like transistors and solar cells. Part of the challenge of working with nanowires is creating a good transition between these nanowires and an electrical contact to the outside world.
#Flexible methane production from electricity and biomass The variable operation modes were the biggest challenge during development says Project Head Siegfried Bajohr of the Engler-Bunte Institute (EBI) of KIT.
From the products of a biomass gasification plant i e. hydrogen carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide the Demosng pilot plant directly produces methane and water by means of a nickel catalyst (SNG operation.
Then the volume flow in the plant can be doubled utilization of carbon from biomass will increase to nearly 100%and a large amount of usable waste heat will be produced by the catalyst (Ptg operation.
There it will be integrated into the gas flows of a biomass gasification plant utilizing wooden residues.
Via an effective methanation wind and solar power can be fed into the natural gas grid without any limitations.
"Potential applications range from battery anodes, to solar cells, to 3d electronic circuits and biomedical devices.""The 3d transformation process involves a balance between the forces of adhesion to the substrate and the strain energies of the bent,
The previously unknown durability to extreme conditions position Graphexeter as a viable and attractive replacement to indium tin oxide (ITO) the main conductive material currently used in electronics such as'smart'mirrors or windows or even solar panels.
This is particularly exciting for the solar panel industry where the ability to withstand all weathers is crucial.
Moreover, the mobile suitcase laboratory will be operated by an integrated solar panel and a power pack. The mobile suitcase laboratory will enter a field trial in Guinea, in collaboration with the Institut pasteur de Dakar
#New technique for producing cheaper solar energy suggested by research A team of experts from the University of Exeter has examined new techniques for generating photovoltaic (PV) energy--or ways in
The global PV market has experienced rapid growth in recent years due to renewable energy targets and CO2 EMISSION controls.
The research by the team from the Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) based at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall is published in the journal Solar energy Materials & Solar cells.
The research is questioning the perovskite material's ability to produce stable solar cells under versatile climatic conditions.
The obtained results are very crucial in terms of perovskite solar cell growth and understanding how to make better devices s
#New technique for growing high-efficiency perovskite solar cells This week in the journal Science, Los alamos National Laboratory researchers reveal a new solution-based hot-casting technique
that allows growth of highly efficient and reproducible solar cells from large-area perovskite crystals.""These perovskite crystals offer promising routes for developing low-cost, solar-based, clean global energy solutions for the future,"said Aditya Mohite,
high temperature crystal-growth processes are seen as the future of efficient solar technology. Solar cells composed of organic-inorganic perovskites offer efficiencies approaching that of silicon,
but they have been plagued with some important deficiencies limiting their commercial viability. It is this failure that the Los alamos technique successfully corrects.
The researchers fabricated planar solar cells from pervoskite materials with large crystalline grains that had efficiencies approaching 18%
#Self-assembled nanotextures create antireflective surface on silicon solar cells Reducing the amount of sunlight that bounces off the surface of solar cells helps maximize the conversion of the sun's rays to electricity,
has potential for streamlining silicon solar cell production and reducing manufacturing costs. The approach may find additional applications in reducing glare from windows, providing radar camouflage for military equipment,
"The issue with using such coatings for solar cells, "he said, "is that we'd prefer to fully capture every color of the light spectrum within the device,
The scientists started by coating the top surface of a silicon solar cell with a polymer material called a"block copolymer,
The self-assembled pattern served as a template for forming posts in the solar cell like those in the moth eye using a plasma of reactive gases-a technique commonly used in the manufacture of semiconductor electronic circuits.
The resulting surface nanotexture served to gradually change the refractive index to drastically cut down on reflection of many wavelengths of light simultaneously, regardless of the direction of light impinging on the solar cell."
Solar cells textured in this way outperform those coated with a single antireflective film by about 20 percent,
whether there are economic advantages to assembling silicon solar cells using our method, compared to other, established processes in the industry,
including glass and plastic, for antiglare windows and coatings for solar panels. This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science e
#First public lighting system that runs on solar and wind energy This system developed after four years of research is designed for inter-urban roads motorways urban parks and other public areas.
and is fitted with a solar panel a wind turbine and a battery. The turbine runs at a speed of 10 to 200 revolutions per minute (rpm)
and has a lower output (100 W). An electronic control system manages the flow of energy between the solar panel the wind turbine the battery and the light.
whereas current wind turbines need more than 2. 5 m/s says Ramon Bargall. This low intensity can provide six nights of electricity without wind
#Getting rid of pinholes in solar cells The pinholes, identified by OIST's Energy Materials and Surface Sciences Unit led by Prof.
The pinholes in the top layer of the solar cell, known as the hole transport layer, were identified as a key cause for the quick degradation of perovskite solar cells.
Researchers around the world are investigating the potential of perovskite, a humanmade organic-inorganic hybrid material, as an alternative to silicon-based solar cells."
"The researchers eliminated the pinholes by using a different method to create the top layer of the solar cell,
and the spiro-OMETAD molecules deposited onto the solar cell. To create this layer, a solar cell is positioned upside down on the ceiling of a vacuum chamber.
As the spiro-OMETAD is heated up, it evaporates and the gas molecules that stick to the perovskite,
"We were able to reduce the thickness of the solar cell from over 200 nanometers to 70 nanometers."
which makes the movement of"holes"carrying positive charges around the solar cell circuit much easier.""A very small difference between the top layer and perovskite material means maybe we get greater energy efficiency,
The evaporation method also resulted in a much longer-lasting solar cell. Before, the cells would lose the ability to efficiently convert sunlight into electricity after a couple of days.
While cheaper than conventional silicon-based solar cells, evaporation-based perovskite solar cells are more expensive than spin-coated cells.
#Revolutionary microbe for biofuel production developed Biofuels pioneer Mascoma LLC and the Department of energy's Bioenergy Science Center have developed a revolutionary strain of yeast that could help significantly accelerate the development of biofuels from nonfood plant matter.
features fermentation and ethanol yields that set a new standard for conversion of biomass sugars from pretreated corn stover--the non-edible portion of corn crops such as the stalk--converting up to 97 percent
Researchers announced that while conventional yeast leaves more than one-third of the biomass sugars unused in the form of xylose,
and convert sugars from lignocellulosic biomass has accelerated greatly the translation of basic research outcomes to a commercial product,
"Although cellulosic biomass such as corn stover, wheat straw and bagasse (the fibrous remains after sugar is extracted from sugarcane
or heat-loving, bacteria to produce biofuels directly from biomass in a single process o
#Stable perovskite solar cells developed through structural simplification Lead-halide-based perovskite (hereinafter simply referred to as perovskite) has been used as a solar cell material since six years ago.
Perovskite solar cells are promising low-cost and highly-efficient next-generation solar cells because they can be produced through low-temperature processes such as spin coating,
and generate a large amount of electricity due to their high optical absorption together with the high open-circuit voltage.
As such, the research on perovskite solar cells is making rapid progress. In order to identify the semiconducting properties of perovskites
and formulate guidelines for the development of highly efficient solar cell materials, NIMS launched an ad hoc Team on Perovskite PV Cells last October led by the deputy director-general of GREEN.
While the conventional perovskite solar cells have demonstrated high conversion efficiency, they were not sufficiently stable plagued by their low reproducibility
Researchers successfully created reproducible and stable perovskite solar cells as follows; They proposed an equivalent circuit model that explains the semiconducting properties of perovskites based on analysis of the internal resistance of perovskite solar cells.
This model indicated the existence of a charge transport process derived from an impurity level between the conduction
Due to this transport process, the efficiency of perovskite solar cells may be suppressed to some extent. In future studies, researchers will investigate into the cause of the impurity level and its influence on solar cells.
In addition, they intend to remove the impurity level and improve the efficiency of the solar cells,
thereby contributing to energy and environmental conservation. This study was conducted at GREEN as a part of the MEXT-commissioned project titled"Development of environmental technology using nanotechnology."
#First solar cell made of highly ordered molecular frameworks"We have opened the door to a new room,
suggest that the excellent properties of the solar cell result from an additional mechanism--the formation of indirect band gaps--that plays an important role in photovoltaics.
A metal-organic solar cell produced on the basis of this novel porphyrine-MOF is presented now by the researchers in the journal Angewandte Chemie (Applied Chemistry.
"The clou is that we just need a single organic molecule in the solar cell, "Wöll says.
Thanks to their mechanical properties, MOF thin films of a few hundred nanometers in thickness can be used for flexible solar cells or for the coating of clothing material or deformable components.
organic materials represent a highly interesting alternative to silicon that has to be processed at high costs before it can be used for the photoactive layer of a solar cell l
and provide backup for renewable energy sources that produce intermittent output, such as wind and solar power. But Chiang says the technology is suited also well to applications where weight
"Quantum dots, which have use in diverse applications such as medical imaging, lighting, display technologies, solar cells, photocatalysts, renewable energy and optoelectronics, are typically expensive and complicated to manufacture.
In particular, current chemical synthesis methods use high temperatures and toxic solvents, which make environmental remediation expensive and challenging.
#New storage cell for solar energy storage, nighttime conversion The innovation is an advancement over the most common solar energy systems that rely on using sunlight immediately as a power source.
Those systems are hindered by not being able to use that solar energy at night or when cloudy conditions exist.
The UT Arlington team developed an all-vanadium photo-electrochemical flow cell that allows for efficient and large-scale solar energy storage even at nighttime.
and use solar power, "said Fuqiang Liu, an assistant professor in the Materials science and engineering Department who led the research team."
"As renewable energy becomes more prevalent, the ability to store solar energy and use it as a renewable alternative provides a sustainable solution to the problem of energy shortage.
It also can effectively harness the inexhaustible energy from the sun."The work is a product of the 2013 National Science Foundation $400,
000 Faculty Early Career development grant awarded to Liu to improve the way solar energy is captured, stored and transmitted for use.
said a major drawback of current solar technology is the limitation on storing energy under dark conditions."
"We have demonstrated simultaneously reversible storage of both solar energy and electrons in the cell, "Dong Liu said."
"Release of the stored electrons under dark conditions continues solar energy storage, thus allowing for unintermittent storage around the clock."
said that the research should allow solar energy storage to be done in a much higher capacity and on a much larger scale."
"We have applied a petrochemical concept to biomass, "says postdoctoral researcher Michiel Dusselier.""We speed up and guide the chemical process in the reactor with a zeolite as a catalyst.
It's an advance that could have huge implications for everything from photography to solar power.
meaning it can gather a lot of light energy, and then scatters the light over a very large area,
this one very small optical device can receive light energy from all around and yield a surprisingly strong output.
Given the nanoresonator's capacity to absorb large amounts of light energy, the technology also has potential in applications that harvest the sun's energy with high efficiency.
In addition, Yu envisions simply letting the resonator emit that energy in the form of infrared light toward the sky,
and could enable new technologies in light sensing and solar energy conversion, "Yu says s
#Better memory with faster lasers By studying the effect of femtosecond laser pulses on the types of materials used to make DVDS,
#Sticky tape and phosphorus the key to ultrathin solar cells The team used sticky tape to create single-atom thick layers,
such as LEDS or solar cells,"said lead researcher Dr Yuerui (Larry) Lu, from The Australian National University (ANU)."
which could potentially be used for applications in dry environments, such as computer hard drives, wind turbine gears, and mechanical rotating seals for microelectromechanical and nanoelectromechanical systems.
#Transparent, electrically conductive network of encapsulated silver nanowires The electrodes for connections on the"sunny side"of a solar cell need to be not just electrically conductive,
She then transferred this suspension with a pipette onto a substrate, in this case a silicon solar cell.
In addition, the new electrode casts a considerably smaller shadow on the solar cell.""The network of silver nanowires is so fine that almost no light for solar energy conversion is lost in the cell due to the shadow,
"explains Göbelt. On the contrary, she hopes"it might even be possible for the silver nanowires to scatter light into the solar cell absorbers in a controlled fashion through
what are known as plasmonic effects. e
#Cooking up altered states Churning raw milk sufficiently creates butter. Squirting lemon juice coagulates it into curd.
#Laser-generated surface structures create extremely water-repellent metals Super-hydrophobic properties could lead to applications in solar panels,
#Perovskites provide big boost to silicon solar cells Stacking perovskites onto a conventional silicon solar cell dramatically improves the overall efficiency of the cell,
The researchers describe their novel perovskite-silicon solar cell in this week edition of the journal Energy & Environmental science. ee been looking for ways to make solar panels that are more efficient and lower cost,
said study co-author Michael Mcgehee, a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford. ight now, silicon solar cells dominate the world market,
but the power conversion efficiency of silicon photovoltaics has been stuck at 25 percent for 15 years.
Mcgehee said. ou simply put one solar cell on top of the other, and you get more efficiency than either could do by itself.
rivaling commercially available silicon solar cells and spawning widespread interest among silicon manufacturers. ur goal is to leverage the silicon factories that already exist around the world,
co-lead author of the study. ith tandem solar cells, you don need a billion-dollar capital expenditure to build a new factory.
Sunlight to electricity Solar cells work by converting photons of sunlight into an electric current that moves between two electrodes.
Silicon solar cells generate electricity by absorbing photons of visible and infrared light, while perovskite cells harvest only the visible part of the solar spectrum where the photons have more energy.
Microscopic cross-section of a tandem solar cell made with two photovoltaic materials, perovskite stacked on top of CIGS (copper indium gallium diselenide).
Colin Bailie, Stanford bsorbing the high-energy part of the spectrum allows perovskite solar cells to generate more power per photon of visible light than silicon cells,
Mcgehee said. o one had made ever a perovskite solar cell with two transparent electrodes. Perovskites are damaged easily by heat and readily dissolve in water.
This inherent instability ruled out virtually all of the conventional techniques for applying electrodes onto the perovoskite solar cell
Remarkable efficiency For the experiment, the Stanford team stacked a perovskite solar cell with an efficiency of a 12.7 percent on top of a low-quality silicon cell with an efficiency of just 11.4 percent. y combining two cells
In another experiment, the research team replaced the silicon solar cell with a cell made of copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS.
it might be possible to upgrade conventional solar cells into higher-performing tandems with little increase in cost,
We have a ways to go to show that perovskite solar cells are stable enough to last 25 years.
#Floating wind turbines bring electricity where it#s needed It a balloon that lifts a wind turbine. That the easiest way to describe the technology being developed by Altaeros Energies,
and airship technology to lift a wind turbine. Most wind turbine manufacturers are competing to build taller turbines to harness more powerful winds above 500 feet,
or 150 meters. Altaeros is going much higher with their novel Buoyant Airborne Turbine: the BAT.
Altaeros Energies Most wind turbine manufacturers are competing to build taller turbines to harness more powerful winds above 500 feet,
Altaeros Energies Aiming high Most wind turbine manufacturers are competing to build taller turbines to harness more powerful winds above 500 feet,
The helium-inflatable shell channels wind through a lightweight wind turbine. The shell self-stabilizes and produces aerodynamic lift, in addition to buoyancy.
The BAT has the potential to bring affordable wind energy to these communities and industries. The first model will provide enough electricity for a small community,
The BAT has the potential to bring affordable wind energy to these communities and industries. The first model will provide enough electricity for a small community,
The BAT has the potential to bring affordable wind energy to these communities and industries. The first model will provide enough electricity for a small community,
and to develop its modular wind turbine for power performance and ease of installation. Altaeros recently received Series A funding of $7 million dollars for the continued development and commercialization of its technology. he new products being developed by the team at Altaeros are exciting
NSF SBIR program director. his technology has the potential to avoid many of the key challenges facing traditional wind turbines. i
Software developed by Fraunhofer researchers will ensure an optimum use of the available wind energy at any time.
it is critical that the available wind energy is used in the best possible way. In order to calculate the optimal sailing route, researchers from Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services CML, a division of Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML
The tiny sensor is coated with a solar cell and it supplies itself with power. Sensors differentiate between ball and crowbar At ten millimeters,
Thanks to this window space, the solar cell obtains adequate light, even in the darkness of winter.
First of all, they succeeded in depositing the solar cell directly onto the uneven surface of the chip.
Secondly, the chip consumes power so meagerly that energy from the miniscule solar cell spans the dark hours.
like a street profile, prior to coating it with the solar cell, vom Bögel says. Currently IMS sensor prototypes can store enough power for up to 30 hours of darkness.
which was asking for solar cells on chips at IMS around two years ago, provided the impetus to developing the solar radio chip.
Andreas Goehlich group of developers succeeded in integrating the solar cells on the surface of the chips.
Using these solar cells, SOLCHIP seeks to monitor the street traffic for example, or the climate conditions in vineyards. s you can see,
#High efficiency concentrating solar cells move to the rooftop Ultra-high efficiency solar cells similar to those used in space may now be possible on your rooftop thanks to a new microscale solar concentration technology developed by an international team
of researchers. solar cells oncentrating photovoltaic (CPV) systems leverage the cost of high efficiency multi-junction solar cells by using inexpensive optics to concentrate sunlight onto them,
which is where the majority of solar panels throughout the world are installed. Giebink notes that the falling cost of typical silicon solar cells is making them a smaller and smaller fraction of the overall cost of solar electricity,
which also includes oftcosts like permitting, wiring, installation and maintenance that have remained fixed over time.
the researchers combined miniaturized, gallium arsenide photovoltaic cells, 3d-printed plastic lens arrays and a moveable focusing mechanism to reduce the size,
and create something similar to a traditional solar panel that can be placed on the south-facing side of a building roof.
very efficient multi-junction solar cells, said Giebink. hese cells are less than 1 square millimeter, made in large,
With each tiny solar cell located in the focus of this duo, sunlight is intensified more than 200 times.
the middle solar cell sheet tracks by sliding laterally in between the lenslet array. Previous attempts at such translation-based tracking have worked only for about two hours a day
because the focal point moves out of the plane of the solar cells, leading to loss of light and a drop in efficiency.
which allows small motors using a minimal amount of force for the mechanical tracking. he vision is that such a microtracking CPV panel could be placed on a roof in the same space as a traditional solar panel
and 99 percent of it everything except the solar cells and their wiring consists of acrylic plastic or Plexiglas,
solar panels that could be integrated into windows, and membranes to desalinate and purify water. But all these possible uses face the same big hurdle:
This combination is a real winner considering that the battery is designed mostly for use in hybrid electric vehicles and energy storage for renewable energy sources.
so it can be integrated it into ultra-small renewable energy devices, such as solar cells, data storage hardware and advancing quantum computing. uow195685 o one in the scientific community believed silicene paper could be made
These new phenomena rely on the transport of thermal energy, in contrast to the conventional application of magnetic fields, providing a new,
a chemical engineer with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley. he recyclable catalysts we developed are capable of converting sugarcane biomass into a new class of aviation fuel and lubricants with superior cold
and lubricants from biomass optimized using life-cycle greenhouse gas assessment. Corinne Scown, a research scientist with Berkeley Lab Energy Analysis and Environmental impacts Division,
Biofuels synthesized from the sugars in plant biomass help mitigate climate change. However jet fuels have stringent requirements that must be met. et fuels must be oxygen-free,
The process developed at EBI can be used to selectively upgrade alkyl methyl ketones derived from sugarcane biomass into trimer condensates with better than 95-percent yields.
The rest of the waste biomass can be combusted to produce process heat and electricity to operate the refinery.
the strategy behind the process could also be applied to biomass from other non-food plants
and agricultural waste that are fermented by genetically engineered microbes. lthough there are some additional technical challenges associated with using sugars derived entirely from biomass feedstocks like Miscanthus
whereas the neodymium magnet in a wind turbine generator only has two. Currently, whether purifying the neodymium and dysprosium out of minerals or out of an old power tool motor
#UCLA chemists devise technology that could transform solar energy storage The materials in most of today residential rooftop solar panels can store energy from the sun for only a few microseconds at a time.
A new technology developed by chemists at UCLA is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
The scientists devised a new arrangement of solar cell ingredients, with bundles of polymer donors (green rods) and neatly organized fullerene acceptors (purple, tan.
UCLA Chemistrythe new design is inspired by the way that plants generate energy through photosynthesis. iology does a very good job of creating energy from sunlight,
and keeping positive and negative charges separated, Tolbert said. hat separation is the key to making the process so efficient. o capture energy from sunlight, conventional rooftop solar cells use silicon, a fairly expensive material.
There is currently a big push to make lower-cost solar cells using plastics, rather than silicon,
but today plastic solar cells are relatively inefficient, in large part because the separated positive and negative electric charges often recombine before they can become electrical energy. odern plastic solar cells don have well-defined structures like plants do
because we never knew how to make them before, Tolbert said. ut this new system pulls charges apart
Schwartz said. o there no additional work. he researchers are already working on how to incorporate the technology into actual solar cells.
and provide backup for renewable energy sources that produce intermittent output, such as wind and solar power. But Chiang says the technology is suited also well to applications where weight
With ultrathin solar panels for trim and a USB charger tucked into the waist, the Southwest-inspired garment captured enough sunshine to charge cell phones
and release it at the exact timing desired would be a boon for the field of renewable energy.
Property of nonstick pans improves solar cell efficiency The same quality that buffers a raincoat against downpours
or a pan against sticky foods can also boost the performance of solar cells, according to a new study from UNL engineers.
Published July 20 in the journal Nature Communications, the study showed that constructing a type of organic solar cell on a on-wettingplastic surface made it 1. 5 times more efficient at converting sunlight to electricity.
Though grain size is limited typically to the thickness of a solar cell, Huang team found that a non-wetting surface allowed it to fabricate grains up to eight times larger than the cell is thick.
#Tiny grains of rice hold big promise for greenhouse gas reductions, bioenergy Discovery delivers high starch content,
such as starch for a richer food source and biomass for energy production, according to a study in Nature.
and creates more plant biomass, a bioenergy feedstock. In early work in Sweden, Jansson and his team investigated how distribution of sugars in plants could be controlled by a special protein called a transcription factor,
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