An environmentally friendly, efficient, and long-lasting battery created out of wood? Sounds too good to be true? Well it may not be — researchers say that they have now developed just such a battery. The tiny new battery — composed of a sliver of wood coated with tin — appears … [continued]
Cattails — Typha sp — are a very useful material, one that can be effectively employed for a variety of very different purposes. Throughout history, they have served as a nutritious food source, a source of downy material for bedding, a raw material for wickerwork, a means of cleaning wastewater … [continued]
A company called Off-Grid Solutions has committed itself to eradicating energy poverty for 1.5 billion people worldwide by leveraging sales of its signature product, the WakaWaka Power portable solar charger that combines a mobile phone charger and lamp. On that account we agreed to take a WakaWaka Power out on … [continued]
Harvesting electricity directly from the best solar power plants in the world (photosynthetic plants)? Sound too good to be true? Well it may be a possibility in the near future, thanks to new research from the University of Georgia. Researchers there have developed a way to “interrupt” photosynthesis and redirect … [continued]
What’s all this fuss about silly federal research projects? If one day in the not too distant future you can go to the dollar store, buy a thin, flat device the size of a playing card, dunk it in a quart of dirty bath water and use it to generate … [continued]
Bringing the concept of an “artificial leaf” closer to reality, a team of researchers at MIT has published a detailed analysis of all the factors that could limit the efficiency of such a system. The new analysis lays out a roadmap for a research program to improve the efficiency of … [continued]
I made a big mistake yesterday when I posted about my first update of the Cleantech, Climate, & Other Green News Google Doc. Well, actually, I made a big mistake before that. I didn’t initially make the doc available to the public! Luckily, a bunch of people requested access to the doc, … [continued]
A new type of flexible color-changing photonic fiber has been created by researchers at Harvard University and the University of Exeter. When it’s stretched, the fiber changes color, with the color varying from a deep red to a bright blue. The researchers think that the new fiber could be used … [continued]
In a potentially breakthrough discovery, researchers at Northwestern University have designed a new type of organic solar cell that will very likely lead to much higher efficiency and cheaper solar power. The new cell design is based around a new geometrical pattern to be used in the ‘scattering layer’ of … [continued]
More-efficient solar cells, and fast-charging lithium-ion batteries, are likely in the near future thanks to some new research on how the teeth of a type of marine snail grow. The newly-gained insights will lead to the less-expensive and more-efficient production of nanoscale materials, according to the researcher behind this work.
