SHP (Safety & Health Practitioner) has reported that a proposed change under RIDDOR 1995 to report incidents that lead to a worker being incapacitated for more than seven days rather than three days, as is currently the case, has been described as a potential retrograde move for health and safety.
A recommendation first made by Lord Young last year in his report - Common Sense, Common Safety - Steffan Groch, explained that the Conservative peer had identified a less-than desirable level of compliance with RIDDOR, and that a change in the requirement to report over-three-day (O3D) injuries to over-seven-day (O7D) injuries might increase the level of compliance by being less burdensome on employers.
Steffan said the jury is still very much out on whether such a change would increase compliance, warning, as well, that the message the impact of the change could send to directors is potentially harmful.


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Tag Archives: photovoltaics
The mystifying physics of paint-on semiconductors
I was not expecting a Canadian connection but it seems we are heavily invested in this research at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), from a March 19, 2018 news item on ScienceDaily,
Some novel materials that sound too good to be true turn out to be true and good. An emergent class of semiconductors, which could affordably light up our future with nuanced colors emanating from lasers, lamps, and even window glass, could be the latest example.
These materials are very radiant, easy to process from solution, and energy-efficient. The nagging question of whether hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites (HOIPs) could really work just received a very affirmative answer in a new international study led by physical chemists at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
A March 19,. 2018 Georgia Tech news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides more detail,
The researchers observed in an HOIP a "richness" of semiconducting physics created by what could be described as electrons dancing on chemical underpinnings that wobble like a funhouse floor in an earthquake. That bucks conventional wisdom because established semiconductors rely upon rigidly stable chemical foundations, that is to say, quieter molecular frameworks, to produce the desired quantum properties.
"We don't know yet how it works to have these stable quantum properties in this intense molecular motion," said first author Felix Thouin, a graduate research assistant at Georgia Tech. "It defies physics models we have to try to explain it. It's like we need some new physics."
Quantum properties surprise
Their gyrating jumbles have made HOIPs challenging to examine, but the team of researchers from a total of five research institutes in four countries succeeded in measuring a prototypical HOIP and found its quantum properties on par with those of established, molecularly rigid semiconductors, many of which are graphene-based.
"The properties were at least as good as in those materials and may be even better," said Carlos Silva, a professor in Georgia Tech's School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Not all semiconductors also absorb and emit light well, but HOIPs do, making them optoelectronic and thus potentially useful in lasers, LEDs, other lighting applications, and also in photovoltaics.
The lack of molecular-level rigidity in HOIPs also plays into them being more flexibly produced and applied.
Silva co-led the study with physicist Ajay Ram Srimath Kandada. Their team published the results of their study on two-dimensional HOIPs on March 8, 2018, in the journal Physical Review Materials. Their research was funded by EU Horizon 2020, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Fond Québécois pour la Recherche, the [National] Research Council of Canada, and the National Research Foundation of Singapore. [emphases mine]
The 'solution solution'
Commonly, semiconducting properties arise from static crystalline lattices of neatly interconnected atoms. In silicon, for example, which is used in most commercial solar cells, they are interconnected silicon atoms. The same principle applies to graphene-like semiconductors.
"These lattices are structurally not very complex," Silva said. "They're only one atom thin, and they have strict two-dimensional properties, so they're much more rigid."
"You forcefully limit these systems to two dimensions," said Srimath Kandada, who is a Marie Curie International Fellow at Georgia Tech and the Italian Institute of Technology. "The atoms are arranged in infinitely expansive, flat sheets, and then these very interesting and desirable optoelectronic properties emerge."
These proven materials impress. So, why pursue HOIPs, except to explore their baffling physics? Because they may be more practical in important ways.
"One of the compelling advantages is that they're all made using low-temperature processing from solutions," Silva said. "It takes much less energy to make them."
By contrast, graphene-based materials are produced at high temperatures in small amounts that can be tedious to work with. "With this stuff (HOIPs), you can make big batches in solution and coat a whole window with it if you want to," Silva said.
Funhouse in an earthquake
For all an HOIP's wobbling, it's also a very ordered lattice with its own kind of rigidity, though less limiting than in the customary two-dimensional materials.
"It's not just a single layer," Srimath Kandada said. "There is a very specific perovskite-like geometry." Perovskite refers to the shape of an HOIPs crystal lattice, which is a layered scaffolding.
"The lattice self-assembles," Srimath Kandada said, "and it does so in a three-dimensional stack made of layers of two-dimensional sheets. But HOIPs still preserve those desirable 2D quantum properties."
Those sheets are held together by interspersed layers of another molecular structure that is a bit like a sheet of rubber bands. That makes the scaffolding wiggle like a funhouse floor.
"At room temperature, the molecules wiggle all over the place. That disrupts the lattice, which is where the electrons live. It's really intense," Silva said. "But surprisingly, the quantum properties are still really stable."
Having quantum properties work at room temperature without requiring ultra-cooling is important for practical use as a semiconductor.
Going back to what HOIP stands for — hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites – this is how the experimental material fit into the HOIP chemical class: It was a hybrid of inorganic layers of a lead iodide (the rigid part) separated by organic layers (the rubber band-like parts) of phenylethylammonium (chemical formula (PEA)2PbI4).
The lead in this prototypical material could be swapped out for a metal safer for humans to handle before the development of an applicable material.
Electron choreography
HOIPs are great semiconductors because their electrons do an acrobatic square dance.
Usually, electrons live in an orbit around the nucleus of an atom or are shared by atoms in a chemical bond. But HOIP chemical lattices, like all semiconductors, are configured to share electrons more broadly.
Energy levels in a system can free the electrons to run around and participate in things like the flow of electricity and heat. The orbits, which are then empty, are called electron holes, and they want the electrons back.
"The hole is thought of as a positive charge, and of course, the electron has a negative charge," Silva said. "So, hole and electron attract each other."
The electrons and holes race around each other like dance partners pairing up to what physicists call an "exciton." Excitons act and look a lot like particles themselves, though they're not really particles.
Hopping biexciton light
In semiconductors, millions of excitons are correlated, or choreographed, with each other, which makes for desirable properties, when an energy source like electricity or laser light is applied. Additionally, excitons can pair up to form biexcitons, boosting the semiconductor's energetic properties.
"In this material, we found that the biexciton binding energies were high," Silva said. "That's why we want to put this into lasers because the energy you input ends up to 80 or 90 percent as biexcitons."
Biexcitons bump up energetically to absorb input energy. Then they contract energetically and pump out light. That would work not only in lasers but also in LEDs or other surfaces using the optoelectronic material.
"You can adjust the chemistry (of HOIPs) to control the width between biexciton states, and that controls the wavelength of the light given off," Silva said. "And the adjustment can be very fine to give you any wavelength of light."
That translates into any color of light the heart desires.
Coauthors of this paper were Stefanie Neutzner and Annamaria Petrozza from the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT); Daniele Cortecchia from IIT and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore; Cesare Soci from the Centre for Disruptive Photonic Technologies, Singapore; Teddy Salim and Yeng Ming Lam from NTU; and Vlad Dragomir and Richard Leonelli from the University of Montreal. …
Three Canadian science funding agencies plus European and Singaporean science funding agencies but not one from the US ? That's a bit unusual for research undertaken at a US educational institution.
In any event, here's a link to and a citation for the paper,
Stable biexcitons in two-dimensional metal-halide perovskites with strong dynamic lattice disorder by Félix Thouin, Stefanie Neutzner, Daniele Cortecchia, Vlad Alexandru Dragomir, Cesare Soci, Teddy Salim, Yeng Ming Lam, Richard Leonelli, Annamaria Petrozza, Ajay Ram Srimath Kandada, and Carlos Silva. Phys. Rev. Materials 2, 034001 – Published 8 March 2018
This paper is behind a paywall.
This entry was posted in electronics, energy, nanotechnology and tagged Ajay Ram Srimath Kandada, Annamaria Petrozza, biexciton light, Canada, Carlos Silva, Centre for Disruptive Photonic Technologies, Cesare Soci, Daniele Cortecchia, EU Horizon 2020, exciton (act and look a lot like particles though they're not), Felix Thouin, Fond Québécois pour la Recherche, Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech, HOIP crystal lattice, hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites (HOIPs), Italian Institute of Technology, Italy, lead iodide, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), National Research Foundation of Singapore, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, optoelectronic, perovskites, phenylethylammonium (PEA)2PbI4), photovoltaics, quantum properties, Research Council of Canada, Richard Leonelli, self-assembling, semiconductors, Singapore, solar cells, Srimath Kandada, Stable biexcitons in two-dimensional metal-halide perovskites with strong dynamic lattice disorder, Stefanie Neutzner, Teddy Salim, University of Montreal, US, Vlad Alexandru Dragomir, Yeng Ming Lam on July 25, 2018 by Maryse de la Giroday.
Beautiful solar cells based on insect eyes
What a gorgeous image!
The compound eye of a fly inspired Stanford researchers to create a compound solar cell consisting of perovskite microcells encapsulated in a hexagon-shaped scaffold. (Image credit: Thomas Shahan/Creative Commons)
An August 31, 2017 news item on Nanowerk describes research into solar cells being performed at Stanford University (Note: A link has been removed),
Packing tiny solar cells together, like micro-lenses in the compound eye of an insect, could pave the way to a new generation of advanced photovoltaics, say Stanford University scientists.
In a new study, the Stanford team used the insect-inspired design to protect a fragile photovoltaic material called perovskite from deteriorating when exposed to heat, moisture or mechanical stress. The results are published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science ("Scaffold-reinforced perovskite compound solar cells").
An August 31, 2017 Stanford University news release (also on EurekAlert) by Mark Schwartz, which originated the news item,
"Perovskites are promising, low-cost materials that convert sunlight to electricity as efficiently as conventional solar cells made of silicon," said Reinhold Dauskardt, a professor of materials science and engineering and senior author of the study. "The problem is that perovskites are extremely unstable and mechanically fragile. They would barely survive the manufacturing process, let alone be durable long term in the environment."
Most solar devices, like rooftop panels, use a flat, or planar, design. But that approach doesn't work well with perovskite solar cells.
"Perovskites are the most fragile materials ever tested in the history of our lab," said graduate student Nicholas Rolston, a co-lead author of the E&ES study. "This fragility is related to the brittle, salt-like crystal structure of perovskite, which has mechanical properties similar to table salt."
Eye of the fly
To address the durability challenge, the Stanford team turned to nature.
"We were inspired by the compound eye of the fly, which consists of hundreds of tiny segmented eyes," Dauskardt explained. "It has a beautiful honeycomb shape with built-in redundancy: If you lose one segment, hundreds of others will operate. Each segment is very fragile, but it's shielded by a scaffold wall around it."
Scaffolds in a compound solar cell filled with perovskite after fracture testing. (Image credit: Dauskardt Lab/Stanford University)
Using the compound eye as a model, the researchers created a compound solar cell consisting of a vast honeycomb of perovskite microcells, each encapsulated in a hexagon-shaped scaffold just 0.02 inches (500 microns) wide.
"The scaffold is made of an inexpensive epoxy resin widely used in the microelectronics industry," Rolston said. "It's resilient to mechanical stresses and thus far more resistant to fracture."
Tests conducted during the study revealed that the scaffolding had little effect on how efficiently perovskite converted light into electricity.
"We got nearly the same power-conversion efficiencies out of each little perovskite cell that we would get from a planar solar cell," Dauskardt said. "So we achieved a huge increase in fracture resistance with no penalty for efficiency."
But could the new device withstand the kind of heat and humidity that conventional rooftop solar panels endure?
To find out, the researchers exposed encapsulated perovskite cells to temperatures of 185 F (85 C) and 85 percent relative humidity for six weeks. Despite these extreme conditions, the cells continued to generate electricity at relatively high rates of efficiency.
Dauskardt and his colleagues have filed a provisional patent for the new technology. To improve efficiency, they are studying new ways to scatter light from the scaffold into the perovskite core of each cell.
"We are very excited about these results," he said. "It's a new way of thinking about designing solar cells. These scaffold cells also look really cool, so there are some interesting aesthetic possibilities for real-world applications."
Researchers have also made this image available,
Caption: A compound solar cell illuminated from a light source below. Hexagonal scaffolds are visible in the regions coated by a silver electrode. The new solar cell design could help scientists overcome a major roadblock to the development of perovskite photovoltaics. Credit: Dauskardt Lab/Stanford University
Not quite as weirdly beautiful as the insect eyes.
Here's a link to and a citation for the paper,
Scaffold-reinforced perovskite compound solar cells by Brian L. Watson, Nicholas Rolston, Adam D. Printz, and Reinhold H. Dauskardt. Energy & Environmental Science 2017 DOI: 10.1039/C7EE02185B first published on 23 Aug 2017
This entry was posted in biomimcry, energy, nanotechnology and tagged Adam D. Printz, bioinspired, biomimetics, Brian L. Watson, compound eye, compound eye of an insect, compound solar cell, insect-inspired design, Mark Schwartz, Nicholas Rolston, perovskite microcells, perovskite solar cells, perovskites, photovoltaics, Reinhold Dauskardt, Reinhold H. Dauskardt, Scaffold-reinforced perovskite compound solar cells, solar cells, solar devices, Stanford University, Thomas Shahan on October 5, 2017 by Maryse de la Giroday.
Researchers from Canada and Russia find metal-organic-frameworks in nature
To date, these 'natural' metal-organic-frameworks have been found only in Siberian coal mines. From an Aug, 5, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily,
One of the hottest new materials is a class of porous solids known as metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs. These human-made materials were introduced in the 1990s, and researchers around the world are working on ways to use them as molecular sponges for applications such as hydrogen storage, carbon sequestration, or photovoltaics.
Now, a surprising discovery by scientists in Canada and Russia reveals that MOFs also exist in nature — albeit in the form of rare minerals found so far only in Siberian coal mines.
The finding, published in the journal Science Advances, "completely changes the normal view of these highly popular materials as solely artificial, 'designer' solids," says senior author Tomislav Friščić, an associate professor of chemistry at McGill University in Montreal. "This raises the possibility that there might be other, more abundant, MOF minerals out there."
Caption: Individual crystals of synthetic zhemchuzhnikovite, prepared by Igor Huskić, McGill University. Credit: Igor Huskić, Friščić Research Group, McGill University
An Aug, 8, 2016 McGill University news release (also on EurekAlert but dated Aug. 5, 2016), which originated the news item, expands on the theme,
The twisting path to the discovery began six years ago, when Friščić came across a mention of the minerals stepanovite and zhemchuzhnikovite in a Canadian mineralogy journal. The crystal structure of the minerals, found in Russia between the 1940s and 1960s, hadn't been fully determined. But the Russian mineralogists who discovered them had analyzed their chemical composition and the basic parameters of their structures, using a technique known as X-ray powder diffraction. To Friščić, those parameters hinted that the minerals could be structurally similar to a type of man-made MOF.
His curiosity piqued, Friščić began looking for samples of the rare minerals, reaching out to experts, museums and vendors in Russia and elsewhere. After a promising lead with a mining museum in Saint Petersburg failed to pan out, Igor Huskić, a graduate student in the Friščić research group at McGill turned his attention to synthesizing analogues of the minerals in the lab – and succeeded. But a major journal last year declined to publish the team's work, in part because the original description of the minerals had been reported in a somewhat obscure Russian mineralogical journal.
Then, the McGill chemists caught a break: with the help of a crystallographer colleague in Venezuela, they connected with two prominent Russian mineralogists: Sergey Krivovichev, a professor at Saint Petersburg State University, and Prof. Igor Pekov of Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Krivovichev and Pekov were able to obtain the original samples of the two rare minerals, which had been found decades earlier in a coal mine deep beneath the Siberian permafrost. The Russian experts were also able to determine the crystal structures of the minerals. These findings confirmed the McGill researchers' initial results from their lab synthesis.
Stepanovite and zhemchuzhnikovite have the elaborate, honeycomb-like structure of MOFs, characterized at the molecular level by large voids. The two minerals aren't, however, representative of the hottest varieties of MOFs — those that are being developed for use in hydrogen-fueled cars or to capture waste carbon dioxide.
As a result, Friščić and his collaborators are now broadening their research to determine if other, more abundant minerals have porous structures that could make them suitable for uses such as hydrogen storage or even drug delivery.
In any event, the discovery of MOF structures in the two rare minerals already is "paradigm-changing" Friščić says. If scientists had been able to determine those structures in the 1960s, he notes, the development of MOF materials "might have been accelerated by 30 years."
Minerals with metal-organic framework structures by Igor Huskić, Igor V. Pekov, Sergey V. Krivovichev, and Tomislav Friščić. Science Advances 05 Aug 2016: Vol. 2, no. 8, e1600621 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600621
This paper appears to be open access.
This entry was posted in nanotechnology and tagged carbon sequestration, hydrogen storage, Igor Huskić, Igor Pekov, Igor V. Pekov, Lomonosov Moscow State University, McGill University, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), Minerals with metal-organic framework structures, MOFs. Canada, photovoltaics, Russia, Saint Petersburg State University, Sergey Krivovichev, Sergey V. Krivovichev, stepanovite, synthetic zhemchuzhnikovite, Tomislav Friščić, zhemchuzhnikovite on August 8, 2016 by Maryse de la Giroday.
A treasure trove of molecule and battery data released to the public
Scientists working on The Materials Project have taken the notion of open science to their hearts and opened up access to their data according to a June 9, 2016 news item on Nanowerk,
The Materials Project, a Google-like database of material properties aimed at accelerating innovation, has released an enormous trove of data to the public, giving scientists working on fuel cells, photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, and a host of other advanced materials a powerful tool to explore new research avenues. But it has become a particularly important resource for researchers working on batteries. Co-founded and directed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientist Kristin Persson, the Materials Project uses supercomputers to calculate the properties of materials based on first-principles quantum-mechanical frameworks. It was launched in 2011 by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science.
A June 8, 2016 Berkeley Lab news release, which originated the news item, provides more explanation about The Materials Project,
The idea behind the Materials Project is that it can save researchers time by predicting material properties without needing to synthesize the materials first in the lab. It can also suggest new candidate materials that experimentalists had not previously dreamed up. With a user-friendly web interface, users can look up the calculated properties, such as voltage, capacity, band gap, and density, for tens of thousands of materials.
Two sets of data were released last month: nearly 1,500 compounds investigated for multivalent intercalation electrodes and more than 21,000 organic molecules relevant for liquid electrolytes as well as a host of other research applications. Batteries with multivalent cathodes (which have multiple electrons per mobile ion available for charge transfer) are promising candidates for reducing cost and achieving higher energy density than that available with current lithium-ion technology.
The sheer volume and scope of the data is unprecedented, said Persson, who is also a professor in UC Berkeley's Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "As far as the multivalent cathodes, there's nothing similar in the world that exists," she said. "To give you an idea, experimentalists are usually able to focus on one of these materials at a time. Using calculations, we've added data on 1,500 different compositions."
While other research groups have made their data publicly available, what makes the Materials Project so useful are the online tools to search all that data. The recent release includes two new web apps—the Molecules Explorer and the Redox Flow Battery Dashboard—plus an add-on to the Battery Explorer web app enabling researchers to work with other ions in addition to lithium.
"Not only do we give the data freely, we also give algorithms and software to interpret or search over the data," Persson said.
The Redox Flow Battery app gives scientific parameters as well as techno-economic ones, so battery designers can quickly rule out a molecule that might work well but be prohibitively expensive. The Molecules Explorer app will be useful to researchers far beyond the battery community.
"For multivalent batteries it's so hard to get good experimental data," Persson said. "The calculations provide rich and robust benchmarks to assess whether the experiments are actually measuring a valid intercalation process or a side reaction, which is particularly difficult for multivalent energy technology because there are so many problems with testing these batteries."
Here's a screen capture from the Battery Explorer app,
The Materials Project's Battery Explorer app now allows researchers to work with other ions in addition to lithium. Courtesy: The Materials Project
The news release goes on to describe a new discovery made possible by The Materials Project (Note: A link has been removed),
Together with Persson, Berkeley Lab scientist Gerbrand Ceder, postdoctoral associate Miao Liu, and MIT graduate student Ziqin Rong, the Materials Project team investigated some of the more promising materials in detail for high multivalent ion mobility, which is the most difficult property to achieve in these cathodes. This led the team to materials known as thiospinels. One of these thiospinels has double the capacity of the currently known multivalent cathodes and was recently synthesized and tested in the lab by JCESR researcher Linda Nazar of the University of Waterloo, Canada.
"These materials may not work well the first time you make them," Persson said. "You have to be persistent; for example you may have to make the material very phase pure or smaller than a particular particle size and you have to test them under very controlled conditions. There are people who have actually tried this material before and discarded it because they thought it didn't work particularly well. The power of the computations and the design metrics we have uncovered with their help is that it gives us the confidence to keep trying."
The researchers were able to double the energy capacity of what had previously been achieved for this kind of multivalent battery. The study has been published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science in an article titled, "A High Capacity Thiospinel Cathode for Mg Batteries."
"The new multivalent battery works really well," Persson said. "It's a significant advance and an excellent proof-of-concept for computational predictions as a valuable new tool for battery research."
A high capacity thiospinel cathode for Mg batteries by Xiaoqi Sun, Patrick Bonnick, Victor Duffort, Miao Liu, Ziqin Rong, Kristin A. Persson, Gerbrand Ceder and Linda F. Nazar. Energy Environ. Sci., 2016, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C6EE00724D First published online 24 May 2016
This paper seems to be behind a paywall.
Getting back to the news release, there's more about The Materials Project in relationship to its membership,
The Materials Project has attracted more than 20,000 users since launching five years ago. Every day about 20 new users register and 300 to 400 people log in to do research.
One of those users is Dane Morgan, a professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who develops new materials for a wide range of applications, including highly active catalysts for fuel cells, stable low-work function electron emitter cathodes for high-powered microwave devices, and efficient, inexpensive, and environmentally safe solar materials.
"The Materials Project has enabled some of the most exciting research in my group," said Morgan, who also serves on the Materials Project's advisory board. "By providing easy access to a huge database, as well as tools to process that data for thermodynamic predictions, the Materials Project has enabled my group to rapidly take on materials design projects that would have been prohibitive just a few years ago."
More materials are being calculated and added to the database every day. In two years, Persson expects another trove of data to be released to the public.
"This is the way to reach a significant part of the research community, to reach students while they're still learning material science," she said. "It's a teaching tool. It's a science tool. It's unprecedented."
Supercomputing clusters at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a DOE Office of Science User Facility hosted at Berkeley Lab, provide the infrastructure for the Materials Project.
Funding for the Materials Project is provided by the Office of Science (US Department of Energy], including support through JCESR [Joint Center for Energy Storage Research].
Happy researching!
This entry was posted in science and tagged A high capacity thiospinel cathode for Mg batteries, batteries, Berkeley Lab, Canada, Dane Morgan, DOE, fuel cells, Gerbrand Ceder, Kristin A. Persson, Kristin Persson, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Linda F. Nazar, Linda Nazar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Miao Liu, MIT, Molecules Explorer app, multivalent batteries, Patrick Bonnick, photovoltaics, Redox Flow Battery app, Redox Flow Battery Dashboard, The Materials Project, thermoelectrics, thiospinels, U.S. Department of Energy, UC Berkeley, University of California at Berkeley, University of Waterloo, University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, Victor Duffort, Xiaoqi Sun, Ziqin Rong on June 17, 2016 by Maryse de la Giroday.
India, Lockheed Martin, and canal-top solar power plants
Apparently the state of Gujarat (India) has inspired at least one other state, Punjab, to build (they hope) a network of photovoltaic (solar energy) plants over top of their canal system (from a Nov. 16, 2014 article by Mridul Chadha for cleantechnica.com),
India's northern state of Punjab plans to set up 1,000 MW of solar PV projects to cover several kilometres of canals over the next three years. The state government has announced a target to cover 5,000 km of canals across the state. Through this program, the government hopes to generate 15% of the state's total electricity demand.
Understandably, the construction of canal-top power plants is technically and structurally very different from rooftop or ground-based solar PV projects. The mounting structures for the solar PV modules cannot be heavy, as it could adversely impact the structural integrity of the canal itself. The structures should be easy to work with, as they are to be set up over a slope.
This is where the Punjab government has asked Lockheed Martin for help. The US-based company has entered into an agreement with the Punjab government to develop lightweight mounting structures for solar panels using nanotechnology.
Canal and rooftop solar power projects are the only viable options for Punjab as it is an agricultural state and land availability for large-scale ground-mounted projects remains an issue. As a result, the state government has a relatively lower (compared to other states) capacity addition target of 2 GW.
There's more about the Punjab and current plans to increase its investment in solar photovoltaics in the article.
Here's an image of a canal-top solar plant near Kadi (Gujarat),
Image Credit: Hitesh vip | CC BY-SA 3.0
A Nov. 15, 2014 news item by Kamya Kandhar for efytimes.com provides a few more details about this Memorandum of Understanding (MOU),
Punjab government had announced its tie up with U.S. aerospace giant Lockheed Martin to expand the solar power generation and overcome power problems in the State. As per the agreement, the state will put in 1,000 MW solar power within the next three years. Lockheed Martin has agreed to provide plastic structures for solar panels on canals by using nano technology.
While commenting upon the agreement, a spokesperson said, "The company would also provide state-of-the-art technology to convert paddy straw into energy, solving the lingering problem of paddy straw burning in the state. The Punjab government and Lockheed Martin would ink a MoU in this regard [on Friday, Nov. 14, 2014]."
The decision was taken during a meeting between three-member team from Lockheed Martin, involving the CEO Phil Shaw, Chief Innovation Officer Tushar Shah and Regional Director Jagmohan Singh along with Punjab Non-Conventional Energy Minister Bikram Singh Majithia and other senior Punjab officials.
As for paddy straw and its conversion into energy, there's this from a Nov. 14, 2014 news item on India West.com,
Shaw [CEO Phil Shaw] said Lockheed has come out with waste-to-energy conversion solutions with successful conversion of waste products to electricity, heat and fuel by using gasification processes. He said it was an environmentally friendly green recycling technology, which requires little space and the plants are fully automated.
Getting back to the nanotechnology, I was not able to track down any information about nanotechnology-enabled plastics and Lockheed Martin. But, there is a Dec. 11, 2013 interview with Travis Earles, Lockheed Martin Advanced materials and nanotechnology innovation executive and policy leader, written up by Kris Walker for Azonano. Note: this is a general interview and focuses largely on applications for carbon nanotubes and graphene.
This entry was posted in energy, environment, graphene, nanotechnology and tagged Bikram Singh Majithia, canal-top solar power plants, carbon nanotubes, Gujarat, Hitesh vip, India, Jagmohan Singh, Kamya Kandhar, Lockheed Martin, Mridul Chadha, paddy straw, Phil Shaw, photovoltaics, Punjab, Travis Earles, Tushar Shah, US on November 17, 2014 by Maryse de la Giroday.
Solar cells and 'tinkertoys'
A Nov. 3, 2014 news item on Nanowerk features a project researchers hope will improve photovoltaic efficiency and make solar cells competitive with other sources of energy,
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have received a $1.2 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy's SunShot Initiative to develop a technique that they believe will significantly improve the efficiencies of photovoltaic materials and help make solar electricity cost-competitive with other sources of energy.
The work builds on Sandia's recent successes with metal-organic framework (MOF) materials by combining them with dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC).
"A lot of people are working with DSSCs, but we think our expertise with MOFs gives us a tool that others don't have," said Sandia's Erik Spoerke, a materials scientist with a long history of solar cell exploration at the labs.
A Nov. 3, 2014 Sandia National Laboratories news release, which originated the news item, describes the project and the technology in more detail,
Sandia's project is funded through SunShot's Next Generation Photovoltaic Technologies III program, which sponsors projects that apply promising basic materials science that has been proven at the materials properties level to demonstrate photovoltaic conversion improvements to address or exceed SunShot goals.
The SunShot Initiative is a collaborative national effort that aggressively drives innovation with the aim of making solar energy fully cost-competitive with traditional energy sources before the end of the decade. Through SunShot, the Energy Department supports efforts by private companies, universities and national laboratories to drive down the cost of solar electricity to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.
DSSCs provide basis for future advancements in solar electricity production
Dye-sensitized solar cells, invented in the 1980s, use dyes designed to efficiently absorb light in the solar spectrum. The dye is mated with a semiconductor, typically titanium dioxide, that facilitates conversion of the energy in the optically excited dye into usable electrical current.
DSSCs are considered a significant advancement in photovoltaic technology since they separate the various processes of generating current from a solar cell. Michael Grätzel, a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, was awarded the 2010 Millennium Technology Prize for inventing the first high-efficiency DSSC.
"If you don't have everything in the DSSC dependent on everything else, it's a lot easier to optimize your photovoltaic device in the most flexible and effective way," explained Sandia senior scientist Mark Allendorf. DSSCs, for example, can capture more of the sun's energy than silicon-based solar cells by using varied or multiple dyes and also can use different molecular systems, Allendorf said.
"It becomes almost modular in terms of the cell's components, all of which contribute to making electricity out of sunlight more efficiently," said Spoerke.
MOFs' structure, versatility and porosity help overcome DSSC limitations
Though a source of optimism for the solar research community, DSSCs possess certain challenges that the Sandia research team thinks can be overcome by combining them with MOFs.
Allendorf said researchers hope to use the ordered structure and versatile chemistry of MOFs to help the dyes in DSSCs absorb more solar light, which he says is a fundamental limit on their efficiency.
"Our hypothesis is that we can put a thin layer of MOF on top of the titanium dioxide, thus enabling us to order the dye in exactly the way we want it," Allendorf explained. That, he said, should avoid the efficiency-decreasing problem of dye aggregation, since the dye would then be locked into the MOF's crystalline structure.
MOFs are highly-ordered materials that also offer high levels of porosity, said Allendorf, a MOF expert and 29-year veteran of Sandia. He calls the materials "Tinkertoys for chemists" because of the ease with which new structures can be envisioned and assembled. [emphasis mine]
Allendorf said the unique porosity of MOFs will allow researchers to add a second dye, placed into the pores of the MOF, that will cover additional parts of the solar spectrum that weren't covered with the initial dye. Finally, he and Spoerke are convinced that MOFs can help improve the overall electron charge and flow of the solar cell, which currently faces instability issues.
"Essentially, we believe MOFs can help to more effectively organize the electronic and nano-structure of the molecules in the solar cell," said Spoerke. "This can go a long way toward improving the efficiency and stability of these assembled devices."
In addition to the Sandia team, the project includes researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder, particularly Steve George, an expert in a thin film technology known as atomic layer deposition.
The technique, said Spoerke, is important in that it offers a pathway for highly controlled materials chemistry with potentially low-cost manufacturing of the DSSC/MOF process.
"With the combination of MOFs, dye-sensitized solar cells and atomic layer deposition, we think we can figure out how to control all of the key cell interfaces and material elements in a way that's never been done before," said Spoerke. "That's what makes this project exciting."
Here's a picture showing an early Tinkertoy set,
Original Tinkertoy, Giant Engineer #155. Questor Education Products Co., c.1950 [downloaded from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinkertoy#mediaviewer/File:Tinkertoy_300126232168.JPG]
The Tinkertoy entry on Wikipedia has this,
The Tinkertoy Construction Set is a toy construction set for children. It was created in 1914—six years after the Frank Hornby's Meccano sets—by Charles H. Pajeau and Robert Pettit and Gordon Tinker in Evanston, Illinois. Pajeau, a stonemason, designed the toy after seeing children play with sticks and empty spools of thread. He and Pettit set out to market a toy that would allow and inspire children to use their imaginations. At first, this did not go well, but after a year or two over a million were sold.
Shrinky Dinks, tinkertoys, Lego have all been mentioned here in conjunction with lab work. I'm always delighted to see scientists working with or using children's toys as inspiration of one type or another.
This entry was posted in energy, nanotechnology and tagged Charles H. Pajeau, DOE, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, EPFL, Erik Spoerke, Gordon Tinker, Mark Allendorf, metal-organic framework (MOF), Michael Grätzel, Next Generation Photovoltaic Technologies III, photovoltaics, Robert Pettit, Sandia National Laboratories, solar cells, solar energy, solar panels, Steve George, Sunshot Initiative, Switzerland, Tinkertoy Construction Set, tinkertoys, University of Colorado Boulder, US, US Department of Energy on November 3, 2014 by Maryse de la Giroday.
Tibetan Buddhist singing bowls inspire more efficient solar cells
There's no mention as to whether or not Dr Niraj Lal practices any form of meditation or how he came across Tibetan Buddhist singing bowls but somehow he was inspired by them when studying for his PhD at Cambridge University (UK). From a Sept. 8, 2014 news item by Niall Byrne for physorg.com,
The shape of a centuries-old Buddhist singing bowl has inspired a Canberra scientist to re-think the way that solar cells are designed to maximize their efficiency.
Dr Niraj Lal, of the Australian National University, found during his PhD at the University of Cambridge, that small nano-sized versions of Buddhist singing bowls resonate with light in the same way as they do with sound, and he's applied this shape to solar cells to increase their ability to capture more light and convert it into electricity.
A Sept. ?, 2014 news release from Australian science communication company, Science in Public, fills in a few more details without any mention of Lal's meditation practices, should he have any,
"Current standard solar panels lose a large amount of light-energy as it hits the surface, making the panels' generation of electricity inefficient," says Niraj. "But if the cells are singing bowl-shaped, then the light bounces around inside the cell for longer".
Normally used in meditation, music, and relaxation, Buddhist singing bowls make a continuous harmonic ringing sound when the rim of the metal bowl is vibrated with a wooden or other utensil.
During his PhD, Niraj discovered that his 'nanobowls' manipulated light by creating a 'plasmonic' resonance, which quadrupled the laboratory solar cell's efficiency compared to a similarly made flat solar cell.
Now, Niraj and his team aim to change all that by applying his singing-bowl discovery to tandem solar cells: a technology that has previously been limited to aerospace applications.
In research which will be published in the November issue of IEEE Journal of Photonics, Niraj and his colleagues have shown that by layering two different types of solar panels on top of each other in tandem, the efficiency of flat rooftop solar panels can achieve 30 per cent—currently, laboratory silicon solar panels convert only 25 per cent of light into electricity, while commercial varieties convert closer to 20 per cent.
The tandem cell design works by absorbing a sunlight more effectively —each cell is made from a different material so that it can 'see' a different light wavelength.
"To a silicon solar cell, a rainbow just looks like a big bit of red in the sky—they don't 'see' the blue, green or UV light—they convert all light to electricity as if it was red ," says Niraj. "But when we put a second cell on top, which 'sees' the blue part of light, but allows the red to pass through to the 'red-seeing' cell below, we can reach a combined efficiency of more than 30 percent."
Niraj and a team at ANU are now looking at ways to super-charge the tandem cell design by applying the Buddhist singing bowl shape to further increase efficiency.
"If we can make a solar cell that 'sees' more colours and keeps the right light in the right layers, then we could increase efficiency even further," says Niraj.
"Every extra percent in efficiency saves you thousands of dollars over the lifetime of the panel," says Niraj. "Current roof-top solar panels have been steadily increasing in efficiency, which has been a big driver of the fourfold drop in the price for these panels over the last five years."
More importantly, says Niraj, greater efficiency will allow solar technology to compete with fossil fuels and meet the challenges of climate change and access.
"Electricity is also one of the most enabling technologies we have ever seen, and linking people in rural areas around the world to electricity is one of the most powerful things we can do."
At the end of the Science in Public news release there's mention of a science communication competition,
Niraj was a 2014 national finalist of FameLab Australia. FameLab is a global science communication competition for early-career scientists. His work is supported by the Australian Research Council and ARENA – the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
About FameLab
In 2014, the British Council and Fresh Science have joined forces to bring FameLab to Australia.
FameLab Australia will offer specialist science media training and, ultimately, the chance for early-career researchers to pitch their research at the FameLab International Grand Final in the UK at The Times Cheltenham Science Festival from 3 to 5 June 2014.
FameLab is an international communication competition for scientists, including engineers and mathematicians. Designed to inspire and motivate young researchers to actively engage with the public and with potential stakeholders, FameLab is all about finding the best new voices of science and engineering across the world.
Founded in 2005 by The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, FameLab, working in partnership with the British Council, has already seen more than 5,000 young scientists and engineers participate in over 23 different countries — from Hong Kong to South Africa, USA to Egypt.
Now, FameLab comes to Australia in a landmark collaboration with the British Council and Fresh Science — Australia's very own science communication competition.
For more information about FameLab Australia, head to www.famelab.org.au
You can find out more about Australia's Fresh Science here.
Getting back to Dr. Lal, here's a video he made about his work and where he demonstrates a Tibetan Buddhist singing bowl (this is a very low tech video and the sound quality isn't great),
Here's a link to and a citation for Lal's most recent paper,
Optics and Light Trapping for Tandem Solar Cells on Silicon by Lal, N.N.; White, T.P. ; and Catchpole, K.R. Photovoltaics, IEEE Journal of (Volume:PP , Issue: 99) Page(s): 1 – 7 ISSN : 2156-3381 DOI: 10.1109/JPHOTOV.2014.2342491 Published online 19 August 2014
The paper is behind a paywall but there is open access to Lal's 2012 University of Cambridge PhD thesis on his approach,
Enhancing solar cells with plasmonic nanovoids by Lal, Niraj Narsey
URI: http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/243864 Date:2012-07-03
Hap;y reading!
This entry was posted in energy, nanotechnology and tagged ARENA – the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Australia, Australian National University, Australian Research Council, British Council, Enhancing solar cells with plasmonic nanovoids, FameLab Australia, Fresh Science, K. R. Catchpole, N. N. Lal, Niall Byrne, Niraj Narsey Lal, Optics and Light Trapping for Tandem Solar Cells on Silicon, photovoltaics, plasmonics, Sience in Public, T. P. White, The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, Tibetan Buddhist singing bowls, UK, University of Cambridge on September 9, 2014 by Maryse de la Giroday.
Transition metal dichalcogenides (molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide) rock the graphene boat
Anyone who's read stories about scientific discovery knows that the early stages are characterized by a number of possibilities so the current race to unseat graphene as the wonder material of the nanoworld is a 'business as usual' sign although I imagine it can be confusing for investors and others hoping to make their fortunes. As for the contenders to the 'wonder nanomaterial throne', they are transition metal dichalcogenides: molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide both of which have garnered some recent attention.
A March 12, 2014 news item on Nanwerk features research on molybdenum disulfide from Poland,
Will one-atom-thick layers of molybdenum disulfide, a compound that occurs naturally in rocks, prove to be better than graphene for electronic applications? There are many signs that might prove to be the case. But physicists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw have shown that the nature of the phenomena occurring in layered materials are still ill-understood and require further research.
Researchers at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Physics (FUW) have shown that the phenomena occurring in the crystal network of molybdenum disulfide sheets are of a slightly different nature than previously thought. A report describing the discovery, achieved in collaboration with Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses in Grenoble, has recently been published in Applied Physics Letters.
"It will not become possible to construct complex electronic systems consisting of individual atomic sheets until we have a sufficiently good understanding of the physics involved in the phenomena occurring within the crystal network of those materials. Our research shows, however, that research still has a long way to go in this field", says Prof. Adam Babinski at the UW Faculty of Physics.
A March 12, 2014 Dept. of Physics University of Warsaw (FUW) news release, which originated the news item, describes the researchers' ideas about graphene and alternative materials such as molybdenum disulfide,
"It will not become possible to construct complex electronic systems consisting of individual atomic sheets until we have a sufficiently good understanding of the physics involved in the phenomena occurring within the crystal network of those materials. Our research shows, however, that research still has a long way to go in this field", says Prof. Adam Babiński at the UW Faculty of Physics.
The simplest method of creating graphene is called exfoliation: a piece of scotch tape is first stuck to a piece of graphite, then peeled off. Among the particles that remain stuck to the tape, one can find microscopic layers of graphene. This is because graphite consists of many graphene sheets adjacent to one another. The carbon atoms within each layer are very strongly bound to one another (by covalent bonds, to which graphene owes its legendary resilience), but the individual layers are held together by significantly weaker bonds (van de Walls [van der Waals] bonds). Ordinary scotch tape is strong enough to break the latter and to tear individual graphene sheets away from the graphite crystal.
A few years ago it was noticed that just as graphene can be obtained from graphite, sheets a single atom thick can similarly be obtained from many other crystals. This has been successfully done, for instance, with transition metals chalcogenides (sulfides, selenides, and tellurides). Layers of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), in particular, have proven to be a very interesting material. This compound exists in nature as molybdenite, a crystal material found in rocks around the world, frequently taking the characteristic form of silver-colored hexagonal plates. For years molybdenite has been used in the manufacturing of lubricants and metal alloys. Like in the case of graphite, the properties of single-atom sheets of MoS2 long went unnoticed.
From the standpoint of applications in electronics, molybdenum disulfide sheets exhibit a significant advantage over graphene: they have an energy gap, an energy range within which no electron states can exist. By applying electric field, the material can be switched between a state that conducts electricity and one that behaves like an insulator. By current calculations, a switched-off molybdenum disulfide transistor would consume even as little as several hundred thousand times less energy than a silicon transistor. Graphene, on the other hand, has no energy gap and transistors made of graphene cannot be fully switched off.
The news release goes on to describe how the researchers refined their understanding of molybdenum disulfide and its properties,
Valuable information about a crystal's structure and phenomena occurring within it can be obtained by analyzing how light gets scattered within the material. Photons of a given energy are usually absorbed by the atoms and molecules of the material, then reemitted at the same energy. In the spectrum of the scattered light one can then see a distinctive peak, corresponding to that energy. It turns out, however, that one out of many millions of photons is able to use some of its energy otherwise, for instance to alter the vibration or circulation of a molecule. The reverse situation also sometimes occurs: a photon may take away some of the energy of a molecule, and so its own energy slightly increases. In this situation, known as Raman scattering, two smaller peaks are observed to either side of the main peak.
The scientists at the UW Faculty of Physics analyzed the Raman spectra of molybdenum disulfide carrying on low-temperature microscopic measurements. The higher sensitivity of the equipment and detailed analysis methods enabled the team to propose a more precise model of the phenomena occurring in the crystal network of molybdenum disulfide.
"In the case of single-layer materials, the shape of the Raman lines has previously been explained in terms of phenomena involving certain characteristic vibrations of the crystal network. We have shown for molybdenum disulfide sheets that the effects ascribed to those vibrations must actually, at least in part, be due to other network vibrations not previously taken into account", explains Katarzyna Gołasa, a doctorate student at the UW Faculty of Physics.
The presence of the new type of vibration in single-sheet materials has an impact on how electrons behave. As a consequence, these materials must have somewhat different electronic properties than previously anticipated.
Here's what the rocks look like,
Molybdenum disulfide occurs in nature as molybdenite, crystalline material that frequently takes the characteristic form of silver-colored hexagonal plates. (Source: FUW)
I am not able to find the published research at this time (March 13, 2014).
The tungsten diselenide story is specifically application-centric. Dexter Johnson in a March 11, 2014 post on his Nanoclast blog (on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website) describes the differing perspectives and potential applications suggested by the three teams that cooperated to produce papers united by a joint theme ,
The three research groups focused on optoelectronics applications of tungsten diselenide, but each with a slightly different emphasis.
The University of Washington scientists highlighted applications of the material for a light emitting diode (LED). The Vienna University of Technology group focused on the material's photovoltaic applications. And, finally, the MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] group looked at all of the optoelectronic applications for the material that would result from the way it can be switched from being a p-type to a n-type semiconductor.
Here are some details of the research from each of the institutions' news releases.
A March 10, 2014 University of Washington (state) news release highlights their LED work,
University of Washington [UW] scientists have built the thinnest-known LED that can be used as a source of light energy in electronics. The LED is based off of two-dimensional, flexible semiconductors, making it possible to stack or use in much smaller and more diverse applications than current technology allows.
"We are able to make the thinnest-possible LEDs, only three atoms thick yet mechanically strong. Such thin and foldable LEDs are critical for future portable and integrated electronic devices," said Xiaodong Xu, a UW assistant professor in materials science and engineering and in physics.
The UW's LED is made from flat sheets of the molecular semiconductor known as tungsten diselenide, a member of a group of two-dimensional materials that have been recently identified as the thinnest-known semiconductors. Researchers use regular adhesive tape to extract a single sheet of this material from thick, layered pieces in a method inspired by the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to the University of Manchester for isolating one-atom-thick flakes of carbon, called graphene, from a piece of graphite.
In addition to light-emitting applications, this technology could open doors for using light as interconnects to run nano-scale computer chips instead of standard devices that operate off the movement of electrons, or electricity. The latter process creates a lot of heat and wastes power, whereas sending light through a chip to achieve the same purpose would be highly efficient.
"A promising solution is to replace the electrical interconnect with optical ones, which will maintain the high bandwidth but consume less energy," Xu said. "Our work makes it possible to make highly integrated and energy-efficient devices in areas such as lighting, optical communication and nano lasers."
Here's a link to and a citation for this team's paper,
Electrically tunable excitonic light-emitting diodes based on monolayer WSe2 p–n junctions by Jason S. Ross, Philip Klement, Aaron M. Jones, Nirmal J. Ghimire, Jiaqiang Yan, D. G. Mandrus, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Kenji Kitamura, Wang Yao, David H. Cobden, & Xiaodong Xu. Nature Nanotechnology (2014) doi:10.1038/nnano.2014.26 Published online 09 March 2014
A March 9, 2014 University of Vienna news release highlights their work on tungsten diselinide and its possible application in solar cells,
… With graphene as a light detector, optical signals can be transformed into electric pulses on extremely short timescales.
For one very similar application, however, graphene is not well suited for building solar cells. "The electronic states in graphene are not very practical for creating photovoltaics", says Thomas Mueller. Therefore, he and his team started to look for other materials, which, similarly to graphene, can arranged in ultrathin layers, but have even better electronic properties.
The material of choice was tungsten diselenide: It consists of one layer of tungsten atoms, which are connected by selenium atoms above and below the tungsten plane. The material absorbs light, much like graphene, but in tungsten diselenide, this light can be used to create electrical power.
The layer is so thin that 95% of the light just passes through – but a tenth of the remaining five percent, which are absorbed by the material, are converted into electrical power. Therefore, the internal efficiency is quite high. A larger portion of the incident light can be used if several of the ultrathin layers are stacked on top of each other – but sometimes the high transparency can be a useful side effect. "We are envisioning solar cell layers on glass facades, which let part of the light into the building while at the same time creating electricity", says Thomas Mueller.
Today, standard solar cells are mostly made of silicon, they are rather bulky and inflexible. Organic materials are also used for opto-electronic applications, but they age rather quickly. "A big advantage of two-dimensional structures of single atomic layers is their crystallinity. Crystal structures lend stability", says Thomas Mueller.
Here's a link to and a citation for the University of Vienna paper,
Solar-energy conversion and light emission in an atomic monolayer p–n diode by Andreas Pospischil, Marco M. Furchi, & Thomas Mueller. Nature Nanotechnology (2014) doi:10.1038/nnano.2014.14 Published online 09 March 2014
This paper is behind a paywll.
Finally, a March 10, 2014 MIT news release details their work about material able to switch from p-type (p = positive) to a n-type (n = negative) semiconductors,
The material they used, called tungsten diselenide (WSe2), is part of a class of single-molecule-thick materials under investigation for possible use in new optoelectronic devices — ones that can manipulate the interactions of light and electricity. In these experiments, the MIT researchers were able to use the material to produce diodes, the basic building block of modern electronics.
Typically, diodes (which allow electrons to flow in only one direction) are made by "doping," which is a process of injecting other atoms into the crystal structure of a host material. By using different materials for this irreversible process, it is possible to make either of the two basic kinds of semiconducting materials, p-type or n-type.
But with the new material, either p-type or n-type functions can be obtained just by bringing the vanishingly thin film into very close proximity with an adjacent metal electrode, and tuning the voltage in this electrode from positive to negative. That means the material can easily and instantly be switched from one type to the other, which is rarely the case with conventional semiconductors.
In their experiments, the MIT team produced a device with a sheet of WSe2 material that was electrically doped half n-type and half p-type, creating a working diode that has properties "very close to the ideal," Jarillo-Herrero says.
By making diodes, it is possible to produce all three basic optoelectronic devices — photodetectors, photovoltaic cells, and LEDs; the MIT team has demonstrated all three, Jarillo-Herrero says. While these are proof-of-concept devices, and not designed for scaling up, the successful demonstration could point the way toward a wide range of potential uses, he says.
"It's known how to make very large-area materials" of this type, Churchill says. While further work will be required, he says, "there's no reason you wouldn't be able to do it on an industrial scale."
In principle, Jarillo-Herrero says, because this material can be engineered to produce different values of a key property called bandgap, it should be possible to make LEDs that produce any color — something that is difficult to do with conventional materials. And because the material is so thin, transparent, and lightweight, devices such as solar cells or displays could potentially be built into building or vehicle windows, or even incorporated into clothing, he says.
While selenium is not as abundant as silicon or other promising materials for electronics, the thinness of these sheets is a big advantage, Churchill points out: "It's thousands or tens of thousands of times thinner" than conventional diode materials, "so you'd use thousands of times less material" to make devices of a given size.
Here's a link to and a citation for the MIT paper,
Optoelectronic devices based on electrically tunable p–n diodes in a monolayer dichalcogenide by Britton W. H. Baugher, Hugh O. H. Churchill, Yafang Yang, & Pablo Jarillo-Herrero. Nature Nanotechnology (2014) doi:10.1038/nnano.2014.25 Published online 09 March 2014
These are very exciting, if not to say, electrifying times. (Couldn't resist the wordplay.)
This entry was posted in electronics, graphene, nanotechnology and tagged Aaron M. Jones, Adam Babiński, Andreas Pospischil, Austria, Britton W. H. Baugher, D. G. Mandrus, David H. Cobden, Electrically tunable excitonic light-emitting diodes based on monolayer WSe2 p–n junctions, Hugh O. H. Churchill, Jason S. Ross, Jiaqiang Yan, Katarzyna Gołasa, Kenji Kitamura, Kenji Watanabe, LEDs, light emitting diodes, Marco M. Furchi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, molybdenum disulfide, Nirmal J. Ghimire, Optoelectronic devices based on electrically tunable p–n diodes in a monolayer dichalcogenide, optoelectronics, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, Philip Klement, photovoltaics, Poland, semiconductors, Solar-energy conversion and light emission in an atomic monolayer p–n diode, Takashi Taniguchi, Thomas Mueller, tungsten diselenide, University of Warsaw, University of Washington (state), US, Vienna University of Technology, Wang Yao, Xiaodong Xu, Yafang Yang on March 14, 2014 by Maryse de la Giroday.
Infusing solar cells with beauty
There is a bit of a theme emerging (if two news items some six months apart can be considered a theme) with scientists now trying to make solar cells or solar panels (as per my July 3, 2013 posting) objects of beauty. The latest project is from the University of Michigan according to a March 4, 2014 news item on ScienceDaily,
Colorful, see-through solar cells invented at the University of Michigan could one day be used to make stained-glass windows, decorations and even shades that turn the sun's energy into electricity.
The cells, believed to be the first semi-transparent, colored photovoltaics, have the potential to vastly broaden the use of the energy source, says Jay Guo, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, mechanical engineering, and macromolecular science and engineering at U-M. Guo is lead author of a paper about the work newly published online in Scientific Reports.
Here's a video (from the University of Michigan) where Jay Guo describes his work,
For those who are too impatient to watch the video, here's some of what was discussed along with additional technical detail from a March 3, 2014 University of Michigan news release, which originated the news item,
"I think this offers a very different way of utilizing solar technology rather than concentrating it in a small area," he said. "Today, solar panels are black and the only place you can put them on a building is the rooftop. And the rooftop of a typical high-rise is so tiny.
"We think we can make solar panels more beautiful—any color a designer wants. And we can vastly deploy these panels, even indoors."
Guo envisions them on the sides of buildings, as energy-harvesting billboards and as window shades—a thin layer on homes and cities. Such an approach, he says, could be especially attractive in densely populated cities.
In a palm-sized American flag slide, the team demonstrated the technology.
"All the red stripes, the blue background and so on—they are all working solar cells," Guo said.
The Stars and Stripes achieved 2 percent efficiency. A meter-square panel could generate enough electricity to power fluorescent light bulbs and small electronic gadgets, Guo says. State-of-the art organic cells in research labs are roughly 10 percent efficient.
The researchers are working to improve their numbers with new materials, but there will always be a tradeoff between beauty and utility in this case. Traditional black solar cells absorb all wavelengths of visible light. Guo's cells are designed to transmit, or—in other versions—reflect certain colors, so by nature they're kicking energy from those wavelengths back out to our eyes rather than converting it to electricity.
Unlike other color solar cells, Guo's don't rely on dyes or microstructures that can blur the image behind them. The cells are mechanically structured to transmit certain light wavelengths. To get different colors, they varied the thickness of the semiconductor layer of amorphous silicon in the cells. The blue regions are six nanometers thick while the red is 31 (the team also made green, but that color isn't in the flag).
Amorphous silicon is commonly used in screens on cell phones, laptops and large LCD screens, in addition to solar cells. They sandwiched an ultrathin sheet of it between two semi-transparent electrodes that could let light in and also carry away the electrical current.
One of these so-called charge transport layers is made of an organic material. This hybrid structure, a combination of both organic and inorganic components, lets the researchers make cells that are 10 times thinner than traditional amorphous silicon solar cells. The organic layer replaces a thick 'doped' region that would typically controls the flow of electricity.
The ultrathin, hybrid design helps the cells hold their color and leads to a nearly 100 percent quantum efficiency. Quantum efficiency is different from overall efficiency. It refers to the percentage of light particles the device catches that lead to electrical current in that charge transport layer. Solar cells can leak current after this point, but researchers strive for a high number.
The cells' hues don't change based on viewing angle, which is important for several reasons. It means manufacturers could lock in color for precise pictures or patterns. It's also a sign that the devices are soaking up the same amount of light regardless of where the sun is in the sky. Conventional solar panels pivot across the day to track rays.
"Solar energy is essentially inexhaustible, and it's the only energy source that can sustain us long-term," Guo said. "We have to figure out how to use as much of it as we can."
Decorative power generating panels creating angle insensitive transmissive colors by Jae Yong Lee, Kyu-Tae Lee, Sungyong Seo, & L. Jay Guo. Scientific Reports 4, Article number: 4192 doi:10.1038/srep04192 Published 28 February 2014
This paper is open access.
This entry was posted in energy, nanotechnology and tagged beauty, Decorative power generating panels creating angle insensitive transmissive colors, Jae Yong Lee, Kyu-Tae Lee, L. Jay Guo, photovoltaics, solar cells, solar panels, Sungyong Seo, UM, University of Michigan on March 5, 2014 by Maryse de la Giroday.
Light: harvesting with transformation *optics and sensing with a photovoltaic bracelet
There's a good general description (although it's still quite technical and challenging) of nanoplasmonics in a Jan. 6, 2014 news release on EurekAlert (later in this posting I have an item about a practical application for photovoltaics),
The control of light is vital to many applications, including imaging, communications, sensing, cancer treatment, and even welding processes for automobile parts. Transformation optics is an emerging field that has revolutionized our understanding of how to control light by constituting an effectively curved electromagnetic space. This revolutionary strategy not only revisits the fundamental physics of light-matter interactions, but also renders trivial the design of optical functions that may otherwise be difficult or virtually impossible, such as an "invisibility cloak," which could only previously be found in science fiction. When compared with ray optics, the new transformation optics technique provides a picture that is equally intuitive, but that is much more accurate in its description of the wave nature of light by using the electric and magnetic field lines as its basis. Therefore, the validity of this method is not restricted to the macroscopic regime, but can also be extended to the subwavelength scale. In a recent review paper published by SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences, Yu Luo and colleagues from Imperial College London illustrate how the general capabilities of the transformation optics technique can be used to treat the subwavelength fields that occur in plasmonic systems and review the latest developments in transformation optics as applied to nanophotonics.
Here's a more detailed description of the difficulties and the solution (transformation optics) from the news release,
In plasmonics, metallic structures with sharp corners can trap light into nanometric volumes, thus giving rise to strong near-field enhancements. This effect can be used to detect single molecules, generate high harmonic signals, and even improve absorption in photovoltaic devices. Further developments using these techniques need to be guided by accurate and versatile theoretical modeling. However, modeling of this type can be difficult, because various aspects associated with the sharp plasmonic structures can hinder provision of accurate and convenient solutions to the problem at hand. First, the size of the sharp metallic point structure is normally much smaller than that of the device overall, which makes it difficult to create meshes for numerical simulations. Second, the strong contrast in the dielectric functions at the metal-dielectric interfaces leads to slow convergence of the field expansions. Yu Luo and colleagues deploy the theory of transformation optics to circumvent these problems. Their idea is to transform a complex plasmonic system with little intrinsic geometrical symmetry into a canonical structure with translational or rotational symmetry, which is then relatively easy to study using conventional theory. For example, two touching nanowires can be transformed into two flat metal surfaces that are separated by a gap, and a sharp metal edge can be related to a periodic array of metal slabs. Other structures that can be studied using transformation optics include pairs of metallic nanospheres, asymmetric core-shell structures and rough metal surfaces. In fact, using transformation optics techniques, we could reverse engineer the optical properties of complex plasmonic nanostructures and redesign these structures based on the requirements of the desired applications.
And then, there's what seems to be a plea for more researchers in the field,
Practical issues with the realization of plasmonic devices, such as the effects of edge rounding at sharp boundaries on the local field enhancement and resonance properties, can also be considered theoretically using transformation optics and provide useful guidance for the fabrication of these devices. In particular, the necessary conditions are highlighted for both broadband light absorption effects and large field enhancements. Experimental evidence for phenomena that have been predicted by transformation optics has also been reviewed, indicating potential applications in biosensing and broadband solar photovoltaics. These studies demonstrate the accuracy and versatility of transformation optics methods and are expected to encourage more researchers to enter this field. [emphasis mine]
Honestly, I don't understand nanoplasmonics very well even after reading the description but there's enough accessible information in the news release to help me achieve a better understanding. For those who want to further explore this latest work in trransformative optics and nanoplasmonics, here's a link to and a citation for the paper,
Harvesting light with transformation optics by LUO Yu, ZHAO RongKuo, FERNANDEZ-DOMINGUEZ Antonio I., MAIER Stefan A., & PENDRY John B… Sci China Inf Sci, 2013, 56(12): 120401(13).
This paper is open access as of Jan. 8, 2014.
Photovoltaic bracelet/brooch
On to the other 'light' topic mentioned earlier. John Brownlee has written about June, a photovoltaic bracelet, which tells you how much sun exposure you've had, in a Jan. 7, 2014 article for Fast Company (aka Co-Design; Note: Links have been removed),
… Meet the June, a bedazzling, Bluetooth-connected bracelet that tells you how much sun you're getting. But don't dismiss the June just because you're not worried about the SPF. This is the future of wearables. [emphasis mine]
… fashionably designed wearable that measures exposure to the sun. Made by Netatmo and designed by Louis Vuitton and Harry Winston collaborator Camille Toupet, the June syncs over Bluetooth to a paired iPhone, where an app tells you how much sun you're getting based upon readings from the bracelet's photovoltaic gem, and then recommends sunglasses, a hat or a specific sunscreen based upon the measurements. It costs $100,
Lily Hay Newman in a Jan. 8, 2014 posting on Slate's future tense blog challenges the notion that June is the "future of wearables,"
… it really only does one thing: It measures sun exposure. It's a single-use device that syncs to a single-use app. Perhaps it foreshadows a world where we each customize our array of wearable sensors by picking and choosing among single-focus gadgets from day to day. Which sensors we want and how we want to look would both play a part in dictating how we dressed and accessorized. Wearables certainly would be a lot more attractive if they weren't crammed with maximal functionality. But this is also wildly inefficient, and previous technologies haven't evolved this way. Cameras, MP3 players, calculators, notebooks, calendars, phones, and everything else eventually collapsed into smartphones: one device. No matter how attractive a sensor-turned-bracelet is, there's a limit to how many wearables one person can actually, you know, wear.
She also notes that June is being marketed to women primarily and suggests that wearables offer an opportunity to change how technology is marketed (Note:Llinks have been removed),
Since the aesthetic direction of wearables is still undetermined, and is currently dictated by the tech inside, the devices present a good opportunity to move away from traditional, often reductive, male and female marketing, which can be particularly blatant in tech. Example: the EPad Femme tablet for women. Alternate example: The Honda Fit She's. It's a tall order, but balancing form and function is the crux of the uncertainty in wearables right now.
I recommend reading both articles (Brownlee's contains a June promotional video). For the curious here's what the bracelet looks like (from the June webpage),
[downloaded from http://www.netatmo.com/en-US/product/june]
June can also be worn as a brooch; the Netatmo website's June webpage states,
Versatile, JUNE can be worn as a bracelet or as a brooch.
I haven't been able to find a product launch date other than it will be 'sometime in 2014'.
* Removed an extra preposition 'with' that preceded the word optics.
This entry was posted in nanotechnology and tagged Antonio I. FERNANDEZ-DOMINGUEZ, Camille Toupet, Harvesting light with transformation optics, John B. PENDRY, John Brownlee, June, June weaable photovoltaic bracelet, light, Lily Hay Newman, nanoplasmonics, Netatmo, photovoltaics, RongKuo ZHAO, Stefan A MAIER, transformation optics, Yu LUO on January 8, 2014 by Maryse de la Giroday.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


DELTA supports a variety of interest groups with a focus on Mediasite, instructional design and virtual reality. These groups meet to discuss the goals and challenges of utilizing new technology in the classroom.
Creative Director of DELTA's New Media Development Mike Cuales was honored with the NC State University Awards for Excellence at the recognition ceremony June 7 at Talley Student Union. The award is the most prestigious honor bestowed upon non-faculty employees.
A team of DELTA staff and Biology faculty Miriam Ferzli, Lisa Paciulli and Betty Black are working to immerse students in field-based experiences where they find and observe organisms in their natural habitats as part of Introductory Biology: Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity (BIO 181).
Mike Cuales, Creative Director, New Media Development, was nominated as DELTA's EHRA Award of Excellence recipient. Cuales, along with recipients from other units reporting to the Provost, were recognized in a ceremony held in Talley Student Union on Monday, April 24.
Educators, researchers and design teams continue to look for innovative solutions to better support lab-based and field-based instruction in online learning environments. The emergence of interactive 360º video capture and virtual reality technologies (i.e. Google Cardboard) have provided new approaches for delivering instruction.