Category Technology/Electronics

MIT researchers have devised a way to grow single crystal GaN thin film on a GaN substrate through two-dimensional materials. The GaN thin film is then exfoliated by a flexible substrate, showing the rainbow color that comes from thin film interference. This technology will pave the way to flexible electronics and the reuse of the wafers.
Credit: Wei Kong and Kuan Qiao; Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license

Cost-effective method produces semiconducting films from materials that outperform silicon. MIT engineers have developed a technique to fabricate ultrathin semiconducting films made from a host of exotic materials other than silicon...

Principle of a silicon singlet fission solar cell with incorporated organic crystals.
Credit: M. Künsting/HZB

A solar cell’s efficiency indicates what percentage of the solar energy radiated into the cell is converted into electrical energy. The theoretical limit for silicon solar cells is 29.3% due to physical material properties. In a new article, researchers describe how this limit can be abolished.

In the journal Materials Horizons, researchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and international colleagues describe how this limit can be abolished. The trick: they incorporate layers of organic molecules into the solar cell...

This is associate professor Larry (Yuerui) Lu (left) and PhD researcher Ankur Sharma from the ANU Research School of Engineering.
Credit: Jack Fox, ANU

Engineers at The Australian National University (ANU) have invented a semiconductor with organic and inorganic materials that can convert electricity into light very efficiently, and it is thin and flexible enough to help make devices such as mobile phones bendable.

The invention also opens the door to a new generation of high-performance electronic devices made with organic materials that will be biodegradable or that can be easily recycled, promising to help substantially reduce e-waste.

The huge volumes of e-waste generated by discarded electronic devices around the world is causing irreversible damage to the environment...

From the left, a mixture of gases, including CO2 (red and gray), N2 (blue), and H2 (white) are exposed to the nanoporous metal-organic framework designed by the Johnson group. Only the CO2 and H2 enter the MOF, which rejects the N2. The catalytic sites within the framework convert the CO2 to formic acid (red, gray and white), a chemical precursor to methanol. Credit: Swanson School of Engineering/Johnson Group

Technology that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere and turn it into valuable chemicals and fuels. Burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas releases carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 while the production of methanol and other valuable fuels and chemicals requires a supply of carbon...