In what is considered to be a first in new materials science, a team of engineers at the Brookhaven and Los Alamos National Laboratories have created a light-absorbing material that efficiently generates charge and charge separation. What’s more, these “films” are transparent, making them perfect for windows. Soon, perhaps, your … [continued]
In one of those happy research accidents that lead to new breakthroughs, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new kind of nanowire that produces light, much like the glow produced by LED technology. The team was actually fine tuning a new method for … [continued]
Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are hot on the heels of a discovery that could more than double the efficiency of solar cells. The trick is to use tiny nanoscale crystals called quantum dots to capture more of the available energy in sunlight, including energy at the … [continued]
Researchers at Stanford University have engineered an ultrasharp nanoscale electrode made of gold that can be used to harvest a small electric current from individual algae cells. In experiments so far, the algae cells survive the intrusion, which could mean that larger electric currents could someday be drawn from entire … [continued]
