On a 104-degree Friday in July when sunlight bathed The University of Arizona campus, doctoral student Dio Placencia sat before a noisy vacuum chamber in the Chemical Sciences Building trying to advance the renewable energy revolution.
As a member of UA professor Neal R. Armstrong’s research group, Placencia conducts research aimed at creating a thin, flexible organic solar cell that could power a tent or keep a car charged between trips to work and back home again.
He’s passionate about renewable energy and says it’s a waste that so little solar has been incorporated into society. “I have a little flat panel that I walk around with,” Placencia said. “I usually put that on my backpack, and …

Every month we are all paying electricity bills which continue to increase and we complain bitterly about it and yet there is a limitless free source of electricity readily available to every one of us. It belongs to no-one and anyone can take as much of it as they want. It’s called the sun.
It’s a huge and limitless source of energy and yet for the most part we don’t bother to use it. The more you think about it the crazier it seems. We are paying out so much money each month for power and using up the earth’s finite resources instead of using the alternative which is staring us in the face.   The simplest …