Lighter, Stronger, and Morphable

Dean Sigler Sustainable Aviation 2 Comments

If you have a pre-teen roaming around the house, you more than likely know the shared delight of assembling the biggest possible thing you can make from Lego® blocks.  There must be something of that delight in the Center for Bits and Atoms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There, researchers have invented, “A new approach to assembling big structures — even airplanes and bridges — out of small interlocking composite components,” according to a story by David L. Chandler of the MIT News Office. Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center, and post-doctoral student Kenneth Cheung recently co-authored a paper published in the journal Science, in which they describe assembling strong lightweight structures with “cubocts,” lattice structures that are the lightest and strongest in existence, as stated in the Center’s publications. The Center claims 12.3 megaPascals, or 1,784 pound per square inch strength for the 7.3 milligrams per cubic centimeter material (about 0.45 pounds per cubic foot).  Balsa wood, …

Princeton Solar Cell is “Black Hole for Light”

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation 2 Comments

A great deal of the light that falls on solar cell panels does little to generate electricity, with a high percentage bouncing off pointlessly.  Princeton researchers have confronted this issue with a layered assembly, otherwise known as a subwavelength  plasmonic cavity. Developed by Princeton University researcher Stephen Chou and a team of scientists, the cavity dampens reflections and traps light.  According to Princeton’s announcement, “The new technique allowed Chou’s team to create a solar cell that only reflects about 4 percent of light and absorbs as much as 96 percent. It demonstrates 52 percent higher efficiency in converting [direct] light to electrical energy than a conventional solar cell.” Overall, the team was able to increase solar cell efficiency a total of 175 percent with their nanostructured sandwich by capturing not only direct sunlight, but angled rays and diffuse light that occurs on cloudy days.  MIT researchers recently reported attempts to gather varying wavelengths of light to effect the same type of …