Eurekalert September 16, 2019 An international team of researchers (China, Sweden) developed a new combination of donor and acceptor materials, with a carefully determined composition, to be used as the active layer in an organic solar cell. The power they produce is low but is probably enough to feed the millions of products IoT products. They designed a non-fullerene acceptor named IO-4Cl and blend it with a polymer donor named PBDB-TF to obtain a photoactive layer whose absorption spectrum matches that of indoor light sources. The photovoltaic characterizations reveal a low energy loss below 0.60 eV. As a result, the organic […]
Category Archives: Solar energy
In the future, this electricity-free tech could help cool buildings in metropolitan areas
EurekAlert August 5, 2019 An international team of researchers (University of Buffalo, University of Wisconsin, Saudi Arabia, China) fabricated an inexpensive planar polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)/metal thermal emitter thin film structure using a fast solution coating process that is scalable for large-area manufacturing. The spectral-selective structure was designed and implemented to suppress the solar input and control the divergence of the thermal emission beam enhancing the directionality of the thermal emissions, so the emitter’s cooling performance was less dependent on the surrounding environment. In tests under different environmental conditions, temperature reductions of 9.5 °C and 11.0 °C in the laboratory and outside environment, respectively, […]
Novel thermoelectric nanoantenna design for use in solar energy harvesting
Nanowerk May 3, 2019 Researchers in Mexico fabricated and compared bimetallic Ni-Pt nanoantennas for a classic and evolutive dipole configuration. Observing the thermoelectric voltage dependence associated with classic and evolutive dipole configuration they found that the evolutive dipole nanoantennas (EDN) generate up to three times more voltage in contrast with the classic dipole nanoantenna (CDN). The evolutive configuration is 1.3 times more efficient than its classical counterpart. The results are corroborated by absorbance of these nanoantennas in the 20 to 36 THz range, where EDN is 40% more efficient than CDN and 30% in the range of 36.1 to 90 […]
“Sun in a box” would store renewable energy for the grid
MIT News December 5, 2018 A team of researchers in the US (MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, National Renewable Energy Laboratory) has outlined their concept for a new renewable energy storage system, which they call Thermal Energy Grid Storage-Multi-Junction Photovoltaics (TEGS-MPV). The new design stores heat generated by excess electricity from solar or wind power in large tanks of white-hot molten silicon, which can withstand high temperatures of over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit and then converts the light from the glowing metal back into electricity when it’s needed. Previously they developed a pump that could withstand such blistering heat and could conceivably […]
Nanoparticles Take Solar Desalination to New Heights
IEEE Spectrum August 10, 2018 Researchers in China have demonstrated that by dispersing tellurium nanoparticles into water, the water evaporation rate is improved by a factor of three under solar radiation. This makes it possible to increase the water temperature from 29 degrees to 85 degrees Celsius within 100 seconds. The Te nanoparticles perform like a plasmonic nanoparticle when it is smaller than 120 nanometers and then as a high-index all-dielectric nanoparticle when those nanoparticles are larger than 120 nm as they have a wide size distribution (from 10 to 300 nm). This enhanced absorption can cover the whole solar […]