Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

This is a Perovskite solar cell prototype. Credit: Copyright Alain Herzog / EPFL

EPFL researchers are pushing the limits of perovskite solar cell performance by exploring the best way to grow these crystals. Michael Graetzel and his team found that, by briefly reducing the pressure while fabricating perovskite crystals, they were able to achieve the highest performance ever measured for larger-size perovskite solar cells, reaching over 20% efficiency and matching the performance of conventional thin-film solar cells of similar sizes.
This is promising news for perovskite technology that is already low cost and under industrial development.

However, high performance in pervoskites does not necessarily herald the doom of silicon-based solar technology...

Conformal titanium nitride in a porous silicon matrix: A nanomaterial for in-chip supercapacitors

Efficient nanomaterial-based integrated energy. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland developed an extremely efficient small-size energy storage, a micro-supercapacitor, which can be integrated directly inside a silicon microcircuit chip. The high energy and power density of the miniaturized energy storage relies on the new hybrid nanomaterial developed recently at VTT. This technology opens new possibilities for integrated mobile devices and paves the way for zero-power autonomous devices required for the future Internet of Things (IoT).

Supercapacitors resemble electrochemical batteries...

How the catalyst works. Credit: University of Melbourne

A radical new process that allows hydrogen to be efficiently sourced from liquid formic acid could be one step forward in making the dream of hydrogen-powered cars an economic reality. Using formic acid to produce hydrogen has never been considered viable because it requires high temperatures to decompose and also produces waste by-products. But the Uni of Melbourne’s Professor Richard O’Hair has led an international team of scientists in designing a molecular catalyst that forces formic acid to produce only H2 and CO2 and at a low temperature of only 70°C.

It marks a new frontier in catalyst design at the molecular level...

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have devised a method to produce “Polymer Opals” on an industrial scale. Credit: Nick Saffell/University of Cambridge

This invention opens up applications ranging from smart clothing for people or buildings, to banknote security. Using a new method called Bend-Induced-Oscillatory-Shearing (BIOS), the researchers are now able to produce hundreds of metres of these materials, known as ‘polymer opals’, on a roll-to-roll process. Some of the brightest colours in nature can be found in opal gemstones, butterfly wings and beetles. These materials get their colour not from dyes or pigments, but from the systematically-ordered microstructures.

The team, based at Cambridge’s Cavendish Lab, have been working on methods of artificially recreating this ‘struc...