Abstract
Almost 20% of the world’s population has no access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. Without electricity, people in developing regions can’t run modern-day sanitation and sterilization devices needed to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. To address this problem, a research team led by Naomi J. Halas of Rice University has engineered a portable sterilization apparatus—an autoclave—that generates steam by using sunlight and metallic nanoparticles (Proc. Natl. Acad. USA 2013, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1310131110). The autoclave makes enough steam to raise the temperature and keep it at 132 °C for at least five minutes. That’s enough time to make water drinkable, sterilize a physician’s surgical equipment, or sanitize the contents of a portable toilet. Last year, the Rice University researchers demonstrated how gold-coated silica nanoparticles dispersed in water can directly convert solar energy into steam ( C&EN, Nov. 26, 2012, page 9). When focused sunlight hits the particles, th...
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