Overview
- UC Santa Barbara chemists led by Grace Han report a bio‑inspired pyrimidone molecule that captures solar energy in chemical bonds and releases it as heat on demand.
- The reversible system stays in a high‑energy state for years and can be triggered by heat or an acid catalyst to return to its original form while emitting heat.
- Laboratory tests showed 107 mg of the charged material in about 0.5 mL of water released heat rapidly enough to bring the water to a boil in roughly half a second.
- The compound achieved an energy density of around 1.65 MJ/kg, roughly double that of a typical lithium‑ion battery at about 0.9 MJ/kg.
- The team, collaborating with UCLA’s Ken Houk, highlights potential uses such as off‑grid heating and residential water heating, while noting current needs like faster, broad‑spectrum charging and engineering scale‑up; the work was supported by a 2025 Moore Inventor Fellowship.