From National Science Foundation, August 17, 2011:  " The National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced the award of $74 million to create four new Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) that will advance interdisciplinary research and education in partnership with industry.

During the next five years, the ERCs will share the goal of creating knowledge and innovations that address significant societal issues such as health and sustainability challenges while advancing the competitiveness of U.S. industry. The centers will support research and innovation in solar energy, water infrastructure, neural engineering and energy transmission."

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National Science Foundation (NSF): http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=121042&org=EEC&from=news 

From Solar Daily, Germany, August 17, 2011:  "The 'CIS Cluster Tool' project is starting its work on the development of new manufacturing procedures for copper indium selenide-based thin film semiconductors (CIS) as part of a sponsoring project within the "Photovoltaics Innovations Alliance". The research project is being carried out in cooperation of leading German companies in the photovoltaic industry.   The project is invested for three years and is financed by funds from the "Photovoltaic Innovations Alliance" funding initiative amounting to 2.9 m euros and by contributions of the participating companies.

The overall project objective of the working group is to research a new manufacturing process for CIS semiconductor films in order to achieve the highest level of efficiency of thin film solar modules combined with a significant increase of plant throughput compared with existing concepts.
An industrial manufacturing process is to be developed on the basis of findings from a planned demonstration plant, with which the costs of manufacturing thin film photovoltaic modules per watt peak can be significantly reduced.

The CIS Cluster Tool joint project is a cooperation between four experienced partners from different levels of the value chain in the photovoltaics industry: AVANCIS GmbH and Co. KG, (manufacturer of CIS photovoltaic modules), SINGULUS TECHNOLOGIES AG (plant construction), HERAEUS Noblelight GmbH (infrared heating technology) and the IfG Institute for Scientific Instruments GmbH (innovative measurement techniques)."

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Solar Daily, Germany: http://www.solardaily.com/reports/CIS_cluster_tool_project_for_thin_film_PV_999.html 

Image: Solar Daily, Germany File Image   

From Department of Energy, September 1, 2011:  

" Energy Secretary Steven Chu  announced more than $145 million for projects to help shape the next generation of solar energy technologies and ensure that the United States remains a  leader in this global market. Sixty-nine projects in 24 states will accelerate research and development to increase efficiency, lower costs and advance cutting-edgetechnologies. Funded through DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the projects will also improve materials, manufacturing processes and supply chains for a wide range of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells and components of solar energy systems. Some of these investments also support efforts that will shorten the overall timeline from prototype to production and streamline building codes, zoning laws, permitting rules, and business processes for installing solar energy systems.

'America is in a world race to produce cost-competitive renewable energy that can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, create manufacturing jobs across the nation, and improve our energy security,' said Secretary Chu. 'The projects announced today under DOE's SunShot Initiative will spur American innovation to help reduce the costs of clean, renewable solar energy and re-establish U.S. global leadership in this fast growing industry.'" 

View the full list of awards by project category.

From PV Insider, September 19, 2011, by Bea Gonzalez: "With the high-profile collapse of Solyndra placing the wider thin film community under scrutiny, PV Insider has been examining how the industry intends to fight back by reducing its costs and develop new innovations. 

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From NASA Tech Briefs, September 1, 2011, Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama: "Dispersion-strengthened molybdenum-rhenium alloys for vacuum plasma spraying (VPS) fabrication of high-temperature-resistant components are undergoing development. In comparison with otherwise equivalent non-dispersion-strengthened Mo-Re alloys, these alloys have improved high-temperature properties. Examples of VPS-fabricated high-temperature-resistant components for which these alloys are expected to be suitable include parts of aircraft and spacecraft engines, furnaces, and nuclear power plants; wear coatings; sputtering targets; x-ray targets; heat pipes in which liquid metals are used as working fluids; and heat exchangers in general. These alloys could also be useful as coating materials in some biomedical applications."

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NASA Tech Briefs, Marshall Space Flight Center: http://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/10849

Image: NASA Tech Briefs 

From University of Arkansas Newswire, September 1, 2011:  "A University of Arkansas physicist and his colleagues have found that ultra-thin films of superconductors and related materials don't lose their fundamental properties when built under strain when built as atomically thin layers, an important step towards achieving artificially designed room temperature superconductivity. This ability will allow researchers to create new types of materials and properties and enable exotic electronic phases in ultra-thin films.

Jak Chakhalian, University of Arkansas professor of physics, and his colleagues reported their findings in Physical Review Letters.  

Room temperature superconductivity would change the world's economy, Chakhalian contends. To start, superconductors can carry electricity without losing energy to heat during transmission the way all of today's materials do. Today's power grid loses almost 15 percent of its energy to heat. That may not seem like a high number, but it translates into a multi-billion dollar loss.

Scientists have looked at many solutions to increase energy efficiency, but Chakhalian seeks radical energy solutions, like a material that acts as a room-temperature superconductor."  

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University of Arkansas Newswire: http://newswire.uark.edu/article.aspx?id=16692 

Image: University of Arkansas

From PhysOrg.com, August 31, 2011, by Mark Esser: "Much like a meteor impacting a planet, highly charged ions hit really hard and can do a lot of damage, albeit on a much smaller scale. And much like geologists determine the size and speed of the meteor by looking at the hole it left, physicists can learn a lot about a highly charged ion's energy by looking at the divots it makes in thin films. 

Building upon their work for which they were recently awarded a patent,* scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Clemson University have measured the energy of highly charged ion impacts on a thin film surface for the first time in detail.** Understanding how ions discharge their energy upon impact will help researchers to make better predictive models of how the particles affect surfaces.  

The research team used xenon atoms from which they had stripped all but 10 of the atoms' original 54 electrons. Making an atom so highly ionized takes a lot of energy-about 50,000 electron volts. The atom soaks up all the energy that went into freeing the electrons until it is capable of imparting more energy, and thus more damage, than could be done with kinetic energy-mass and speed-alone.

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PhysOrg.com: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-ion-armageddon-impact-energy-highly.html  
Image: NIST  

From ElectroIQ.com, September 13, 2011: "Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) researchers are developing solar cells with higher efficiency thanks to a new nanopatterning technology for the zinc oxide (ZnO) layer. The solar cells are 1000x thinner than conventional cells.

The thin-film solar cells under development by Professor Christophe Ballif's team at the Photovoltaics and Thin-Film Electronics Laboratory at the EPFL use thin silicon layers with zinc oxide to scatter light onto the silicon.

Zinc oxide layers grow in small pyramid-shaped crystals, which the researchers are modifying for better light scattering. They grew ZnO on an inverted mold built in the structure they wanted. The thin layer is then deposited by inverting the mold."  

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Image: ElectroIQ.com

From University California Riverside Newsroom, September 26, 2011: "An accidental discovery in a physicist's laboratory at the University of California, Riverside provides a unique route for tuning the electrical properties of graphene, nature's thinnest elastic material. This route holds great promise for replacing silicon with graphene in the microchip industry.

The researchers found that stacking up three layers of graphene, like pancakes, significantly modifies the material's electrical properties. When they fabricated trilayer graphene in the lab and measured its conductance, they found, to their surprise, that depending on how the layers were stacked some of the trilayer graphene devices were conducting while others were insulating. 
"What we stumbled upon is a simple and convenient 'knob' for tuning graphene sheets' electrical properties," said Jeanie Lau, an associate professor of physics and astronomy, whose lab made the serendipitous finding.   

Study results appeared online Sept. 25 in Nature Physics."

Source: Click the link to read the full article.

UCR Newsroom:  http://newsroom.ucr.edu/2733

Image: Lau lab, UC Riverside  

From Linköping University, September 9, 2011, by Monica Westman Svenselius:  " Lars Herlogsson's thesis illustrates how to develop a fully functional, fast switching and printable transistor in cheap plastic. As if that was not enough, all six articles in the thesis were published in the prestigious Advanced Materials journal.

'A thesis that is unparalleled at LiU, it'll probably be a while before we get to experience anything like it again', says proud mentor, Magnus Berggren, professor of organic electronics at the Department of Science and Technology, Campus Norrköping.

Lars Herlogsson's thesis claims that with the help of polymers, plastics, which are already manufactured on a large scale, it is possible to manufacture transistors that are fast and can run on small printed batteries, where the drive voltage is around 1 volt.
They are particularly suitable for printed electronics.

The transistor is made up of two polymers, one of which acts as a semiconductor and the other as an electrolyte; a substance containing mobile charged ions that controls the current flowing through the transistor.  

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Linköping University: http://www.liu.se/forskning/forskningsnyheter/1.287854?l=en