{"id":231286,"date":"2026-02-13T13:09:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T19:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/organic-molecule-stores-solar-energy-for-years-then-releases-it-as-heat-on-demand"},"modified":"2026-02-13T13:09:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T19:09:10","slug":"organic-molecule-stores-solar-energy-for-years-then-releases-it-as-heat-on-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/organic-molecule-stores-solar-energy-for-years-then-releases-it-as-heat-on-demand","title":{"rendered":"Organic molecule stores solar energy for years, then releases it as heat on demand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/organic-molecule-stores-solar-energy-for-years-then-releases-it-as-heat-on-demand2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When the sun goes down, solar panels stop working. This is the fundamental hurdle of renewable energy: how to save the sun\u2019s power for a rainy day\u2014or a cold night. Chemists at UC Santa Barbara have developed a solution that doesn\u2019t require bulky batteries or electrical grids. In a paper published in the journal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aec6413\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Science<\/i><\/a>, Associate Professor Grace Han and her team detail a new material that captures sunlight, stores it within chemical bonds and releases it as heat on demand.<\/p>\n<p>The material, a modified organic molecule called <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2023-08-optimizing-molecular-photoswitches-solar-energy.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\" target=\"_blank\">pyrimidone<\/a>, is the latest advancement in molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe concept is reusable and recyclable,\u201d said Han Nguyen, a doctoral student in the Han Group and the paper\u2019s lead author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the sun goes down, solar panels stop working. This is the fundamental hurdle of renewable energy: how to save the sun\u2019s power for a rainy day\u2014or a cold night. Chemists at UC Santa Barbara have developed a solution that doesn\u2019t require bulky batteries or electrical grids. In a paper published in the journal Science, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}