26Nov

Ascent Solar’s Flexible CIGS Solar Panels One of TIME’s 50 Best Inventions of 2011

Categories: Green Technology & Efficient Solutions
No comments

Email, RSS Follow

Ascent Solar Technologies develops innovative, lightweight, flexible, thin-film solar photovoltaic modules (that’s a mouthful, I know — read it again). Ascent’s flexible CIGS solar panels are so innovative they were named one of TIME’s are designed to integrate with limitless applications, transforming unused surface area into a source of clean, renewable energy.50 Best Inventions of 2011, one of only six “green” inventions to make the list this year. The list is featured in the November 28, 2011 issue of TIME (which, somehow, is already online… oh, old media, how you amuse me).

(more…)

Share

Tags:
4Oct

Electricity from the Nose: Engineers Make Power from Human Respiration

Categories: Green Technology & Efficient Solutions
No comments

Email, RSS Follow

The same piezoelectric effect that ignites your gas grill with the push of a button could one day power sensors in your body via the respiration in your nose.

Writing in the September issue of the journal Energy and Environmental Science, Materials Science and Engineering Professor Xudong Wang, postdoctoral Researcher Chengliang Sun and graduate student Jian Shi report creating a plastic microbelt that vibrates when passed by low-speed airflow such as human respiration.

(more…)

Share

Tags:
3Oct

Top 10 self powered concept cellphones

Categories: Green Technology & Efficient Solutions
No comments
Top 10 self powered concept cellphones

Email, RSS Follow

A few years ago, mobile phones were considered to be a luxury product. But now it has almost become a must have article. Today, when the green concept is hovering over the human kind with an ever important ferocity, it is obvious that even mobile phone companies have tried to contribute their shares to the actualization of this concept. Given below are 10 such phones which are the proud claimants of this title.

(more…)

Share

Tags:
28Sep

Copper nanowires could mean cheaper touch screens, solar cells and foldable electronics

Categories: Green Technology & Efficient Solutions
No comments
Copper nanowires could mean cheaper touch screens, solar cells and foldable electronics

Email, RSS Follow

In June of last year we reported on the success by researchers at Duke University in developing a technique capable of producing copper nanowires at a scale that could make them a potential replacement for rare and expensive indium tin oxide (ITO) in touch screens and solar panels. However, the water-based production process resulted in the copper nanowires clumping, which reduced their transparency and prevented the copper from oxidizing, thereby decreasing their conductivity. The researchers have now solved the clumping problem and say that copper nanowires could be appearing in cheaper touch screens, solar cells and flexible electronics in the next few years.

(more…)

Share

Tags:
8Sep

Nanowires show promise for less expensive solar cells with less hazardous materials

Categories: Green Technology & Efficient Solutions
No comments

Email, RSS Follow

Nano remains one of the most scintillating words in the whole of photovoltaics research. The idea engineering materials at a near atomic scale to create more efficient, less expensive photovoltaics has created numerous types of new solar cells, using everything from quantum wells to nanoantennas, nanowires and other nano-scale technologies.

Most recently, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) in California introduced new research that created solar cells in ambient conditions in a liquid bath.

(more…)

Share

Tags:
26Aug

In-shoe device harvests energy created by walking

Categories: Green Technology & Efficient Solutions
No comments
In-shoe device harvests energy created by walking

Email, RSS Follow

Although you may not be using a Get Smart-style shoe phone anytime soon, it is possible that your mobile phone may end up receiving its power from your shoes. University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering researchers Tom Krupenkin and J. Ashley Taylor have developed an in-shoe system that harvests the energy generated by walking. Currently, this energy is lost as heat. With their technology, however, they claim that up to 20 watts of electricity could be generated, and stored in an incorporated rechargeable battery.

(more…)

Share

Tags:
15Aug

PV technology: Bandgap Engineering secures two patents for silicon nanowire design

Categories: Green Technology & Efficient Solutions
No comments

Email, RSS Follow

Bandgap Engineering (Woburn, Massachusetts, U.S.) announced that it has secured two patents for its silicon nanowire solar photovoltaic (PV) cell design.

The first patent covers technology to improve the performance of PV cells by placing scattering centers in volume around the nanomaterial, to absorb more light for energy conversion.

The second patent allows for the exploitation of nanowire/matrix interfaces and nano-engineering of the bad structure of silicon for optimized solar energy conversion.

(more…)

Share

Tags:
30Jul

Hydrogen Generation & Storage Made Easy with Nano-Technology

Categories: Green Technology & Efficient Solutions
No comments
Hydrogen Generation & Storage Made Easy with Nano-Technology

Email, RSS Follow

Fuels like gasoline, based on hydrocarbon, create pollution and carbon footprint. Hydrogen has been claimed to be a good alternative to replace fossil fuel since the 1970s. But hydrogen’s potential has not been realized even partially mainly because of storage and commercial production difficulties. There have been research being done on renewable energy sources like hydrogen for quite some years. Recently, breakthrough research has been successful in creating a new method for storing hydrogen.

(more…)

Share

Tags: