my god when lorde said “it got hard to grow up with your cool hand around my neck” and “every perfect summer’s gotta say goodnight” and “spend all the evenings you can with the people who raised you, because all the times they will change, it’ll all come around” and
Harvesting solar fuels through a bacterium’s unusual appetite for gold
A bacterium named Moorella thermoacetica won’t work for free. But UC Berkeley researchers have figured out it has an appetite for gold. And in exchange for this special treat, the bacterium has revealed a more efficient path to producing solar fuels through artificial photosynthesis.
M. thermoacetica first made its debut as the first non-photosensitive bacterium to carry out artificial photosynthesis in a study led by Peidong Yang, a professor in UC Berkeley’s College of Chemistry. By attaching light-absorbing nanoparticles made of cadmium sulfide (CdS) to the bacterial membrane exterior, the researchers turned M. thermoacetica into a tiny photosynthesis machine, converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into useful chemicals.
Now Yang and his team of researchers have found a better way to entice this CO2-hungry bacterium into being even more productive. By placing light-absorbing gold nanoclusters inside the bacterium, they have created a biohybrid system that produces a higher yield of chemical products than previously demonstrated. The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was published on Oct. 1 in Nature Nanotechnology.
UCLA materials scientists and colleagues have discovered that perovskites, a class of promising materials that could be used for low-cost, high-performance solar cells and LEDs, have a previously unutilized molecular component that can further tune the electronic property of perovskites.
Named after Russian mineralogist Lev Perovski, perovskite materials have a crystal-lattice structure of inorganic molecules like that of ceramics, along with organic molecules that are interlaced throughout. Up to now, these organic molecules appeared to only serve a structural function and could not directly contribute to perovskites’ electronic performance.
Led by UCLA, a new study shows that when the organic molecules are designed properly, they not only can maintain the crystal lattice structure, but also contribute to the materials’ electronic properties. This discovery opens up new possibilities to improve the design of materials that will lead to better solar cells and LEDs. The study detailing the research was recently published in Science.
Tesla has revealed its Tesla Semi – an articulated lorry that can travel 500 miles (804km) on a single charge, consuming less than two kilowatt-hours of energy per mile.
With a full 80,000-pound load, the lorry can do 0-60 mph in 20 seconds and can climb 5% gradients at 65mph. The electric vehicle’s battery is reinforced for safety and its windshield is made from impact resistant glass.
According to Chief Executive Elon Musk the Tesla Semi could travel 643km after 30 minutes of charging using one of Tesla’s new mega-chargers. While the lorry’s cost has not yet been revealed, Tesla claims that is will be cheaper than diesel equivalents per mile, considering fuel and maintenance.
The Tesla Semi is due to go into production in 2019.
To find out more on materials science, packaging and engineering news, visit our website IOM3 at or follow us on Twitter @MaterialsWorld for regular news updates.
Researchers at The University of Queensland, New Zealand, and the University of Münster, Germany, have gained insight into the photosynthesis process at a molecular level through understanding the cyclic electron flow supercomplex, which is a critical part of the photosynthetic machinery in plants. The discovery could help guide the development of next-generation solar biotechnologies.
The team purified and characterised the cyclic electron flow supercomplex from micro-algae, and analysed its structure using electron microscopy. The analysis showed how complexes that harvest light become supercomplexes that allow the plant to adapt to varying light conditions and energy requirements.
‘The cyclic electron flow supercomplex is an excellent example of an evolutionarily highly conserved structure,’ says Professor Hippler, the University of Münster. ‘By the year 2050, we will need 50% more fuel, 70% more food, and 50% more clean water. Technologies based on photosynthetic microalgae have the potential to play an important role in meeting these needs’, says Professor Ben Hankamer of the University of Queensland.
The discovery will help guide the design of next generation solar capture technologies based on micro-algae and a wide range of solar driven biotechnologies. This can help produce food, fuel and clean water.
The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, an independent, research-driven graduate-level university focused on advanced energy and sustainable technologies, today announced that its researchers have successfully demonstrated that desert sand from the UAE could be used in concentrated solar power (CSP) facilities to store thermal energy up to 1000°C.
The research project called ‘Sandstock’ has been seeking to develop a sustainable and low-cost gravity-fed solar receiver and storage system, using sand particles as the heat collector, heat transfer and thermal energy storage media.
Desert sand from the UAE can now be considered a possible thermal energy storage (TES) material. Its thermal stability, specific heat capacity, and tendency to agglomerate have been studied at high temperatures.
Dr. Behjat Al Yousuf, Interim Provost, Masdar Institute, said, “The research success of the Sandstock project illustrates the strength of our research and its local relevance. With the launch of the MISP in November, we have further broadened the scope of our solar energy research and we believe more success will follow in the months ahead.”
Scientists at the University of Basel have found a way to change the spatial arrangement of bipyridine molecules on a surface. These potential components of dye-sensitized solar cells form complexes with metals and thereby alter their chemical conformation. The results of this interdisciplinary collaboration between chemists and physicists from Basel were recently published in the scientific journal ACS Omega.
Dye-sensitized solar cells have been considered a sustainable alternative to conventional solar cells for many years, even if their energy yield is not yet fully satisfactory. The efficiency can be increased with the use of tandem solar cells, where the dye-sensitized solar cells are stacked on top of each other.
The way in which the dye, which absorbs sunlight, is anchored to the semiconductor plays a crucial role in the effectiveness of these solar cells. However, the anchoring of the dyes on nickel oxide surfaces – which are particularly suitable for tandem dye-sensitized cells – is not yet sufficiently understood.
Physicists have discovered a novel kind of nanotube that generates current in the presence of light. Devices such as optical sensors and infrared imaging chips are likely applications, which could be useful in fields such as automated transport and astronomy. In future, if the effect can be magnified and the technology scaled up, it could lead to high-efficiency solar power devices.
Working with an international team of physicists, University of Tokyo Professor Yoshihiro Iwasa was exploring possible functions of a special semiconductor nanotube when he had a lightbulb moment. He took this proverbial lightbulb (which was in reality a laser) and shone it on the nanotube to discover something enlightening. Certain wavelengths and intensities of light induced a current in the sample—this is called the photovoltaic effect. There are several photovoltaic materials, but the nature and behavior of this nanotube is cause for excitement.
“Essentially our research material generates electricity like solar panels, but in a different way,” said Iwasa. “Together with Dr. Yijin Zhang from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Germany, we demonstrated for the first time nanomaterials could overcome an obstacle that will soon limit current solar technology. For now solar panels are as good as they can be, but our technology could improve upon that.”
Hydrogen gas, an important synthetic feedstock, is poised to play a key role in renewable energy technology; however, its credentials are undermined because most is currently sourced from fossil fuels, such as natural gas. A KAUST team has now found a more sustainable route to hydrogen fuel production using chaotic, light-trapping materials that mimic natural photosynthetic water splitting.
The complex enzymes inside plants are impractical to manufacture, so researchers have developed photocatalysts that employ high-energy, hot electrons to cleave water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gas. Recently, nanostructured metals that convert solar electrons into intense, wave-like plasmon resonances have attracted interest for hydrogen production. The high-speed metal plasmons help transfer carriers to catalytic sites before they relax and reduce catalytic efficiency.
Getting metal nanoparticles to respond to the entire broadband spectrum of visible light is challenging. “Plasmonic systems have specific geometries that trap light only at characteristic frequencies,” explains Andrea Fratalocchi, who led the research. “Some approaches try to combine multiple nanostructures to soak up more colors, but these absorptions take place at different spatial locations so the sun’s energy is not harvested very efficiently.”
Solar power is the third most used renewable energy source and its popularity is growing.
Determining the efficacy of organic solar cell mixtures is a time-consuming and tired practice, relying on post-manufacturing analysis to find the most effective combination of materials.
Now, an international group of researchers – from North Carolina State University in the US and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology – have developed a new quantitative approach that can identify effective mixtures quickly and before the cell goes through production.
Development of a thin-film solar cell.Image: science photo/Shutterstock
By using the solubility limit of a system as a parameter, the group looked to find the processing temperature providing the optimum performance and largest processing window for the system, said Harald Ade, co-corresponding author and Professor of Physics at NC State.
‘Forces between molecules within a solar cell’s layers govern how much they will mix – if they are very interactive they will mix but if they are repulsive they won’t,’ he said. ‘Efficient solar cells are a delicate balance. If the domains mix too much or too little, the charges can’t separate or be harvested effectively.’
‘We know that attraction and repulsion depend on temperature, much like sugar dissolving in coffee – the saturation, or maximum mixing of the sugar with the coffee, improves as the temperature increases. We figured out the saturation level of the ‘sugar in the coffee’ as a function of temperature,’ he said.
New research from Rice University could make it easier for engineers to harness the power of light-capturing nanomaterials to boost the efficiency and reduce the costs of photovoltaic solar cells. Rice researchers selectively filtered high-energy hot electrons from their less-energetic…
The silicon-based tandem solar cell is regarded as the most promising strategy to break the theoretical efficiency limit of single-junction Si solar cells. With Si-based tandem solar cells as the bottom cells, the optimal bandgap of top cells is 1.7 eV, which enables high efficiency of ~45% for two-junction tandem solar cells. III-V semiconductors/Si and perovskites/Si tandem solar cells have achieved high efficiency levels of ~30%, proving their feasibility. However, the stability challenges of perovskite and the high-cost problem of III-V semiconductors largely limit their wide applications. Exploring new stable, low-cost, and bandgap 1.7 eV photovoltaic materials is of great significance in science and broad prospects in technology.
Cadmium selenide (CdSe), a binary II-VI semiconductor, enjoys great potential in the application of Si-based tandemsolar cells because of the suitable bandgap of ~1.7 eV, excellent optoelectronic properties, high stability, and low manufacturing cost. Nevertheless, the progress of CdSe thin-film solar cells remains as it was 30 years ago, and there are few systematic studies on CdSe thin-film solar cells in recent years.
Professor Tang Jiang and his team have proposed a method of rapid thermal evaporation (RTE) to obtain high-quality CdSe thin films and have designed CdSe thin-film solar cells. This study, entitled Rapid thermal evaporation for cadmium selenide thin-film solar cells, was published in Frontiers of Optoelectronics on Dec. 6, 2021.
A team of researchers working at Oxford University has found a way to add cesium to perovskite solar cells to boost the performance of silicon, while maintaining the efficiency benefits it offers. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes their process which included finding a way to overcome the problem of efficiency loss in such materials that normally come about due to a limited range of solar spectrum use.
As researchers around the world continue to look for the next-generation material to use for solar power collection to increase efficiency, others continue to seek ways to improve the standard now in use: silicon. In this new effort the research team noted the work done by others looking into the possibility of using perovskites (minerals made mostly of calcium titanate) as possible replacements for silicon, and found a way to add cesium to the mineral to make it work in tandem with silicon to create a solar collector that is up to 25 percent more efficient than those now in use. Such an improvement in performance could signal a transformation in real world use—solar power has thus far not proven to be efficient enough for the average consumer to cut the cord from the utility company—doubling efficiency might just make doing so a smart investment.
Up until now, efforts to get perovskites to work in tandem with silicon have been held back by inefficiencies in the cells due to the range of solar spectrum they were able to use—attempts to tweak the mix have led to instability in the materials. To overcome this problem, the team at Oxford came up with a process based on substituting certain ions in the material with cesium ions—it solved the spectrum problem, they report, while maintaining the stability of the overall structure.
Caltech researchers have made a discovery that they say could lead to the economically viable production of solar fuels in the next few years.
For years, solar-fuel research has focused on developing catalysts that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen using only sunlight. The resulting hydrogen fuel could be used to power motor vehicles, electrical plants, and fuel cells. Since the only thing produced by burning hydrogen is water, no carbon pollution is added to the atmosphere.
In 2014, researchers in the lab of Harry Gray, Caltech’s Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry, developed a water-splitting catalyst made of layers of nickel and iron. However, no one was entirely sure how it worked. Many researchers hypothesized that the nickel layers, and not the iron atoms, were responsible for the water-splitting ability of the catalyst (and others like it).
To find out for sure, Bryan Hunter (PhD ‘17), a former fellow at the Resnick Institute, and his colleagues in Gray’s lab created an experimental setup that starved the catalyst of water. “When you take away some of the water, the reaction slows down, and you are able to take a picture of what’s happening during the reaction,” he says.
Government gives go ahead for world’s largest windfarm
The second stage of the world’s biggest offshore wind farm has been given the go-ahead by the UK Government. The Hornsea Project Two scheme could see 300 turbines being built across 55 miles off the East Yorkshire coast to deliver up to 1.8MW of electricity to 1.8 million UK homes. The turbines will be connected to the grid at North Killingholme in North Lincolnshire.
Approval for the project was delayed for several months after concerns were raised about its potential impact on porpoises. Hornsea Project Two is the second stage of Dong Energy’s planned development of the Hornsea Zone in the North Sea. The windfarm is expected to create up to 1,960 construction jobs and 580 operational and maintenance jobs.
Business and Energy Secretary, Greg Clark, said his decision to give consent would lead to ‘jobs and economic growth right across the country.’ The UK aims to use wind power to provide 10% of the entire country’s energy needs by 2020.
To find out more on materials science, packaging and engineering news, visit our website IOM3 or follow us on Twitter @MaterialsWorld for regular news updates. You can also now get access to our content any time, anywhere via our app. For more information, visit app.materialsworld.org
I wonder what would happen if the blades on a windmill had solar panels and piezoelectric membranes to absorb more energy.
Well, windmills with solar panels technically are a thing, though I believe there’s still some work to be done before they’re put into production. Check out this US patent on the topic, which was actually published 10 years ago in 2006, as well as this company that focuses on solar wind turbines.
Not everybody has the chance to, but if you have the option to change your power supplier, do so. It might seem obvious, but people underestimate the power we have. We can vote with our dollars for the world we want to live in. Also, check what company is behind the green power supplier of your choice and try to find one who is not part of a big coal or fracking company.
