Pyrite Key to Cheap Effective Solar Power?

Imagine this scenario, as a kid you look down and see small glittering stones beneath the gently lapping waves of a river.  You proudly announce to your parents that you found gold.

Soon your mind is reeling and you begin to plan out your whole life.  You’re now rich!

What are you going to do with all that money?

What are you going to do with your life?

Maybe buy a giraffe?

But as quickly as the dreams come, they are dashed by your parents unwanted sense of realism.  It is not gold, they tell you, but rather is simply iron pyrite.  This revelation then leads to the following or similar conversation with your parents:

“What the hell is pyrite?”

“Fool’s gold.”

“What?  You’re now calling me a fool?  Thanks a lot.”

Seriously, did anyone else go through this heartache as a child?

If so, don’t feel bad. Pyrite has fooled may kids over the years and prospectors too.  However, besides being sold as a novelty at most zoos and natural history museums, pyrite is rather worthless. Even scientists, according to the EurekAlert! press release, ‘Fool’s gold’ aids discovery of new options for cheap, benign solar energy, viewed this mineral as having little use, especially in solar power research.  So why study it further?

Because they were wrong.  Sort of.

You see iron pyrite has many solar properties, which in theory, should make it a great resource for solar panels.  The problem was that, in practice, it simply didn’t work.

Scientists from Oregon State University found when heating up iron pyrite, a necessity in the creation process of solar panels, the pyrite decomposes and prevents the flow of electricity.  Definitely not a good thing, when the sole purpose of a solar panel is to harness and create electricity.

This didn’t discourage the researchers, they simply changed focus.  Rather than attempting to make Fool’s gold a viable option for solar panels, they searched for compounds that shared many of the solar-related traits of pyrite, but did not share its weaknesses.

Researchers found that iron silicon sulfide, which holds many of the same properties to Fool’s gold, is a cheap, stable and effective alternative, that could potentially be used in the development of next-generation solar panels.

While Fool’s gold may not have been the answer per say, it definitely provided an important  key step in furthering this research. I’m all for research that lends itself to finding new ways to remove our dependencies from fossil fuel and end our present energy crisis.