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His lab is dedicated to an idea called frugal innovation: “How do you do very high-level science or engineering with very little?” said Thuo, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Iowa State University and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory. “How can you solve a problem with the least amount of resources?”

That goal has Thuo and his research group using their materials expertise to study soft matter, single-molecule electronics and renewable energy production. A guiding principle is that, whenever possible, nature should do part of the work.

“Nature has a beautiful way of working for us,” he said. “Self-assembly and ambient oxidation are great tools in our designs.”

Continue reading “Micro-sized, Liquid-metal Particles for Heat-free Soldering Developed” »

Thin films of crystalline materials called perovskites provide a promising new way of making inexpensive and efficient solar cells. Now, an international team of researchers has shown a way of flipping a chemical switch that converts one type of perovskite into another—a type that has better thermal stability and is a better light absorber.

The study, by researchers from Brown University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, could be one more step toward bringing perovskite solar cells to the mass market.

“We’ve demonstrated a new procedure for making solar cells that can be more stable at moderate temperatures than the perovskite solar cells that most people are making currently,” said Nitin Padture, professor in Brown’s School of Engineering, director of Brown’s Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation, and the senior co-author of the new paper. “The technique is simple and has the potential to be scaled up, which overcomes a real bottleneck in perovskite research at the moment.”

Continue reading “Flipping a chemical switch helps perovskite solar cells beat the heat” »

(Phys.org)—For the past 17 years, spiro-OMeTAD, has been keeping a secret. Despite intense research efforts, its performance as the most commonly used hole-transporting material in perovskite and dye-sensitized solar cells has remained stagnant, creating a major bottleneck for improving solar cell efficiency. Thinking that the material has given all it has to offer, many researchers have begun investigating alternative materials to replace spiro-OMeTAD in future solar cells.

But in a new study published in Science Advances, Dong Shi et al. have taken a closer look at spiro-OMeTAD and found that it still has a great deal of untapped potential. For the first time, they have grown single crystals of the pure material, and in doing so, they have made the surprising discovery that spiro-OMeTAD’s single-crystal structure has a hole mobility that is three orders of magnitude greater than that of its thin-film form (which is currently used in solar cells).

“This paper reports a major breakthrough for the fields of perovskite and solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells by finally clarifying the potential performance of the material and showing that improving the crystallinity of the hole transport layer is the key strategy for further breakthroughs in device engineering of these solar cells,” Osman Bakr, a professor of engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia and leader of the study, told Phys.org.

Continue reading “Solar cell mystery solved, expected to greatly increase efficiency” »

While speaking at a transport conference in Norway this week, Elon Musk articulated that Tesla’s plan to revolutionize the transportation industry is much broader and more ambitious than initially assumed. In other words, if you thought Tesla’s master plan to usher in an EV revolution was going to end once the Model 3 hit mass production, think again.

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Far from it, Tesla is just getting started. Not only have we heard reports that Tesla is eyeing a crossover vehicle based on the Model 3, Musk has also suggested that a Tesla pickup truck might also be a possibility later on down the line.

Continue reading “Elon Musk says Tesla is working on a secret new vehicle that could replace public transport” »

Tech capital is first major US city to require all new buildings of 10 storeys or under to have solar panels, reports BusinessGreen.

These mushrooms EAT PLASTIC! Could this be a solution to our plastic problem?

“Inevitably, the compromises of the Paris Agreement make it both a huge achievement and an imperfect solution to the problem of global climate change.”

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The researchers call their material a hybrid because they dope the electrical conductivity of layered tin disulfide semiconductor with the light harvesting of different spectrums of light from various sized quantum dots.