Research News Round Up October
Cheap solar cells
Researchers found a new method to manufacture solar cells
using less amount of silicon. Due to this new approach solar cells can be
available at cheaper price.
By this approach we can save up to 90% of silicon with
current standard. It also has advantages over traditional manufacturing process
of solar that is expensive and laborious.
The developed solar cells are comprised of silicon fibers
coated in glass. Silicon core is placed into a glass tube of 30mm in diameter.
And this is heated up so that the silicon melts and the glass softens. Then
this tube is stretched in to a thin glass fire filled with silicon. This whole
process of heating and stretching makes the fiber thinner 100 times thinner.
Ultra-thin 3-D LCD displays for greater energy efficiency
Researchers have develop a ultra-thin LCD screen that can
activated without a power source resulting in compact and energy efficient to
display the visual information.
As all of I know Liquid crystal displays are used in many
applications from television screens to digital clocks and smart watches. In a
traditional Liquid crystal displays the electrodes are inserted between the
polarized glass plates and the electrodes passes the currents affecting the
liquid crystals inside and changing accordingly the way they interact with
polarized light.
The new display’s developed ditch the electrodes making
the screen very much
thinner and lesser energy requirements. Whenever an image
is uploaded to the LCD screen through the flash of light no power is needed to
keep that image further on the screen because
of the so bi-stable displays draws power
only whenever the image changes.
-Researchers from Hong Kong University
Making Electric vehicles more powerful lighter and energy efficient
Researchers at the department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National
Laboratory have developed a power Inverter resulting in electric vehicles
powerful, lighter and more efficient
Coming to the finer details of the inverter is wide band gap
of the silicon carbide material having qualities superior to semiconductor
materials. Advantages of wider band gap is that it can have higher inherent
reliability, higher frequency of operation, lighter weight, higher temperature capabilities,
higher power densities and overall efficiency.
Another important factor to be considered in these
inverter design is it incorporates small capacitors in parallel for cooling purposes
resulting in lower cost when compared to few brick type capacitors.
-Researchers
from Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Thinking beyond LEDS, carbon Nanotubes Flat panel lights
Scientist from Tohoku University have developed a flat panel
light out of carbon nano tubes. These flat panel lights having less power
requirements of 0.1 watt for every hour operation which is 100 times better
than the usual LED’s existing today.
These scientist combined the mixture of liquid containing
crystalline single walled carbon nanotube dispersed in an organic solvent combined
with the surfactant chemical (soap-like chemical). Then they have painted these
mixture on to the cathode or positive electrode and scratched the surface using
sandpaper to form a light panel that is capable of producing a large stable and
homogeneous emission’s with low power consumption.
-Scientists from Tohoku University
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