Latest Solid Stories

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have demonstrated a way to fabricate efficient solar cells from low-cost and flexible materials. The new design grows optically active semiconductors in arrays of nanoscale pillars, each a single crystal, with dimensions measured in billionths of a meter."To take advantage of abundant solar energy we have to find ways to mass-produce efficient photovoltaics,"...

Researchers from Graz University of Technology, Humboldt University in Berlin,  M.I.T.,  Montan University in Leoben and  Georgia Institute of Technology report an important advance in the understanding of electrical conduction through single molecules.Minimum size, maximum efficiency: The use of molecules as elements in electronic circuits shows great potential. One of the central challenges up until now has been that most molecules only start to conduct once a large voltage has...

Ohio State University researchers have developed a new method for making extremely pure, very small metal-oxide nanoparticles.They are using this simple, fast, and low-temperature process to make materials for gas sensors that detect toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) and biological warfare agents.The researchers described their work in a recent issue of the journal Materials Chemistry and Physics.Patricia Morris, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State, leads a...

Though the solar industry today predominately produces solar panels made from crystalline silicon, they remain relatively expensive to make. New players in the solar industry have instead been looking at panels that can harvest energy with CIGS (copper-indium-gallium-selenide) or CIGS-related materials. CIGS panels have a high efficiency potential, may be cheaper to produce and would use less raw materials than silicon solar panels. But unfortunately, manufacturing of CIGS panels on...

PHOENIX, July 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiary Sumika Electronic Materials, Inc., leading suppliers of advanced materials to the global solar panel, semiconductor and plastics industries, have earned a supplier excellence award from one of the world's largest microelectronics manufacturers. Sumitomo Chemical and Sumika earned the award on the strength of their product quality and reliable on-time delivery over the past year. Sumika Electronic Materials...

Better predictions of how many valuable materials behave under stress could be on the way from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where scientists have recently found evidence* of an important similarity between the behavior of polycrystalline materials"”such as metals and ceramics"”and glasses.Most metals and ceramics used in manufacturing are polycrystals. The steel in a bridge girder is formed from innumerable tiny metal crystals that grew together in a...

  If solar cells were transparent they could be fitted to windows and building facades. Physical modeling helps in the development of suitable materials for transparent electronics and thus in creating the basis for transparent solar cells. Offering a view of the garden and an adjacent field, it looks like any other window. But this window offers an additional feature: it also produces electricity. The facades of the house, too, harness solar energy to supply the occupants with...

Fast and affordable genome sequencing has moved a step closer with a new solid-state nanopore sensor being developed by researchers at the University of Illinois.The nanopore sensor, made by drilling a tiny hole through a thin film of aluminum oxide, could ultimately prove capable of performing DNA analysis with a single molecule, offering tremendous possibilities for personalized medicine and advanced diagnostics."Solid-state nanopore sensors have shown superior chemical, thermal and...

CHENGDU, China, May 15 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- The Board of Directors of Apollo Solar Energy, Inc., (OTC Bulletin Board: ASOE; "Apollo Solar Energy" or "the Company"), a leading vertically integrated miner and refiner of tellurium (Te) and high-purity tellurium based metals for specific segments of the global electronic materials market, today announced financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2009. Revenue for the first quarter of 2009 increased 21% to $2.3...

Parachute cords, climbing ropes, and smart coatings for bridges that change color when overstressed are several possible uses for force-sensitive polymers being developed by researchers at the University of Illinois.The polymers contain mechanically active molecules called mechanophores. When pushed or pulled with a certain force, specific chemical reactions are triggered in the mechanophores."This offers a new way to build function directly into synthetic materials," said Nancy...