Category Physics

Solar technologies have become increasingly advanced over the years, with the discovery of new photovoltaic materials and designs. While solar cells based on a mixture of organic and inorganic halide perovskite materials have been the topic of numerous research studies and achieved promising performances, these cells are often difficult to fabricate on a large-scale.

Researchers at Chonnam University in South Korea recently introduced an alternative solar cell design fully based on inorganic perovskites. Their solar cells, introduced in Nature Energy, could be easier to fabricate on a large-scale, while nonetheless achieving promising power conversion efficiencies (PCEs).

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New research suggests a new solar energy design, inspired by nature, may pave the way for future renewable energy technologies.

Photovoltaic solar energy is obtained by converting sunshine into electricity—and researchers from Imperial have developed a new leaf-like design with increased efficiency.

The new photovoltaic leaf (PV-leaf) technology uses low-cost materials and could inspire the next generation of renewable energy technologies.

A series of experiments has demonstrated that a PV-leaf can generate over 10% more electricity compared to conventional solar panels, which lose up to 70% of the incoming solar energy to the environment...

Scientists led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) investigators have made a significant advance in developing alternative materials for the high-speed memory chips that let computers access information quickly and that bypass the limitations of existing materials.

They have discovered a way that allows them to make sense of previously hard-to-read data stored in these alternative materials, known as antifer...

MIT engineers developed a new way to create these arrays, by scaffolding quantum rods onto patterned DNA. Using scaffolds of folded DNA, engineers assembled arrays of quantum rods with desirable photonic properties that could enable them to be used as highly efficient micro-LEDs for televisions or virtual reality devices.

Flat screen TVs that incorporate quantum dots are now commercially available, but it has been more difficult to create arrays of their elongated cousins, quantum rods, for commercial devices. Quantum rods can control both the polarization and color of light, to generate 3D images for virtual reality devices.

Using scaffolds made of folded DNA, MIT engineers have come up with a new way to precisely assemble arrays of quantum rods...