In Solar Cells, Tweaking the Tiniest of Parts Yields Big Jump in Efficiency

By tweaking the smallest of parts, a trio of University at Buffalo engineers is hoping to dramatically increase the amount of sunlight that solar cells convert into electricity. With military colleagues, the UB researchers have shown that embedding charged...

Germany Increasing Its Focus on Solar Energy

In the wake of the 11 March nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima nuclear power complex, the government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to shutter the country’s nuclear power plants, which in turn has increased Berlin’s...

Better, Faster, Cheaper: Doing Business with the Sun

The change in energy policy has been decided; Germany needs more green energy. From Sep. 5-9 in Hamburg, everything will revolve around our biggest energy supplier: the sun. At the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, in Hall B4G, Stand C12,...

Why Japan Will Turn to Solar Energy Following Fukushima

As the dire news continues to leach out of Fukishima, the silver lining in its nuclear cloud is that renewable energy technologies, despite their daunting start-up costs, are receiving renewed scrutiny.

Nanoantennas Hold Promise to Improve Solar Panels with Infrared Photovoltaics

Basic scientific curiosity paid off in unexpected ways when Rice University researchers investigating the fundamental physics of nanomaterials discovered a new technology that could dramatically improve solar energy panels. The research is described in...

Rutgers Discovery Paves Way for Development of Efficient, Inexpensive Plastic Solar Cells

Rutgers physicists have discovered new properties in a material that could result in efficient and inexpensive plastic solar cells. The discovery, posted online by the journal Nature Materials, reveals that excitons, or energy-carrying particles generated...

Market Researchers Forecast Threefold Increase for LEDs And OLEDs

Market researchers have forecast a threefold increase up to almost 13 billion Euros by 2012 for light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and organic LEDs (OLEDs). These technologies offer a particularly small size, a long lifetime and top levels of energy-efficiency,...

Australian Breakthrough Will Help Increase Solar Cell Efficiency

Australian researchers have come up with an ingenious method of increasing the efficiency of conventional solar cells. A team led by University of Sydney scientists Dr Tim Schmidt and Professor Max Crossley have achieved a one third increase in the upconversion...