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Apr 26 | News
Silicon
germanium (SiGe) has been valued for its performance in
high-temperature thermoelectric applications, but its low-temperature
performance and high cost have prevented broader applications. By
altering the design of bulk SiGe with a process borrowed from the
thin-film semiconductor industry, however, researchers have
substantially increased its electrical conductivity.
Apr 20 | News
Theoretically,
a solar cell can achieve 33.5% efficiency under ideal conditions, but
until now researchers had hit only 26%. This past year, a company called
Alta Devices acted on the theory that emission and voltage go
hand-in-hand by creating solar cell that acts like a light-emitting
diode. Its prototype broke the record, achieving 28.3% efficiency.
Mar 29 | News
Using
a simple liquid bath process, scientists at Natcore Technology Inc.
have create have created a black surface on a silicon wafer with an
average reflectance in the visible and near-infrared region of the solar
spectrum of 0.3%, making it the "blackest" silicon solar cell surface
ever recorded.
Mar 22 | News
So
far, quantum bits have only existed in relatively large vacuum
chambers. A research team in Germany, with help from colleagues in Japan
and France, has now generated them in a high-quality gallium arsenide
crystal.
9/19/2011 | News
Researchers from the University of Toronto, King Abdullah University of Science & Technology, and Pennsylvania State University have created the most efficient colloidal quantum dot (CQD) solar cell ever.
8/15/2011 | RDBlog
The editors of R&D Magazine have opened the nominations for the 2012 R&D 100 Awards competition, which will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the awards. If your organization introduced a new product this year, or is planning to, you can begin the entry process now.
7/11/2011 | News
Next month, R&D Magazine
will be wrapping up its print and web issues of the annual R&D 100
Awards. One of the winners to be featured, FlashQE, is a new solar cell
quality testing platform brought to market by Tau Sciences, and based on
work at the Dept. of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Bill Scanlon of NREL has recently published an in-depth feature on the
underlying technology, Real-Time QE.
7/1/2011 | News
Australian researchers have invented nanotech solar cells that are thin, flexible, and use one hundredth the materials of conventional solar cells.
6/1/2011 | News
Efficient,
cheap solar energy of the future will likely be of the printed variety.
Roll-to-roll methods for making photovoltaic cells already exist, but a
cheaper way would be to make them in solution. Argonne National Lab
researchers have created such an inorganic nanocrystal arrays using a
colloidal “ink” approach that depends on a quantum dot precursor of
their own design.
5/16/2011 | News
Tiny
energy converters being developed Oak Ridge National Lab are designed
for deployment in high-performance computer chips as way to use thermal
energy to generate power for much-needed cooling. The research team
reports that efficiency levels of their cantilevered invention are far
higher than existing harvesters.
