You know what we love? Solar-powered gadgets, and
carbon nanotubes. Oh, and Ivy League schools. Boffins from Cornell University are now looking to use the multifaceted carbon nanotube instead of silicon to develop efficient solar cells, and judging by the
glacial pace at which solar cell efficiency is
improving, we'd say the sector could use the boost. The researchers have already fabricated, tested and measured a simple solar cell (called a photodiode, just so you know) that was formed from an individual carbon nanotube. The tube was essentially a rolled-up sheet of
graphene, and while the inner workings would take days to explain, the gist of it is this:
"The nanotube may be a nearly ideal photovoltaic cell because it allowed electrons to create more electrons by utilizing the spare energy from the light."
So, solar-powered F-350 trucks are now a possibility for next year, right?
[Via
Graphene-Info]
posted Sep 17th 2009 10:21PM
two things we really need big improvements in: solar cells and batteries. battery tech (i'm talking mostly about capacity) has been improving at a snails pace for years.
Agreed on both counts!
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/08/scientists-create-paper-thin-flexible-biodegradable-battery.ars
Batteries are probably a dead end. We need micro-generators or fuel cells.
Agreed! I can personally say research in this field is very, very interesting! Two summers ago I had the opportunity doing work in this exact field (we initially experimented with thermophotovoltaic cells), but there is still much to be discovered of CNT's (and expecially multiwalled CNT's!) The biggest difficulty is in obtaining an efficiency value that is practical for daily use, and as of now we are nowhere near such a percentage.
But someday we will!
UT Dallas represent!
@billyhicks
Yeah especially because lithium air batteries promise 10x the capacity of lithium ion batteries. Quit spreading uneducated propaganda... Battery tech has a lot of promise over the next 5 years.
Fuel cells are great but they are altogether less efficient than batteries. Take hydrogen for example. Best case scenario from water to hydrogen is 85% efficiency. Then through a fuel cell to electricity is another 15% dip in efficiency. And by the way if we are talking about cars, they still need batteries. Its not like it goes direct from fuel cell to motor. FAIL
I'm glad that went way over your head.
Batteries are fine and dandy. They aren't going away and are only going to get better. Batteries have their place and are not going away.
Lithium air batteries. We'll see if they can get to work on a consumer level product and if the technology scales to large devices. However, the problem of lithium is still the scarcity of the material.
Micro-generator. A generator that can fit inside small devices like a cell phone. Plus, even if it does explode an alcohol based device will not explode with the force of lithium batteries.
Fuel cells. There are more than hydrogen fuel cells. These also work with fuels that will not create grossly dangerous explosions. Efficiency isn't much of an issue when the fuel itself can be generated in abundance for cheap.
The future, meaning not tomorrow, or next year, but years down the road. Batteries will likely eventually be replaced in many applications with generators unless there is some fundamental breakthrough in battery technology, (dead end technology is likely too strong of a word).
"Its not like it goes direct from fuel cell to motor." The point here is? I also don't expect the battery in my computer that runs the clock to ever be replaced. Batteries certainly will still have uses but their prevalence (capacity, number, etc.) is likely to take a hit from a variety of emerging technologies in the future.
I'm going to build a house out of carbon nanotubes
If you really wanted to be green, you'd build the hammer out of them first.
i saw something about this a while ago. they think it will be better because carbon is a lot darker than silicon i think.
"The nanotube may be a nearly ideal photovoltaic cell because it allowed electrons to create more electrons by utilizing the spare energy from the light."
What does this mean? electrons are creating electrons from energy. If that's the case, this would be big news indeed.
"electrons to create more electrons "? I studied physics in college; unless they are smashing electrons at relativistic speeds, that is hard to imagine.
[a little while later]
OK, so I read the whole paragraph from which the quote is selected. The preceding sentence is important. The excited electrons, it appears, imparts energy to still bound electrons, causing them to be freed, adding to the "current" of electrons already flowing through the nano-tubes. Ah, that makes more sense.
Thanks for the post. Now, I'm not a scientist (far from it), but I'm glad I wasn't the first one to look at that quote and think, well, "that was a whole lotta nuthin'." (Jamie Hyneman)
It's exciting to see something you read online daily to be related in class. I'm taking microelectronic materials (an EE class) and we just talked about carbon nanotubes, bucky balls, etc. cool stuff
same. we are covering solar panels in my ece for non-majors class and covering nanoparticle architectures in my biomaterials class. very cool to see the come together like this.
My master's thesis was on this very topic. However, I ended up deviating from the main topic since I could not optimize performance for a CNT solar cell. But the PhD student with whom I worked got some cool results and published his results. Although not a new concept I would like to see how efficient these were because the ones I was able to produce in lab were good as a proof of concept and publishing papers but for actual industrial application it's gonna take some time imho.
Maybe Cornell should be looking for Swine Flu vaccine instead
So your insinuating that the people at cornell who study Energy and other things that relate to this. Should take up medicine and work on swine flu? If so please refer to this:
http://i34.tinypic.com/2nvcs8z.jpg
"The nanotube may be a nearly ideal photovoltaic cell because it allowed electrons to create more electrons by utilizing the spare energy from the light."
Electrons create more electrons? Isn't this sort of contrary to the first law of conservation of matter? Perpetual motion machine!
But... it uses spare energy from light!
To quote Jeph Jaques: "Ah, carbon nanotubes. They are to modern half-assed science fiction what "radiation" was to half-assed science fiction fifty years ago."
The comic is my proof!
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1269
i love QC.
pshht, At least they finally found something that these carbon nanotube thingies might actually useful for. It's not like this dumb invention has any other purpose.