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nanotimes News in Brief
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) associate professor of chemical engineering and mathematics Martin Z. Bazant has provided surpri- sing new results showing that the material behaves quite differently than had been thought, helping to explain its performance and possibly opening the door to the discovery of even more effective bat- tery materials. The new insights into lithium iron phosphate‘s behavior are detailed in a paper appea- ring in ACS Nano.
Daniel A Cogswell and Martin Z. Bazant: Coherency Strain and the Kinetics of Phase Separation in LiFePO4 Nanoparticles, In: ACS Nano (Just Accepted), February 3, 2012, DOI:10.1021/nn204177u: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nn204177u
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photon from the blue light spectrum. This could enable the cells to capture 44% of the incoming solar energy.
Bruno Ehrler, Mark W. B. Wilson, Akshay Rao, Richard H. Friend, and Neil C. Greenham: Singlet Exciton Fission- Sensitized Infrared Quantum Dot Solar Cells, In: Nano Letters, Volume 12(2012), Issue 2, February 8, 2012, Pages 1053-1057, DOI:10.1021/nl204297u: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl204297u
Scientists from the Cavendish Laboratory, the University’s Department of Physics (UK), have developed a novel type of solar cell which could harvest energy from the sun much more efficiently than traditional designs.
The research, published in the journal NanoLetters, could dramatically improve the amount of useful energy created by solar panels.
The Cambridge team, led by Professor Neil Green- ham and Professor Sir Richard Friend, has de- veloped a hybrid cell which absorbs red light and harnesses the extra energy of blue light to boost the electrical current. Typically, a solar cell generates a single electron for each photon captured. However, by adding pentacene, an organic semiconductor, the solar cells can generate two electrons for every
Some of the recent advancements in nanotechnology depend critically on how nanoparticles move and diffuse on a surface or in a fluid under non-ideal to extreme conditions. Center for Computational Mo- lecular Science and Technology, School of Chemi- stry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Tech- nology (U.S.) has a team of researchers dedicated to advancing this frontier. Rigoberto Hernandez investigates these relationships by studying three- dimensional particle dynamics simulations on high- performance computers.
“These simulations bring us a step closer to creating a nanorod device that allows scientists to control the flow of nanoparticles,” said Hernandez. “Blue- sky applications of such devices include the creati- on of new light patterns, information flow and other microscopic triggers.”