Better living through carbon

A sidebar to the Bell Labs special report, Reviving an icon

Bell Labs director of device physics research Art Ramirez spends his time playing with a lot of molecular models with arcane names such as pentacene, tetracene or buckminster fullerene. He’s trying to find a carbon-based molecular crystal that can be used to create inexpensive low-power microelectronics -- a project that that he’s doing not just with Bell Labs funding but with dollars from the U.S. Department of Energy and Columbia University. Such technology could produce organic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that can be printed onto a sheet of paper, creating a digital newspaper or the circuitry of an MP3 player that could be woven into the threads of a jacket.

But its most significant application could come in the form of an organic photo-voltaic cells that could be applied to almost any surface. They could be printed onto portable electronics, giving them a supplementary power source, or they could be painted directly onto a house, turning every square exterior inch into a solar cell.

For Ramirez, the value of his work doesn’t just lie in its science, nor in the value it would have to Alcatel-Lucent as a commercial technology. His work in organics could be applied to solving the world’s fundamental energy problems.

“The problems facing our species are enormous,” Ramirez said. “We have to have a broader vision. If we can make organic photo cells, we'll have done more than just create a wireless power source. We will have gone a long way to solving the energy problem in a way that everyone on earth can afford.”