The Idaho National Laboratory researcher prophesies a future in which solar antennae are as easy to use as Saran Wrap—and almost as cheap.

SN: We developed a resonant circuit. The challenge for us in developing these particular circuits were that we wanted to capture light that was at a frequency and a very small wavelength in—we were going to start off for us in the near, the mid-infrared region. And I don't know how much you want to know about actual wavelengths but the wavelength we actually consider to be heat—that we sense as heat—is typically between the 8 and 12 micron region. And so we needed to make antennae about a quarter of that size to get resonance.

MJ: So the idea is that you can then capture solar energy that's around us even when the sun's not out—when you can't perceive it?

SN: Yeah, the general idea is that typical solar cells really work off more of a chemical process, and these work at a very different process. And that process gives us flexibility to capture a much wider range of solar energy. So the opportunities there are enormous. And that's probably a good point to really get across, that the challenge with solar cells—traditional solar cells—has been efficiency. And efficiency is the result of the process that goes on inside the solar cells.