… could make air travel easier on the environment. Built to take the heat: While conventional sensors reach breaking point at around 300°C, researchers at Fraunhofer IZM are creating a sensor that works reliably at twice that temperature. The secret of the heat-loving sensors: Silicon carbide, etched with exceptional precision. Their ability to monitor pressure even in extremely adverse environments could help fine-tune the combustion process in jet turbines and reduce the fuel consumption of aircraft. Humans have dreamt of…
From lab to fab: Q CELLS, a renowned total energy solutions provider in solar, energy storage, downstream project business and energy retail, has set a new world-record tandem cell efficiency of 28.7% in collaboration with researchers at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin using a Q.ANTUM-based silicon bottom cell in combination with a perovskite-based top cell. Q CELLS’ R&D team in Thalheim, Germany, has worked jointly with Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin over the past three years to create a tandem solar cell comprising a silicon-based Q.ANTUMbottom…
Researchers at the University of Bremen are currently working successfully on the next generation of energy storage systems. Their goal is aqueous zinc-ion batteries that eliminate any risk of explosion or fire. Professor Fabio La Mantia and his team have now outlined the main challenges that need to be overcome in the further development of the novel battery technology in the renowned scientific journal Nature Communications. The environmentally friendly energy supply of the future is one of the most discussed…
A uniform charging field makes this new transmitter ideal for consumer devices. A new wireless charging system can charge devices placed anywhere within a ring around it. Existing systems transfer power in a specific direction or to a specific position. By providing a donut-shaped charging field, the new system offers a more convenient and reliable design for consumer use. The main challenge in creating an omnidirectional charger has been that the strength of the charging field changes with location. This…
We know triple-pane windows conserve energy, reduce noise, and lower home energy bills; now they are getting more affordable. It’s time to make the switch to triple-pane windows. That’s the message from a series of studies led by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in collaboration with a coalition of public and private partners. “Lower costs, greater availability, and the drive to reduce carbon emissions are pushing us toward a tipping point where triple-pane windows start making a…
Green hydrogen and fuel technology are a new focus of the Export Initiative Environmental Technologies (EXI). The University of Bayreuth has recently become involved in this funding programme of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) with its “ECO-FCGen – decentralized power generator based on fuel cells” project. The aim of the project is to build two electricity generation prototypes based on green hydrogen in Germany and India. Research partners are CBC GmbH…
Technology could make it possible to use radio emissions from cell phone networks to wirelessly power sensors and LEDs. Researchers have developed a new metasurface-based antenna that represents an important step toward making it practical to harvest energy from radio waves, such as the ones used in cell phone networks or Bluetooth connections. This technology could potentially provide wireless power to sensors, LEDs and other simple devices with low energy requirements. “By eliminating wired connections and batteries, these antennas could…
Micro supercapacitors could revolutionise the way we use batteries by increasing their lifespan and enabling extremely fast charging. Manufacturers of everything from smartphones to electric cars are therefore investing heavily into research and development of these electronic components. Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a method that represents a breakthrough for how such supercapacitors can be produced. “When discussing new technologies, it is easy to forget how important the manufacturing method is, so that they can…
Tandem cells made of silicon and perovskite are able to convert the broad energy spectrum of sunlight into electrical energy more efficiently than the respective single cells. Now, for the first time, two teams from HZB and ISFH Hameln have succeeded in combining a perovskite top cell with a so-called PERC/POLO silicon cell to form a tandem device. This is an important achievement, since PERC silicon cells on p-type silicon are the “workhorse” of photovoltaics, with a market share of…
Today’s rechargeable batteries are a wonder, but far from perfect. Eventually, they all wear out, begetting expensive replacements and recycling. “But what if batteries were indestructible?” asks William Chueh, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University and senior author of a new paper detailing a first-of-its-kind analytical approach to building better batteries that could help speed that day. The study appears in the journal Nature Materials. Chueh, lead author Haitao “Dean” Deng, PhD ’21, and collaborators…
A research team led by Chemnitz University of Technology with the participation of IFW Dresden and Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry present an application-oriented method for an unsolved problem in microelectronics – Publication in the prestigious journal Advanced Energy Materials. Computers are getting smaller and smaller, just as current cell phones offer computing power similar to that of a laptop. And the trend toward miniaturization continues. Smart dust applications (tiny microelectronic devices), such as biocompatible sensor systems in the body,…
Better Function thanks to optimized construction. Loudspeakers without enclosures are used anywhere that visible speakers are not favorable due to design purposes or to reduce environmental or visual vandalism. However, in these types of speakers, the exciter usually gets very hot and therefore requires a cooling air way to maintain its performance and serviceable life-time. Researchers at the University of Stuttgart have improved the design of an in-wall speaker and developed a new type of exciting mechanism that allows the…
PhD thesis investigated application of a special white-light laser for semiconductor industry and microbiology. A new high-performance white-light laser is expected to speed up quality control in the semiconductor industry and provide closer monitoring of toxicity tests in microbiology. In one step, this laser enables the two-sided characterization of surfaces and can be integrated into production chains. The technology has been developed at the Fraunhofer Application Center for Optical Metrology and Surface Technologies (AZOM) and Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau (WHZ) as…
Researchers from Japan design a transducer powered by electrochemical reactions for operating fluid pumps without cumbersome parts in soft robots. The word “robot” would probably conjure up images of hard metallic bodies that are invulnerable to attacks. In modern day-to-day life, however, robots are hardly needed for defending against enemy attacks. Instead, they are required to perform more mundane tasks such as handling delicate objects and interacting with humans. Unfortunately, conventional robots perform poorly at such seemingly simple tasks. Moreover,…
IOW supports successful deployment of new Argo Float sensors. As part of the DArgo2025 project, Germany’s Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) coordinated the successful validation and deployment of new sensors on automated drifting buoys, so-called Argo floats. These sensors can now be deployed worldwide and thus provide information about current environmental changes in the oceans, such as increasing eutrophication, oxygen depletion, and acidification. In this context, the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) evaluated novel nutrient sensors…
University of Rochester researchers adapt excited state lifetime thermometry to extract temperatures of nanoscale materials from light emitted by nitrogen vacancy centers. For centuries people have placed the highest value on diamonds that are not only large but flawless. Scientists, however, have discovered exciting new applications for diamonds that are not only incredibly small but have a unique defect. In a recent paper in Applied Physics Letters, researchers at the University of Rochester describe a new way to measure temperature…
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