Small Solar Cells Are Replacing Batteries in Keyboards, Remotes

The basic technology behind Ambient Photonics’s solar cells is so simple that it’s routinely assembled as a high school science experiment. In labs across the US, students sandwich blackberries’ potent pigment between glass to create dye-sensitized cells capable of harnessing energy from the sun.

Ambient Photonics’s process is more high-tech, with an automated assembly line that moves window pane-sized glass sheets through a gleaming factory in Scotts Valley, California. And the cells it makes can harvest enough energy from the sun to replace coin and other types of small batteries.

The company is deploying the technology to power what Chief ...