* Astronomy

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Perovskite solar cells

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RE: Solar Panels

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Solar cycle path opens in Netherlands

The world's first public solar cycle lane has opened in the Netherlands as part of a pilot scheme.
It is designed to capture the energy from the sun and transform it into electricity.
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Making solar cells with tofu salt

A new way of making solar cells could dramatically bring down the cost of generating energy from the Sun.
A team at Liverpool University has found a way of replacing the toxic element in the process with a material found in bath salts and tofu.
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Solar panels as inexpensive as paint? Its possible due to research at University at Buffalo

Most Americans want the U.S. to place more emphasis on developing solar power, recent polls suggest.
A major impediment, however, is the cost to manufacture, install and maintain solar panels. Simply put, most people and businesses cannot afford to place them on their rooftops.
Fortunately, that is changing because researchers such as Qiaoqiang Gan, University at Buffalo assistant professor of electrical engineering, are helping develop a new generation of photovoltaic cells that produce more power and cost less to manufacture than whats available today.
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Scientists use inkjet printing to produce solar cells

Solar energy may soon become easier to capture, say researchers who have developed a novel method to produce solar cells using inkjet printing.
Oregon State University researchers have come up with a technology similar to that commonly used to print documents and photos.
They say their method is quicker and less expensive than traditional solar cell manufacturing techniques.
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New Solar Product Captures Up to 95 Percent of Light Energy

Efficiency is a problem with today's solar panels; they only collect about 20 percent of available light. Now, a University of Missouri engineer has developed a flexible solar sheet that captures more than 90 percent of available light, and he plans to make prototypes available to consumers within the next five years.
Patrick Pinhero, an associate professor in the MU Chemical Engineering Department, says energy generated using traditional photovoltaic (PV) methods of solar collection is inefficient and neglects much of the available solar electromagnetic (sunlight) spectrum. The device his team has developed - essentially a thin, moldable sheet of small antennas called nantenna - can harvest the heat from industrial processes and convert it into usable electricity. Their ambition is to extend this concept to a direct solar facing nantenna device capable of collecting solar irradiation in the near infrared and optical regions of the solar spectrum.
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New solar fuel machine 'mimics plant life'

A prototype solar device has been unveiled which mimics plant life, turning the Sun's energy into fuel.
The machine uses the Sun's rays and a metal oxide called ceria to break down carbon dioxide or water into fuels which can be stored and transported.
Conventional photovoltaic panels must use the electricity they generate in situ, and cannot deliver power at night.
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Caltech Researchers Create Highly Absorbing, Flexible Solar Cells with Silicon Wire Arrays

Using arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded in a polymer substrate, a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has created a new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons. The solar cell does all this using only a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells.
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Imagine a world where sunlight can be captured to produce electricity anywhere, on any surface. The makers of thin-film flexible solar cells imagine that world too. But a big problem has been the amount of silicon needed to harvest a little sunshine.
Now, researchers [led by Harry A. A****er] at CalTech say they've designed a device that gets comparable solar absorption while using just one percent of the silicon per unit area that current solar cells need. The work was published in the journal Nature Materials.
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