Solar energy has one persistent weakness: it disappears at sunset. Finding a reliable way to store that energy for later use remains one of the biggest obstacles to expanding renewable power.
A research team at UC Santa Barbara may have found an unexpected workaround. Instead of relying on conventional batteries, they created a small organic molecule that captures sunlight, locks that energy into its structure, and releases it later as heat. The work, published in Science, introduces a new version of Molecular Solar Thermal (MOST) storage using a compound called pyrimidone.
“The concept is reusable and recyclable,” said lead author Han Nguyen, a doctoral student in the Han Group.
To understand the idea, Nguyen points to a familiar example. “Think of photochromic sunglasses. When you’re inside, they’re just clear lenses. You walk out into the sun, and they darken on their own. Come back inside, and the lenses become clear again,” Nguyen said. “That kind of reversible change is what we’re interested in. Only instead of changing color, we want to use the same idea to store energy, release it when we need it, and then reuse the material over and over.”
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