Solar power tagged posts

Lightweight as a window cling and replicable as a newspaper, organic solar cells are emerging as a viable solution for the nation’s growing energy demand.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are the first to observe a biological property called chirality emerging in achiral conjugated polymers, which are used to design flexible solar cells. Their discovery could help enhance the cells’ charge capacity and increase access to affordable renewable energy.

DNA’s coiled architecture is recognizable to many as a helix...

Engineers have developed an integrated circuit that can carry out complicated artificial-intelligence operations like face, voice and gesture recognition and cardiac monitoring. Powered by either a tiny battery or a solar panel, it processes data at the edge and can be configured for use in just about any type of application.

AI is used in an array of extremely useful applications, such as predicting a machine’s lifetime through its vibrations, monitoring the cardiac activity of patients and incorporating facial recognition capabilities into video surveillance systems. The downside is that AI-based technology generally requires a lot of power and, in most cases, must be permanently connected to the cloud, raising issues related to data protection, IT security and energy use.

CSE...

Engineers calculate the ultimate potential of next-generation solar panels. Most of today’s solar panels capture sunlight and convert it to electricity only from the side facing the sky. If the dark underside of a solar panel could also convert sunlight reflected off the ground, even more electricity might be generated.

Double-sided solar cells are already enabling panels to sit vertically on land or rooftops and even ho...

When exposed to sunlight, star-shaped gold nanoparticles coated with a semiconductor allow efficient production of hydrogen from water. Credit: Ashley Pennington/Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Rutgers study opens door to broader use of sunlight and advanced materials to combat climate change. Star-shaped gold nanoparticles, coated with a semiconductor, can produce hydrogen from water over 4X more efficiently than other methods – opening the door to improved storage of solar energy and other advances that could boost renewable energy use and combat climate change, according to Rutgers University-New Brunswick researchers.

“Instead of using ultraviolet light, which is the standard practice, we leveraged the energy of visible and infrared light to excite electrons in gold nanoparticles,” sa...