By carving specks of single crystal silicon from a bulk wafer and casting them onto sheets of plastic, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated a route to ultrahigh performance, mechanically flexible thin-film transistors. The process could enable new applications in consumer electronics – such as inexpensive wall-to-wall displays and intelligent but disposable radio frequency identification tags – and could even be used in applications that require significant
This is the PVNET Roadmap for European Research and Development for Photovoltaics, a network, which brought together representatives of relevant research and development (R&D) and production areas in photovoltaics. Their main task was to stimulate communication within the whole PV community by organising expert meetings, workshops and symposia, and disseminating the information gathered therein. This Thematic Network was carried out in the framework of the specific research and technological develop
Fagor is working in three lines of research of solar energy, one of which involves a system for cooling household temperatures. Trials are being carried out in the experimental house installed in the Miñano Technological Park.
Perhaps it is the photoelectric energy that is the best known of the three. For years the production photoelectric energy has had the sole aim of on-site consumption for personal use, and thus were often installed in places lacking power supply lines. However, in the l
Penn State environmental engineers have removed and replaced one of the most expensive parts of their prototype microbial fuel cell and the device now costs two-thirds less and produces nearly six times more electricity from domestic wastewater.
Earlier this year, the Penn State team was the first to develop a microbial fuel cell (MFC) that can generate electricity while simultaneously cleaning domestic wastewater skimmed from the settling pond of a sewage treatment plant. Now, they’ve
University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory with a colleague from Sandia National Laboratories have developed a new method for exciting light emission from nanocrystal quantum dots. The discovery provides a way to supply energy to quantum dots without wires, and paves the way for a potentially wider use of tunable nanocrystalline materials in a variety of novel light-emitting technologies ranging from electronic displays to solid-state lighting and electrically pumpe
’The Fusion of Neuroscience and Robotics for Augmenting Human Capabilities’
FET, the Unit dealing with Future and Emerging Technologies and acting as the pathfinder of IST by exploring new science and technology frontiers, has launched a new research initiative- Beyond Robotics. Neurobotics is one out of three so-called Integrated Projects.
The ultimate objective of the NEUROBOTICS project is to introduce a discontinuity in the robot design, thus going literally “
While the memory inside electronic devices may often be more reliable than that of humans, it, too, can worsen over time.
Now a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Argonne National Laboratory may understand why. The results are published in the early online edition (May 23) of the journal Nature Materials.
Smart cards, buzzers inside watches and even ultrasound machines all take advantage of ferroelectrics, a family of materials that can retain informa
To convert a gaseous fuel into a clean liquid one is the target of the research project being undertaken by the School of Industrial Engineering and Telecommunications Engineers of Bilbao in the Basque Country. It involves, in the final analysis, obtaining fuels which do not have contaminant components, i.e. sulphur, nitrogen or aromatic components.
Participating in this project, financed by the MARCO programme of the European Union, are nine groups from different European countries, under t
Just as low-carbohydrate diets are trimming the American waistline, more judicious use of hydrocarbon-based fossil fuels would reduce U.S. energy consumption by 33 percent and save consumers $438 billion a year by 2014, according to an analysis by Cornell University ecologists.
David Pimentel, Cornell professor of ecology, and 11 student ecologists found the most fat for trimming — with the best potential for major energy savings — in the transportation, residential heating and cooling, i
University of Michigan engineering students have discovered a redeeming quality in junk food: waste grease produced in campus cafeterias that can be used to make biodiesel fuel for U-M buses.
During a term project for a course in environmental sustainability, a four-student team led by Lisa Colosi and Andres Clarens concluded and demonstrated that it is economically and technically feasible to harvest the 10,700 gallons of waste grease produced in the 10 campus dining halls to make an effec
Converting waste heat into electricity
“Waste heat” might not be such a waste after all. The excess heat produced in everything from microelectronics to large ship engines is generally thought of as a problem for engineers to solve. But a new leap in semiconductor technology funded by the Office of Naval Research could put that troublesome heat to good use.
Dr. Mihal Gross of ONR’s physical sciences division explains, “With this class of semiconductors, when you have a
CIDETEC is working on a project the aim of which is to carry out a direct assessment of the technology of fuel cells for “mini” applications which have between 1 and 10 watt power requirements – such as for mobile phone or PDA chargers or for remote signalling, etc. to this end, a series of technologies are being developed in order to obtain a house technology mini fuel cells, including the design and enhancement of EMAs (electrode-membrane assemblies), of structural elements (current collectors, sh
Up to 20 million homes in Europe could be powered by clean renewable energy from the sea, according to ocean energy expert Teresa Pontes of Portugal, who was speaking at the EurOCEAN marine science and policy event in Galway today (12th May). She estimated that, by harnessing energy from waves and marine currents, Europe would produce around 200 TerraWatt (200 million megawatt) hours per year of electrical power.
“The oceans contain a huge energy resource with different origins,” said Ms. Te
Like the signals it emits, the radio may soon disappear from sight.
University of Florida electrical engineers have installed a radio antenna less than one-tenth of an inch long on a computer chip and demonstrated that it can send and receive signals across a room. The achievement is another step in the team’s continuing efforts to build an “ultrasmall radio chip” – a transceiver, processor and battery all placed on a chip not much larger than a pinhead – and one that could one
Using improved processing equipment developed with support from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Technology Program, American Superconductor Corporation (AMSC) has produced lengths of record-breaking high-temperature superconductor (HTS) wire.
The company recently announced that it achieved electric current carrying capacity in multiple 10-meter lengths of second-generation (2G) HTS wire equal to or better than 250 Amperes per centimeter of width, an indust
A new type of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) is being developed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories to help bring the goal of a micro fuel cell closer to realization using diverse fuels like glucose, methanol, and hydrogen.
This Sandia Polymer Electrolyte Alternative (SPEA) could help fulfill the need for new, uninterrupted autonomous power sources for sensors, communications, microelectronics, healthcare applications, and transportation.
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