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Spray-painted solar cells promise cheap power on seemingly any surface
Scientists have dreamed of painting solar cells to generate energy on just about any surface, but efficiency has been a problem; researchers were happy to get one percent just a couple of years ago. At last, though, it looks like viable paint-on power is close at hand. A team at the University of Sheffield has developed spray-on cells that should be both cheap and capable. The trick is to coat an object in perovskite, a calcium titanium oxide mineral -- it's inexpensive like organic solar cells, but absorbs light nearly as well as silicon.
Researchers develop cell spray to repair hearts, healthy dose of electricity included
Spray-on solutions have found a place in green technology and even in transmitting radio waves, and they're no strangers to medical research, either. Researchers at the British Heart Foundation are working on a bioelectric spray composed of heart cells to help mend that most vital of organs. Because the cells need to be extremely thin to form a sheet of heart tissue, they are passed through a conductive needle that charges them with up to 30,000 volts. Exposing the cells to an electric field turns the solution into small droplets, which in turn form the cardiac sheet. The scientists can also add other types of cells to create "three-dimensional" tissue, which can be grafted onto injured hearts or sprayed onto scar tissue to help patients' tickers pump more strongly. As is so often the case, the next step will be testing the technology on animals, and the project's ultimate goal is to use this spray-on solution rather than making patients wait for donor hearts.
Spray-on antenna revealed: best thing to come in a can since Easy Cheese (video)
Ever found yourself without a signal and wished you could just spray one on like magic? Well, maybe soon, you'll be able to do just that. Chamtech Enterprises has developed a spray-on antenna it says is more lightweight and energy-efficient than current technology. Revealed at Google's inaugural Solve for X shindig, the antenna can be "painted" onto almost anything, including trees, walls and fabrics. Chamtech's already talking with government-based customers, and as such can't spill too much detail on how it works, but said it uses organic elements to tinker with magnetic and radio-frequency fields. The start-up's CTO, Rhett Spencer, claims the antenna could increase mobile energy efficiency by 10 percent. It was also found to work particularly well under water, and being organic, we presume, would make it ideal for sub-aquatic telecom infrastructure, and of course, rainy days.
Notre Dame heralds paint-on solar cells, wants to smear your home with its goop (video)
Leave it to the Fighting Irish to take a stab at solving the world's energy woes. Notre Dame researchers have successfully developed solar cells that can be easily painted on to any conductive surface. Imagine, for a moment, applying this solution to your home rather than attaching solar panels to the roof. The paint mixture incorporates quantum dots of titanium dioxide, which is then coated with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide, and is then suspended in mixture of water and alcohol to create a spreadable compound that's capable of generating electricity. While its efficiency isn't currently much to crow home about -- which hovers around one-percent -- scientists are now actively pursuing ways to improve this aspect while making a more stable compound. Most importantly, the paint can be made cheaply and in large quantities, which suggests that even if efficiency remains in the doldrums, it may be a very worthwhile pursuit. Touchdown Jesus is already watching the video after the break.
Quantum dots could coat the world in nano-sized solar panels
We've long believed in the mystical power of quantum dots, so it makes perfect sense to us that one day they'll be used to fully harness the Sun God's rays and thereby save the planet. The nano-particles turn light into electricity, and could potentially be manufactured cheaply and abundantly enough to coat surfaces in current-generating paint. The main obstacle to this has so far been efficiency: the clever little dots just don't work very hard. However, scientists at the University of Toronto now claim to have discovered a fix. Instead of using a single layer of particles, which can only harvest one meager wavelength from the full gamut of solar light, they added a second coat on top and configured it to be sensitive to an additional part of the spectrum. By adding third and fourth layers, the researchers hope to achieve a commercially viable efficiency of 10-percent within the next five years. We humbly call on Ra to be pleased with their efforts.
Over the counter, spray-on stem cell treatment could heal burns on the go
Research at the University of Utah could lead to burn treatment on the go that makes use of your body's own cells. Surgeons Amit Patel and Amalia Cochran are researching the use of stem cells in conjunction with several chemicals as a spray-on jelly which has, in early testing, shown to accelerate the healing process of burns. While the team is starting with small burns, its goal is to be able to provide fast and effective, actual regeneration of a patient's own cells to be grafted onto large area burns. Video of the project is after the break.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: fly like a bird, bend batteries in half, and spray clothing from a can
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. This week saw several amazing feats of aeronautics as we showcased the world's first continuous flight of a human-powered ornithopter and the sun-powered Solar Impulse plane embarked upon an incredible voyage across Switzerland. We also watched transportation take off as BMW unveiled a zippy new electric scooter, Sanitov launched a GPS enabled cargo tricycle in London, and this week's Green Overdrive show took us off-roading on a souped-up e-bike! Renewable energy tech also energized the globe as several countries in Central America launched plans to tap volcanoes for power and China developed the world's first directly solar-powered air conditioning unit. Energy storage also got a big boost as Stanford researchers unveiled a new type of bendable battery made out of paper - just the thing to power the flexible e-readers of the future. In other news, this week we brought you exclusive coverage of the greatest green designs from this year's London Design Festival and we showcased the latest in wearable tech - instant spray-on clothing in a can! Finally, we tackled an issue that has plagued tech junkies forever - those impossible-to-open clamshell plastic packages.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: frozen energy, spray-on solar and the hydrogen peroxide helicopter
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. It was a big week for green transportation as San Francisco broke ground on its massive green-roofed Transbay Transit Center and unveiled plans to install 5,000 EV charging stations throughout the Bay Area. We were also wowed by several fun new forms of alternative transportation - a single-person helicopter that emits nothing but water vapor and a human-powered car that can go 30 MPH while driving uphill! It was also an exciting week for energy storage tech as New York prepared to power up the world's first grid-scale flywheel energy plant and researchers cracked the code on a new cryogenic energy storage system. We also showcased a plan for a ribbon-like solar field that unfurls over the desert and saw researchers unveil a transparent solar spray that can transform practically any surface into a sun-capturing source of energy. In other news, solar tech energized the arena of interior lighting as we showcased an adorable solar-powered table lamp and were dazzled by this set of folding OLED origami lights. Finally, a team of scientists blew our minds with this light-bending invisibility cloak made from gold-coated silk.
Scottish brainiacs develop spray-on computer for medical analysis
Spray-on gadgetry isn't exactly new, but the possibility of spritzing a computer on your epidermis most certainly piqued our interest. A team of Scottish scientists have reportedly "developed a computer the size of a matchstick head, thousands of which can be sprayed onto patients to give a comprehensive analysis of their condition." The device(s) joins the ever-growing array of communication-enabled health sensors aimed at helping the elderly stay in contact with their doctors even in remote locations, and can compute a variety of inputs such as blood pressure, muscle movement, and pulse rate. The technology, dubbed speckled computing, can even be rigged to transmit information via radio waves, meaning that a full-fledged diagnostic report could get a whole lot less invasive if this stuff pans out.[Via MedGadget, photo courtesy of EISF]
