Power and Electrical Engineering
This topic covers issues related to energy generation, conversion, transportation and consumption and how the industry is addressing the challenge of energy efficiency in general.
innovations-report provides in-depth and informative reports and articles on subjects ranging from wind energy, fuel cell technology, solar energy, geothermal energy, petroleum, gas, nuclear engineering, alternative energy and energy efficiency to fusion, hydrogen and superconductor technologies.
High-performance, single-crystal plastic transistors reveal hidden behavior
Printing circuits on sheets of plastic may offer a low-cost technique for manufacturing thin-film transistors for flexible displays, but maximizing the performance of such devices will require a detailed, fundamental understanding of how charge flows through organic semiconductors.
Now, an unusual way of fabricating single-crystal organic transistors has allowed scientists to probe charge transport within the crystals and to observe a strong anisotropy of the charge transport mobility within
Fuel cell reaches milestone
A five-kilowatt solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) undergoing testing in Fairbanks has reached the 5,000-hour milestone since its start-up eight months ago. During each hour of operation the fuel cell produces approximately four kilowatts of electricity totaling 20,000 kilowatt hours for the duration, enough to power two average houses for a full year.
“Since the biggest questions surrounding fuel cells have been longevity and reliability, this is an exciting achievement in fuel cell technology
Fuel-cell microbes’ double duty: treat water, make energy
NSF ’sugar’ grant supports single-chamber prototype fed by wastewater
Something big may be brewing on the sewage treatment circuit thanks to a new design that puts bacteria on double-duty-treating wastewater and generating electricity at the same time.
The key is an innovative, single-chambered microbial fuel cell. The prototype is described in the online version of the journal Environmental Science & Technology (http://pubs.acs.org/journals/esthag/); the article w
OHSU researchers discover way to grow silicon nanowires
OGI School of Science & Technology Research is one of a kind in Northwest
Oregon Health & Science University researchers have discovered a new way to accurately grow silicon nanowires on an electrode for use in fabricating transistors. A portion of these findings will be published in the Feb. 23 issue of Applied Physics Letter. The discovery has important implications for semiconductor research and may one day help engineers build faster computer chips.
A research group led
Sources of energy for the EFDA-JET nuclear fusion experimental reactor
JEMA, the company based in Lasarte in the Basque Country, has recently put into operation the two energy supply plants designed and manufactured for the European EFDA (the European Fusion Development Agreement)-JET nuclear fusion experimental reactor at Culham in the United Kingdom. This reactor is one of the plants on which ITER, the largest research project in the world, has been based.
With this achievement JEMA has carried out more than 2 years of intense work in research, design and con
Cornell-developed tools to guide and switch light could lead to photonic microchips and practical home fiber-optic lines
A Cornell University researcher is developing techniques for making photonic microchips — in which streams of electrons are replaced by beams of light — including ways to guide and bend light in air or a vacuum, to switch a beam of light on and off and to connect nanophotonic chips to optical fiber.
Michal Lipson, an assistant professor at Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y., described recent research by the Nanophotonics Group in Cornell’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the a