Research on solar lasers at MPL receives funding from Europe-wide APACE project
Dr. Hanieh Fattahi, independent leader of the research group “Femtosecond Fieldoscopy”, and her team at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen are aiming to develop a new type of solar laser. The bio-inspired sunlight-pumped laser, based on photosynthetic-complexes is capable of upgrading diffuse natural sunlight into a coherent laser beam. This research project, which has been funded with 476,000 euros, is part of the larger consortium „Towards A Bio-Mimetic Sunlight Pumped Laser Based On Photosynthetic Antenna Complexes“ (APACE).
This collaboration with scientists from across Europe has been financed by the Pathfinder Open 2023 call of the European Innovation Council. In the quest for long-term, self-sustaining space technologies, the growing demand for energy must be met both outside our atmosphere and on our home planet. Biology, with self-sustainability at its core, could offer a promising solution to this dilemma. The APACE project is set to unveil an innovative sunlight-pumped laser, inspired by the efficient energy conversion processes found in photosynthetic bacterial complexes. These natural systems showcase an extraordinary ability to channel solar energy with near-perfect efficiency. APACE's bio-inspired design utilizes these properties, enabling operation in natural sunlight without the need for concentration and significantly outperforming current solar energy solutions.
APACE will thus lay the foundation for a novel solar harvesting technology which could ultimately be fabricated in situ on permanent space stations, and may benefit from a similar scalability to photovoltaic panels. The collected energy can be used for in situ energy production (e.g. hydrogen generation) as well as for wireless power transmission to satellites or to Earth by infrared laser beams. For an overview of the prominent applications of solar lasers, see the perspective article published in APL Photonics by Michael Küblböck et al in the Fattahi Research Group: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0209355
Within APACE nine European academic institutions work together closely: Universita Degli Studi Di Firenze, Italy; Universita Degli Studi Di Parma, Italy; Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche, Italy; Heriot-Watt University, UK; Institute Of Organic Chemistry, Poland; Karlsruher Institut Für Technologie, Germany, Technische Universität München, Germany; Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Germany. In addition, Laboratorio Europeo Di Spettroscopie is part of the consortium as an associated member.
Contact:
Dr. Hanieh Fattahi
hanieh.fattahi@mpl.mpg.de
Contact
Edda Fischer
Head of Communication and Marketing
Phone: +49 (0)9131 7133 805
MPLpresse@mpl.mpg.de
