From University of Warwick News and Events, April 6, 2011: "Researchers at the University of Warwick have developed a gold plated window as the transparent electrode for organic solar cells. Contrary to what one might expect, these electrodes have the potential to be relatively cheap since the thickness of gold used is only 8 billionths of a metre. This ultra-low thickness means that even at the current high gold price the cost of the gold needed to fabricate one square metre of this electrode is only around £4.5. It can also be readily recouped from the organic solar cell at the end of its life and since gold is already widely used to form reliable interconnects it is no stranger to the electronics industry. 

Organic solar cells have long relied on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO)

coated glass as the transparent electrode, although this is largely due to the absence of a suitable alternative. ITO is a complex, unstable material with a high surface roughness and tendency to crack upon bending if supported on a plastic substrate. If that wasn't bad enough one of its key components, indium, is in short supply making it relatively expensive to use.

An ultra-thin film of air-stable metal like gold would offer a viable alternative to ITO, but until now it has not proved possible to deposit a film thin enough to be transparent without being too fragile and electrically resistive to be useful.

Now research led by Dr Ross Hatton and Professor Tim Jones in the University of Warwick 's department of Chemistry has developed a rapid method for the preparation of robust, ultra-thin gold films on glass. Importantly this method can be scaled up for large area applications like solar cells and the resulting electrodes are chemically very well-defined."

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University of Warwick, Coventry United Kingdom:

General Electric Commits $600M to Solar Ramp 

From www.optics.org, April 7, 2011: "One of the biggest companies in the world is to invest $600 million to commercialize CdTe solar cells. General Electric (GE), which is more typically associated with conventional and nuclear energy technologies, has bought out PrimeStar Solar, and is planning to build a 400 MW manufacturing facility in the US.

The development should eventually provide some major competition for First Solar, rated as the world's third-largest solar cell manufacturer in 2010, and the market leader in thin-film CdTe technology by far.

According to GE, PrimeStar - in which it has held a majority stake since 2008 - has already produced a thin-film CdTe panel with a conversion efficiency of 12.8%, as verified by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Although that is only a single result at this point, the figure compares extremely well with First Solar's average module efficiency of 11.6% - although First has previously said that it expects to improve that figure by about 0.5% per year.

"Photovoltaic solar is the next step in growing GE's renewable energy portfolio and is part of the company's 'ecomagination' commitment to drive clean energy technology through innovation and R&D investment," said the company, which has also been developing solid-state lighting products under the ecomagination umbrella."

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www.optics.org: http://optics.org/news/2/4/11 

Image: First Solar  

From MIT News, April 25, 2011, by David L. Chandler: "Researchers at MIT have found a way to make significant improvements to the power-conversion efficiency of solar cells by enlisting the services of tiny viruses to perform detailed assembly work at the microscopic level.

In a solar cell, sunlight hits a light-harvesting material, causing it to release electrons that can be harnessed to produce an electric current. The new MIT research, published online this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, is based on findings that carbon nanotubes - microscopic, hollow cylinders of pure carbon - can enhance the efficiency of electron collection from a solar cell's surface.

Previous attempts to use the nanotubes, however, had been thwarted by two problems. First, the making of carbon nanotubes generally produces a mix of two types, some of which act as semiconductors (sometimes allowing an electric current to flow, sometimes not) or metals (which act like wires, allowing current to flow easily). The new research, for the first time, showed that the effects of these two types tend to be different, because the semiconducting nanotubes can enhance the performance of solar cells, but the metallic ones have the opposite effect. Second, nanotubes tend to clump together, which reduces their effectiveness.

And that's where viruses come to the rescue. Graduate students Xiangnan Dang and Hyunjung Yi - working with Angela Belcher, the W. M. Keck Professor of Energy, and several other researchers - found that a genetically engineered version of a virus called M13, which normally infects bacteria, can be used to control the arrangement of the nanotubes on a surface, keeping the tubes separate so they can't short out the circuits, and keeping the tubes apart so they don't clump."  

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MIT News:

Image: Matt Klug, Biomolecular Materials Group

From AZOoptics.com, April 21, 2011, by Andy Choi:  "The Information Network, a market research firm based in New Tripoli, (PA) has released a new market research report titled 'The Solid State Lighting Revolution: Market Analysis And Insight On Reducing Manufacturing Costs.'

According to the report, the unit shipments of LEDs are anticipated to increase over 40% in 2011 and twofold between the period of 2010 to 2013. The unit shipments of high brightness LEDs is expected to reach about 135 billion units in 2011 when compared to less than 100 billion units in 2010, while the backlight LEDs will reach 30 billion units, compared to 20 billion in 2011.  

As per the report, Nichia was the top player with a 15% market share in 2010 followed by Samsung LED with a 10.5% share. In 2010, Aixtron was the top player in the MOCVD tool market with over 55% share, while Veeco retained the second position with a 41% market share.  

The President at The Information Network, Robert Castellano said that China accounted for about 35% share of MOCVD deployments in 2010.

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AZOoptics.com:

The report is available for purchase from The Information Network: http://www.theinformationnet.com/led.html

From Materials Views, April 6, 2011, by Carmen Teutsch: "'Biofouling' is the unwanted adhesion and growth of bio-molecules, such as proteins and micro-organisms, on the surfaces of biomedical and marine devices and tools that poses an adverse effect on the performance and efficiency of the devices. Therefore, development of anti-biofouling surfaces has great technological as well as industrial importance." 

"Professor F. Arefi-Khonsari's research group at ENSCP, UPMC, Paris, has expertise in development of different plasma reactors (low pressure as well as atmospheric pressure systems) for the surface treatment of polymers and plasma deposition of organic or inorganic thin films and to understand the plasma-surface interactions by coupling plasma and surface diagnostic techniques. Recently, Prof. Arefi's group has explored a rather new field, namely plasma copolymerization in low pressure plasma systems for a wide range of applications."

Source:  

Materials Views: http://www.materialsviews.com/details/news/1038511/Smart_Polymer_Coatings_with_Plasma_Polymerization.html

From Lab Manager Magazine, April 5, 2011, by Jared Sagoff:  "Even as royalty set diamonds into crowns and rings, engineers lusted after the gems for different reasons: diamonds are stronger than any other natural material and are excellent electrical insulators and heat conductors. Today they are widely used in industry and factories. But the diamond supply is limited, and while artificial diamonds can be made in gem form, they have been hard to synthesize in thin films.

A new technique invented at Argonne National Laboratory creates thin films of diamond with grains so small they're called ultrananocrystalline diamond films. The films can be applied to an astounding array of surfaces and uses, ranging from better seals on pumps to heart pump walls so smooth that dangerous blood clots don't form. The grains of diamond in the film are just five nanometers across-about a billion of them would fit inside one red blood cell.

The innovation sprang from DOE Office of Science-funded research, when materials scientists Dieter Gruen, Alan Krauss, Orlando Auciello, and John Carlisle developed a gas-based method to form the diamond films to precise standards."

Source:

Lab Manager Magazine: http://www.labmanager.com/?articles.view/articleNo/4533/article/Thin-Sheet-of-Diamond-Has-Worlds-of-Uses