A good deal of what we see in life is counter-intuitive – things like pushing forward on the control stick when the airplane stalls and is headed downhill already. Plasmonic metamaterials as designed by University of Pennsylvania scientists have counter-intuitive properties, such as breaking light that strikes them into surface plasmon polaritons with shorter wavelengths than the original incident light. This quantum-like reaction occurs when, “Light hitting a metamaterial is transformed into electromagnetic waves of a different variety—surface plasmon polaritons, which are shorter in wavelength than the incident light. This transformation leads to unusual and counterintuitive properties that might be harnessed for practical use. Moreover, new approaches that simplify the fabrication process of metamaterials are under development. This work also includes making new structures specifically designed to enable measurements of the materials’ novel properties. Furthermore, nanotechnology applications of these nanostructures are currently being researched, including microscopy beyond the diffraction limit.” Scattering,rather than gathering light rays, seems counter-intuitive, but the scattering …
5X Batteries? How About 70,000X Solar Cells?
Matt Shipman of North Carolina State University News Services reports on a connector that could allow stacking solar cells without losing voltage. This stacking could allow cells to operate at solar concentrations of “70,000 suns worth of energy without losing much voltage as ‘wasted energy’ or heat.” This could have tremendous implications improving the overall efficiency of solar energy devices and reducing the cost of solar energy production. Stacked solar cells live up to their name, simply being several cells stacked on one another, with their layering leading to up to 45-percent efficiency in converting solar energy into electricity. So far, the big drawback has been the junctions between cells, which tend to waste the energy from the connected cells as heat. Dr. Salah Bedair, a professor of electrical engineering at NC State and senior author of a paper describing the work says, “We have discovered that by inserting a very thin film of gallium arsenide into the connecting junction of …
Record Conversion Efficiency for Plastic Solar Cells
Megan Fellman, reporting for Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, explains a possible breakthrough in obtaining power conversion efficiency for polymer (plastic) solar cells close to those for more expensive silicon cells. Fellman lists the benefits of the plastic cells: “Among the various photovoltaic technologies, polymer (plastic) solar cells offer unique attractions and opportunities. These solar cells contain Earth-abundant and environmentally benign materials, can be made flexible and lightweight, and can be fabricated using roll-to-roll technologies similar to how newspapers are printed. But the challenge has been improving the cells’ power-conversion efficiency.” Faculty members and students led by Professor Tobin J. Marks designed and synthesized new polymer semiconductors, “and reports the realization of polymer solar cells with fill factors of 80 percent – a first. This number is close to that of silicon solar cells.” “Fill factor” is a measure of the ratio of the maximum power from the solar cell to the product of Voc (open-circuit voltage) and Isc (short-circuit current). The link …
Fuel Cell Progress in Britain
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado released a document last year on the viability of fuel cells for various applications, including transportation. The National Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Learning Demonstration Final Report, “analyzed data from more than 500,000 individual vehicle trips covering 3.6 million miles traveled and more than 152,000 [kilograms] hydrogen produced or dispensed.” The agency tested 180 vehicles over a six-year period. With United States Department of Energy expectations that fuel cell powered vehicles could achieve: • 250-mile driving range • 2,000-hour fuel cell durability • $3/gallon gasoline equivalent (gge) hydrogen production cost (based on volume production) At least two fuel cell manufacturers report results exceeding these numbers, so the major impediment to wide-spread implementation of this clean technology seems to be lack of an effective distribution network. The NREL lists 54 existing H2 sites, with 15 projected for the near future, nowhere near the estimated 159,000 outlets (including convenience stores) that sell gasoline and other …
Soy Beans – Not Just for Tofu Anymore
Shilpa and twin sister Shweta Iyer have been working on splitting water to extract hydrogen for many years. In November, 2012 the Port Jefferson Station high school students won regional finalist honors in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology, and netted $1,000 each. They were awarded the Grand Prize in the Long Island Science and Engineering Fair in March, and were sent to Phoenix, Arizona in May to compete in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, where they won fourth place and $500 each. Their winnings go into college funds which they will invest in the fall. What has won these young women international recognition? Perhaps it’s their work in creating a catalyst for the production of hydrogen – from literally dirt cheap material that advisor James Muckerman credits with being, “the best performing, non-noble-metal-containing hydrogen evolution catalyst yet known – and even better than bulk platinum metal.” The young women entered the U. S. Department of …
A Milestone on the Road to Dr. Cui’s 10X Battery
Seeing the Amprius web site, one would never know that some “dramatic improvements” promised in the terse announcement might mean so much in terms of true breakthroughs. Neatly centered, Amprius’ total web site is a few lines of discrete text. Amprius is a leading Lithium-Ion battery developer Amprius’s silicon technology was originally developed at Stanford University and enables dramatic improvements in the energy density and specific energy of Lithium-Ion batteries. Amprius is backed by some of the world’s leading investors, including Trident Capital, VantagePoint Venture Partners, IPV Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Dr. Eric Schmidt. Amprius, Inc., 225 Humboldt Ct. Sunnyvale, CA 94089 But the battery manufacturer has two first-generation product offerings with volumetric energy densities of 580 Watt-hours and 600 Watt-hours per liter. Most lithium batteries fall into a range from 250-500 Wh/l., putting the new cells at the upper limit of such batteries. Both Amprius batteries are now in production and available to original equipment manufacturers, …
Peel-and-Stick Solar Cells Make Debut
The U. S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Stanford University have teamed up to create what may be the thinnest of thin solar cells – a peel-and-stick decal. One micron thick, the decal-like peel-and-stick, or water-assisted transfer printing (WTP), technologies were developed by Stanford researchers and have been used for nanowire based electronics. Meeting at a conference where both made presentations, Stanford’s Xiaolin Zheng talked about her peel-and-stick technology, and NREL principal scientist Qi Wang spoke on his team’s research in thin-film amorphous solar cells. Zheng realized that the NREL had the type of solar cells needed for her peel-and-stick project, according to the NREL announcement. The NREL press release explains, “The university and NREL showed that thin-film solar cells less than one-micron thick can be removed from a silicon substrate used for fabrication by dipping them in water at room temperature. Then, after exposure to heat of about 90°C for a few seconds, they can …
Battery Optimization: Working Smarter, Not Harder
We’re often told that we use only a small part of our brains – easily demonstrated in your editor’s case. What if we’re only using a small part of the battery power that’s available to us? Fixing that would lead to smaller batteries working more efficiently, a significant step toward lighter power packages. Hybridcars.com shares this kind of thinking in two recent postings, the first about a $4 million contract beween PARC, a Xerox company, its partner LG Chem Power and the U. S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy (ARPA-E) as part of the Advanced Management and Protection of Energy Storage Devices (AMPED) program. According to hybridcars’ Philippe Crowe, the partners will, “Develop a fiber optic monitoring system capable of providing detailed information about the internal condition of batteries. The end goal is to allow batteries to perform better in applications such as electric vehicles (EVs). This smart system will perform on-the-job training, learning the …
Carbon Free or Carbon Neutral – Could New Fuels Save Us?
Three companies – Air Fuel Synthesis, Cool Planet Energy Systems, and Joule Unlimited – are generating comment and controversy for their approaches to creating different kinds of biofuels. They all promise extreme reductions in carbon emissions and lower prices at the pump. Their output could use existing infrastructure for delivery, making them all desire able commodities if their promise can be achieved. Cool Planet Cool Planet Energy Systems claims to be, “The only company producing carbon negative fuels using plant photosynthesis to remove CO2 from our atmosphere.” Its now patented approach recycles its solid products back into the soil, and using more of the liquid fuel products cleans the air more quickly, according to the firm’s web site. The company’s process divides its output from plant-based sources into liquid fuel and bio-char, an activated carbon that can be used as a coal substitute or fertilizer and soil conditioner, in which instance it acts as a carbon sequestration material, reducing the …
Hope or Patience? Ennui or Exuberance?
EV-World.com first stymied this editor’s hopes, and then gave cause to hope at an elevated level. Two articles in jousting juxtaposition explored this dichotomy. Anthony Ingram took a jaundiced view of present battery progress and the hopes for a more energy-dense future. He noted that, “There’s kind of a running joke within the electric car world that the next generation of batteries is just a decade away. And the next time you ask, it’s still a decade away. Even a decade later. “Well, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, the next generation of usable battery technology is – wait for it – around ten years away.” He explains that today’s EVs are running on ten-year-old technology, and that the most promising current new technologies could power the next decade’s cars. Keying from remarks by Tony Hancock of the Department of Energy’s Kentucky-Argonne Battery Manufacturing Research and Development Center, Ingram explains that, “current lithium-ion chemistry still has room for improvement, …