Light-Powered Nanomachines

Solar power isn't so high-tech anymore when it comes to having light powered technology. Instead of converting light energy into electricity, researchers at Yale University have come up of a way to harness light energy directly. Although the researching has only just made produced a little success and is still on a very small scale of harnessing light energy, researchers at Yale can now cause a very small object to vibrate, simply by putting light through it. The nanomechanical resonator, or bridge which was the small object, vibrates when laser light is routed through it. The resonator simply reacts to the energy. The researching team is led by Hong Tang, an assistant professor at Yale's School of Engineering & Applied Science department. "You don't need to apply voltage, you just need to pass light through it," he says, explain how the concept is actually quite simple. Although the research is still in its very early stages and Tang would like to "get a similar device vibrating at much higher speeds, above the gigahertz range—in the billions of cycles per second,"the possibilities of harnessing light energy directly could be endless. When that happens maybe the world wouldnt need to rely on fossil fuels so much and help the environment, though that would be quite some time into the future before any of that actually happens. It'll be best if we all just stick to recycling for now until that happens...

Below is a picture of the nanomechanical resonator with the light travelling through it. The vibrations cannot be seen, nor detected unless using another extremely precise laser to detect movement.