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Articles tagged with: ‘photovoltaics‘

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Aluminum studs make solar panels up to 22 percent more efficient

By Maja Bosanac
28 October 2013

aluminum-studs-solar-panels-1A team of researchers at the Imperial College London and their international collaborators in Belgium, China and Japan have demonstrated that the efficiency of all solar panel designs could be improved by up to 22 percent by covering their surface with aluminum studs that bend and trap light inside the absorbing layer. Solar panels covered… »

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World record solar cell with 44.7 percent efficiency

By Damir Beciri
1 October 2013

fraunhofer-solar-cell-record-1Engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin joined forces to achieve a new world record for the conversion of sunlight into electricity. Using a new solar cell structure with four solar subcells, they managed to set a new record efficiency of 44.7% was measured at a concentration of 297 suns… »

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SIS solar cells allow creation of colorful solar facades

By Damir Beciri
3 Comments6 July 2013

fraunhofer-color-facade-sis-cells-1When you hear someone talking about solar panels, you imagine the black or bluish-gray colored panels. However, various groups of researchers are contributing to changes which help designers and architects in their goal for aesthetics. With the help of thin-film technologies, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute managed to contribute to this cause by turning solar… »

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Zinc oxide moulding enables production of thinner and cheaper solar cells

By Damir Beciri
One Comment11 September 2011

epfl-thin-pv-cellEven though silicon is one of the most abundant elements, the energy required to make silicon from sand is immense. A group of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) developed a new nanopatterning technique which boosts the output of the cells, thus enabling manufacture of solar cells that are one… »

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Green architecture – Montecito Residence, Santa Barbara

By Damir Beciri
2 Comments22 August 2011

montecito-residence-1Located in the hills of Santa Barbara, the Montecito Residence is a great example of opened design with a large quantity of structural steel and glass, whose noncombustible nature proves useful in a fire-prone area. The house was recently awarded with the Merit Award in the Innovative Design in Engineering and Architecture with Structural Steel… »

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New 3D nanocone solar cell technology boosts the efficiency

By Rob Aid
29 April 2011

nanocone-solar-cell-illustrationA team of researchers, led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s (ORNL’s) Jun Xu, created a 3D nanocone-based solar cell platform which boosts the light-to-power conversion efficiency of photovoltaics by nearly 80 percent. The technology substantially overcomes the problem of poor transport of charges generated by solar photons, which occur due to defects in bulk materials… »

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Plasmonics with coated nanodomes for thin and affordable solar cells

By Damir Beciri
2 Comments4 February 2011

stanford-plasmonics-imprintsA multidisciplinary team of Stanford engineers led by Mike McGehee, Yi Cui and Mark Brongersma, and joined by Michael Graetzel at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), is developing a new type of thin solar cell that could offer a new direction for the field. They succeeded in harnessing plasmonics – trapping light within… »

Architecture| Tech»

Green architecture – LUMENHAUS

By Damir Beciri
22 November 2010

lumenhaus-1Although we tend not to write about prefabricated homes, here is an article about a house that was recently exhibited in Millennium Park, Chicago. Inspired by the glass pavilion-style Farnsworth House designed by Bauhaus architect Mies Van Der Rohe, the folks from Virginia Tech came up with LUMENHAUS – a prefabricated house which features a… »