photovoltaics

If sustainability is key to the new energy economy, a team of University of Pennsylvania researchers has just taken a big step toward the future by developing the first photovoltaic circuit that powers itself. The circuits could eventually be packed into touchscreens and other consumer devices that would run without a battery or any other source of power, as long as they have a beam of sunlight to harvest.

When it comes to energy efficiency, there’s still no substitute for millions upon millions of years of evolution. Scientists at UC Berkeley have found a way to hack common tobacco plants to grow synthetic photovoltaic and photochemical cells that can be extracted, dissolved in solution and sprayed onto a glass or plastic substrate to create solar panels. That’s the idea, anyhow.

What happens when you add 64,000 tiny components to a base of oil and water? Depending on the nature of the components, you might end up with a delectable vinaigrette. University of Minnesota researchers found something even more tantalizing: a self-assembly method that is particularly effective at joining extremely small components in electronic devices.

Suburban rave-goers, women of Jersey Shore, and Elton John, take note: your lives just got a little bit greener. The sartorial risk-takers over at Sandia National Labs have created glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize solar energy collection the way Liberace revolutionized the dress code for concert pianists.

Even as some of the world moves into a future of unimaginably complex technology, many communities still lack the basic electrical infrastructure needed to power even simply electric devices like light bulbs. Unwilling to wait for the wiring to catch up to the demand, Danish researcher Frederik Krebs has created an LED lamp embedded within a flexible, printable solar panel that could replace the kerosene lamps still used around the developing world.

One of the problems plaguing solar cells is their inability to absorb all of the light they receive. Currently, the bluish anti-reflective coating you see on most cells is 60 or 65 percent efficient, meaning nearly a third of the light is bounced back into the sky. That's because the coating is only able to absorb a narrow range of wavelengths from the sun's rays. Now, however, researchers at the University of Florida and Portland State University think they may have found a better way and their inspiration comes from an unlikely source: moth eyes.