathering capacity is limited by direction and size.

“We are developing photodetectors based on this technology and, for example, it could be helpful for photographers wanting to shoot better quality pictures in weak light conditions,” Yu says.

Given the nanoresonator’s capacity to absorb large amounts of light energy, the technology also has potential in applications that harvest the sun’s energy with high efficiency. In addition, Yu envisions simply letting the resonator emit that energy in the form of infrared light toward the sky, which is very cold. Because the nanoresonator has a large optical cross-section — that is, an ability to emit light that dramatically exceeds its physical size — it can shed a lot of heat energy, making for a passive cooling system.

“This research opens up a new way to manipulate the flow of light, and could enable new technologies in light sensing and solar energy conversion,” Yu says.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Extraordinarily Large Optical Cross Section for Localized Single Nanoresonator by Ming Zhou, Lei Shi, Jian Zi, and Zongfu Yu. Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 023903  DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.023903 Published 10 July 2015

This paper is behind a paywall.

Solar cells and ‘tinkertoys’

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A Nov. 3, 2014 news item on Nanowerk features a project researchers hope will improve photovoltaic efficiency and make solar cells competitive with other sources of energy,

 Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have received a $1.2 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative to develop a technique that they believe will significantly improve the efficiencies of photovoltaic materials and help make solar electricity cost-competitive with other sources of energy.

The work builds on Sandia’s recent successes with metal-organic framework (MOF) materials by combining them with dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC).

“A lot of people are working with DSSCs, but we think our expertise with MOFs gives us a tool that others don’t have,” said Sandia’s Erik Spoerke, a materials scientist with a long history of solar cell exploration at the labs.

A Nov. 3, 2014 Sandia National Laboratories news release, which originated the news item, describes the project and the technology in more detail,

Sandia’s project is funded through SunShot’s Next Generation Photovoltaic Technologies III program, which sponsors projects that apply promising basic materials science that has been proven at the materials properties level to demonstrate photovoltaic conversion improvements to address or exceed SunShot goals.

The SunShot Initiative is a collaborative national effort that aggressively drives innovation with the aim of making solar energy fully cost-competitive with traditional energy sources before the end of the decade. Through SunShot, the Energy Department supports efforts by private companies, universities and national laboratories to drive down the cost of solar electricity to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.

DSSCs provide basis for future advancements in solar electricity production

Dye-sensitized solar cells, invented in the 1980s, use dyes designed to efficiently absorb light in the solar spectrum. The dye is mated with a semiconductor, typically titanium dioxide, that facilitates conversion of the energy in the optically excited dye into usable electrical current.

DSSCs are considered a significant advancement in photovoltaic technology since they separate the various processes of generating current from a solar cell. Michael Grätzel, a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, was awarded the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize for inventing the first high-efficiency DSSC.

“If you don’t have everything in the DSSC dependent on everything else, it’s a lot easier to optimize your photovoltaic device in the most flexible and effective way,” explained Sandia senior scientist Mark Allendorf. DSSCs, for example, can capture more of the sun’s energy than silicon-based solar cells by using varied or multiple dyes and also can use different molecular systems, Allendorf said.

“It becomes almost modular in terms of the cell’s components, all of which contribute to making electricity out of sunlight more efficiently,” said Spoerke.

MOFs’ structure, versatility and porosity help overcome DSSC limitations

Though a source of optimism for the solar research community, DSSCs possess certain challenges that the Sandia research team thinks can be overcome by combining them with MOFs.

Allendorf said researchers hope to use the ordered structure and versatile chemistry of MOFs to help the dyes in DSSCs absorb more solar light, which he says is a fundamental limit on their efficiency.

“Our hypothesis is that we can put a thin layer of MOF on top of the titanium dioxide, thus enabling us to order the dye in exactly the way we want it,” Allendorf explained. That, he said, should avoid the efficiency-decreasing problem of dye aggregation, since the dye would then be locked into the MOF’s crystalline structure.

MOFs are highly-ordered materials that also offer high levels of porosity, said Allendorf, a MOF expert and 29-year veteran of Sandia. He calls the materials “Tinkertoys for chemists” because of the ease with which new structures can be envisioned and assembled. [emphasis mine]

Allendorf said the unique porosity of MOFs will allow researchers to add a second dye, placed into the pores of the MOF, that will cover additional parts of the solar spectrum that weren’t covered with the initial dye. Finally, he and Spoerke are convinced that MOFs can help improve the overall electron charge and flow of the solar cell, which currently faces instability issues.

“Essentially, we believe MOFs can help to more effectively organize the electronic and nano-structure of the molecules in the solar cell,” said Spoerke. “This can go a long way toward improving the efficiency and stability of these assembled devices.”

In addition to the Sandia team, the project includes researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder, particularly Steve George, an expert in a thin film technology known as atomic layer deposition.

The technique, said Spoerke, is important in that it offers a pathway for highly controlled materials chemistry with potentially low-cost manufacturing of the DSSC/MOF process.

“With the combination of MOFs, dye-sensitized solar cells and atomic layer deposition, we think we can figure out how to control all of the key cell interfaces and material elements in a way that’s never been done before,” said Spoerke. “That’s what makes this project exciting.”

Here’s a picture showing an early Tinkertoy set,

Original Tinkertoy, Giant Engineer #155. Questor Education Products Co., c.1950 [downloaded from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinkertoy#mediaviewer/File:Tinkertoy_300126232168.JPG]

Original Tinkertoy, Giant Engineer #155. Questor Education Products Co., c.1950 [downloaded from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinkertoy#mediaviewer/File:Tinkertoy_300126232168.JPG]

The Tinkertoy entry on Wikipedia has this,

The Tinkertoy Construction Set is a toy construction set for children. It was created in 1914—six years after the Frank Hornby’s Meccano sets—by Charles H. Pajeau and Robert Pettit and Gordon Tinker in Evanston, Illinois. Pajeau, a stonemason, designed the toy after seeing children play with sticks and empty spools of thread. He and Pettit set out to market a toy that would allow and inspire children to use their imaginations. At first, this did not go well, but after a year or two over a million were sold.

Shrinky Dinks, tinkertoys, Lego have all been mentioned here in conjunction with lab work. I’m always delighted to see scientists working with or using children’s toys as inspiration of one type or another.