Category Technology/Electronics

New research takes energy efficient windows a step further by proposing a new “smart window” design that would harvest the sun’s energy in the winter to warm the house and reflect it in the summer to keep it cool.

Homeowners know that the type of windows in a house contribute greatly to heating and cooling efficiency. And that’s a big deal — maintaining indoor temperatures consumes great amounts of energy and accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the national energy budgets in developed countries. The work was recently published in the journal ACS Photonics and funded as part of the EPSRC Wearable and Flexible Technologies Collaboration.

“The major innovation is that these windows can change according to seasonal needs,” explained Nathan Youngblood, assistant professor of electrical ...

Sound waves may pave the way for topological electronic transistors. Researchers have designed and simulated the first topological acoustic transistors — with sound waves instead of electrons — and proposed a connection architecture to form a universal logic gate that can switch the flow of sound on and off.

Topological materials move electrons along their surface and edges without any loss, making them promising materials for dissipationless, high-efficiency electronics...

An electric car that runs on PV power sounds appealing. But is it really possible to enjoy flexibility with a vehicle charged through a home photovoltaic system? An ETH research team has reached some surprising conclusions.

The area of photovoltaics (PV) is rapidly increasing in popularity, and in Switzerland it already covers 5 percent of the country’s electricity consumption...