Category Technology/Electronics

A scanning electron microscope image shows the rigid pillar-like bristles of the FLUENCE rake, which is used to apply light-harvesting polymers to a solar cell. The distance between the pillars is 1 micrometer, about one-hundredth the diameter of a human hair. Credit: Z. Bao et al, Nature Communications

When commercialized, this advance could help make polymer solar cells an economically attractive alternative to those made with much more expensive silicon-crystal wafers. In experiments, solar cells made with the tiny rake double the efficiency of cells made without it and are 18% better than cells made using a microscopic straightedge blade.

Polymer-based photovoltaic cells are much cheaper than silicon because they’re made of inexpensive materials that can be simply painted or printed in...

Long-standing concerns about portable electronics include the devices’ short battery life and their contribution to e-waste. One group of scientists is now working on a way to address both of these concerns with the development of a biodegradable nanogenerator made with DNA that can harvest the energy from everyday motion and turn it into electrical power.

The movements we often take for granted – such as walking and tapping on our keyboards – release energy that largely dissipates, unused. Several years ago, scientists figured out how to capture some of that energy and convert it into electricity so we might one day use it to power our mobile gadgetry. Achieving this would not only untether us from wall outlets, but it would also reduce our demand on fossil-fuel-based power sources...

The Next Generation Wearable Display Using Fiber Based Light Emitting Diodes. Credit: Copyright KAIST

Professor Kyung-Cheol Choi and his team from the School of Electrical Engineering at KAIST have developed fiber-like LED’s, which can be applied in wearable displays. Traditional wearable displays were manufactured on a hard substrate, which is later attached to the surface of clothes. Such technique has posed limitations in applying it for wearable displays because inflexible displays were not adequate in practice, and the characteristics of fabric were ignored.

Dip-Coating Process to Create Fiber-Based Light-Emitting Diodes

Solution? They focused on fibers, a component of fabrics, and developed a fiber-like light emitting diode that has the characteristics of both fabrics and displays...