News, Trends & Analysis
MIT: Technology Review
PV Technology Review: Material Traps Light on the Cheap
Mar 8th
The flexible composite requires far less silicon than today’s solar cells.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2010
A new photovoltaic material performs as well as the one found in today’s best solar cells, but promises to be significantly cheaper. The material, created by researchers at Caltech, consists of a flexible array of light-absorbing silicon microwires and light-reflecting metal nanoparticles embedded in a polymer.
Computational models suggest that the material could be used to make solar cells that would convert 15 to 20 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity–on par with existing high-performance silicon cells. But the material would require just 1 percent More >
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Loading ...MIT Technology Review: The Year in Energy
Dec 28th
Liquid batteries, giant lasers, and vast new reserves of natural gas highlight the fundamental energy advances of the past 12 months.
By Kevin Bullis
MONDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2009
With many renewable energy companies facing hard financial times (“Weeding Out Solar Companies“), a lot of the big energy news this year was coming out of Washington, DC, with massive federal stimulus funding for batteries and renewable energy and programs such as Energy Frontier Research Centers and Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (“A Year of Stimulus for High Tech“).
Credit: Roy RitchieBut there was still plenty of action outside the beltway, both in the United States and More >
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