In the wake of reduced feed-in tariffs for PV, large commercial users will want to better manage the energy they generate and sell back to utilities.  NanoMarkets believes that energy storage will become a key part of this new management effort and his trend will help take sales of lead-acid and lead-carbon batteries for solar power storage to $465 million by 2016."

 

From +Plastic Electronics, May 3, 2011, by Sara Ver-Bruggen: "Recent months have seen unprecedented commercial progress by nanomaterial products developed as alternatives to transparent conductive oxide (TCO) materials such as indium tin oxide (ITO).

 

The deals and investments by developers, including California, US-headquartered Cambrios and Beneq in Finland, suggest that confidence in the performance of some nanomaterials-based TCO alternatives is becoming more assured within newer segments of the display and wider microelectronics industry.

Cambrios recently revealed a leading smartphone incorporates its transparent conductor technology, which is based on silver nanowire solutions coated onto PET film. The ClearOhm product is used in the phone's touchscreen interface.

 

Cambrios partnered with Synaptics, a provider of touchscreen modules and systems, to bring its technology to market. The collaboration marks the first commercial debut of transparent electrodes in the smartphone market that use alternative materials to TCOs such as ITO, which is less suited - due to its brittleness - to touchscreen electronics."

 

Source:  

Click on the link to read the entire article:

+Plastic Electronics: http://www.plusplasticelectronics.com/consumerelectronics/nanomaterials-underpin-ito-alternatives-coming-to-market-30344.aspx 

Image: +Plastic Electronics

Free Standing Single Walled Carbon Nanotube Thin Film 

 

From Aalto University, May 13, 21011: "Single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) are a unique family of materials exhibiting diverse useful chemical and physical properties.

 

Thin films of SWCNTs have many unique properties such as high porosity and specific surface area, low density, high ratio of optical transmittance to sheet resistance, high thermal conductivity and chemical sensitivity, and tunable metallic and semiconducting properties.

 

Recently researchers from Department of Applied Physics at Aalto University (Finland) in collaboration with Canatu Ltd. (Finland) have discovered a simple and rapid method to prepare thin multifunctional single-walled carbon nanotube films without any substrate (free-standing films). Usually SWCNT films are prepared from suspensions of SWCNTs by a liquid filtration. This method typically involves several time and resource consumingand potentially detrimental liquid dispersion and purification steps ending up with dense SWCNT networks on a filter, which have a transfer issue. Moreover, preparation of free-standing films bythe vacuum-filtration method is still a challenging task."

 

 

 

Source: Click the link to read the full article:

Aalto University: http://www.aalto.fi/en/current//news/view/2011-05-13/ 

Image: Aalto University

 

From Brookhaven National Laboratory News, April 27, 2011: "Like atomic-level bricklayers, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory are using a precise atom-by-atom layering technique to fabricate an ultrathin transistor-like field effect device to study the conditions that turn insulating materials into high-temperature superconductors. The technical break-through, which is described in the April 28, 2011, issue of Nature, is already leading to advances in understanding high-temperature superconductivity, and could also accelerate the development of resistance-free electronic devices.

"Understanding exactly what happens when a normally insulating copper-oxide material transitions from the insulating to the superconducting state is one of the great mysteries of modern physics," said Brookhaven physicist Ivan Bozovic, lead author on the study.

 

One way to explore the transition is to apply an external electric field to increase or decrease the level of "doping" - that is, the concentration of mobile electrons in the material - and see how this affects the ability of the material to carry current. But to do this in copper-oxide (cuprate) superconductors, one needs extremely thin films of perfectly uniform composition - and electric fields measuring more than 10 billion volts per meter. (For comparison, the electric field directly under a power transmission line is 10 thousand volts per meter.)

Bozovic's group has employed a technique called molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to uniquely create such perfect superconducting thin films one atomic layer at a time, with precise control of each layer's thickness. Recently, they've shown that in such MBE-created films even a single cuprate layer can exhibit undiminished high-temperature superconductivity.^*

 

Now, they've applied the same technique to build ultrathin superconducting field effect devices that allow them to achieve the charge separation, and thus electric field strength, for these critical studies.

 

Source: Click the link to read the full article:

Brookhaven National Laboratory News: http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=1268 

 

From PV-Tech.org, May 3, 2011, by Syanne Olson: "Jun Xu and his team of researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created a 3-D nanocone-based solar cell, which is said to enhance the light-to-power conversion efficiency by almost 80%. The solar cell is constructed using n-type nanocones made from zinc oxide, which perform as the junction framework and electron conductor , and are enveloped by a p-type semiconductor consisting of polycrystalline cadmium telluride, which act as the principal photon absorber channel and hole conductor.

 

"To solve the entrapment problems that reduce solar cell efficiency, we created a nanocone-based solar cell, invented methods to synthesize these cells and demonstrated improved charge collection efficiency," said Xu, a member of ORNL's chemical sciences division.

 

Using this technology, Xu and his team are said to have reached a light-to-power conversion efficiency of 3.2%, compared to the 1.8% efficiency of the traditional planar structure from the same materials. The researchers point to the solar materials distinctive electric field distribution, which allows for an efficient charge transport, the combination of nanocones using economical proprietary methods and the reduction of defect and voids in semiconductors as important features of the technology that allow for the enhanced conversion rate. Interestingly, the team maintains that due to the efficient charge transport, the new solar cell is said to be able to endure defective materials and therefore lessen the cost of producing next-generation solar cells."

 

Source: Click on the link to read the entire article:

PV-Tech.org: full article 

Image: PV-Tech.org  

 

From Solar Junction, April 14, 2011: "Solar Junction, a developer of high efficiency multi-junction cells for the concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) market, today announced it
has set a world-record for 43.5 percent efficiency on a commercial-ready production cell. This achievement was, in part, supported under the U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE) PV Incubator Program, managed through DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The cell's efficiency was confirmed by NREL's Measurement and
Characterization Laboratory. The 5.5 mm x 5.5 mm production cell tops the current record by 1.2 percent and is significantly higher than the average efficiency gain achieved by previous record holders. The Solar Junction cell measured a peak
efficiency of 43.5 percent at greater than 400 suns and still maintained an efficiency as high as 43 percent out to 1,000 suns.

 

Solar Junction's cells incorporate the company's proprietary adjustable spectrum latticematched, A-SLAM™ technology, which enables the company to more optimally partition
the solar spectrum for maximum efficiency and greater reliability. Increases in CPV cell efficiencies are a key driver for improving CPV economics, with each cell efficiency gain
leveraged and multiplied in value by the components that account for the remaining 80 percent of total system costs."

 

Source: Click the link to read the full press release 

Solar Junction: full press release