11-02/03 :: February / March 2011

nanotimes News in Brief

environmental remediation, pollution prevention, innovative drug delivery and therapy, efficient re- newable energy, and effective energy storage.

In addition to EPA‘s $5.5 million, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has contributed $500,000 through a new research partnership bet- ween the two agencies. Grant awards were made to three consortia consisting of researchers from the U.S. and the U.K. Each U.S. team of researchers re- ceived $2 million from EPA and CPSC for a total of $6 million. Each U.K. team also receives $2 million from the U.K. agencies, resulting in a grand total of $12 million to conduct the research.

http://www.epa.gov/ncer/uk_nano09/

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partnership funded by TDK Corporation and the University of Luxembourg.

Alex Redinger, Dominik M. Berg, Phillip J. Dale, and Su- sanne Siebentritt: The Consequences of Kesterite Equili- bria for Efficient Solar Cells, In: Journal of the American Chemical Society, Volume 133(2011), Issue 10, March 16, 2011, Pages 3320-3323: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja111713g

http://wwwen.uni.lu/research/fstc/physics_and_materi- al_research_unit/photovoltaics_lpv

Kesterites combine the low cost of thin film solar cell technologies with extremely low raw materi- al cost. Their main component consists of copper, zinc, tin, and sulfur or selenium, all abundant and low cost elements. Several labs have reported that the loss of tin during preparation limits the ability to control deposition processes. The Laboratory for Photovoltaics, LU, has therefore developed a prepa- ration process that allows controlling the tin loss and has in the first attempt led to the record efficiency.

„With this first success we are now able to under- stand the further limitations of these solar cells. This will help us to improve the efficiency further“ says Susanne Siebentritt, head of the Laboratory for Photovoltaics. This laboratory was founded in Luxembourg in April 2007 within the framework of the TDK Europe professorship, a public-private

In the Fraunhofer System Research for Electromo- bility (FSEM) project, researchers from the Fraun- hofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern are developing software to simulate lithium-ion batteries, which should in turn speed up this process and make it more effi- cient. The new software is dubbed BEST, short for Battery and Electrochemistry Simulation Tool.

A lithium-ion battery consists of two porous elec- trodes kept apart by a separator filled with elec- trolyte. Lithium ions flow between the electrodes when the battery is charged and discharged.

“Battery performance depends on the materials used in the components. These materials need to work in harmony with each other,” explains Jochen Zausch, a scientist in the Complex Fluids group at Fraunhofer ITWM. “Various material combinations can be simulated using our software, enabling us to come up with the ideal mix. The kind of trial-and- error testing done in the past is no longer necessary.”