Solar Cell Game Changer

A simple processing technique cuts cost of organic photovoltaics and wearable electronics

07-Dec-2016 - With a new technique for manufacturing single-layer organic polymer solar cells, scientists at UC Santa Barbara and three other universities might very well move organic photovoltaics into a whole new generation of wearable devices and enable small-scale distributed power generation. The simple ...

For wearable electronic devices plastic holes are golden

25-Nov-2016 - In science, sometimes the best discoveries come when you're exploring something else entirely. That's the case with recent findings from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where a research team has come up with a way to build safe, nontoxic gold wires onto flexible, thin ...

Supersonic spray yields new nanomaterial for bendable, wearable electronics

24-Nov-2016 - A new, ultrathin film that is both transparent and highly conductive to electric current has been produced by a cheap and simple method devised by an international team of nanomaterials researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Korea University. The film is also bendable and ...

Semiconductor-free microelectronics are now possible, thanks to metamaterials

09-Nov-2016 - Engineers at the University of California San Diego have fabricated the first semiconductor-free, optically-controlled microelectronic device. Using metamaterials, engineers were able to build a microscale device that shows a 1,000 percent increase in conductivity when activated by low voltage ...

Tiny graphene radios may lead to Internet of Nano-Things

03-Nov-2016 - For wireless communication, we're all stuck on the same traffic-clogged highway - it's a section of the electromagnetic spectrum known as radio waves. Advancements have made the highway more efficient, but bandwidth issues persist as wireless devices proliferate and the demand for data grows. The ...

The unexpected hardness of gallium nitride

31-Oct-2016 - Gallium nitride (GaN) has emerged as one of the most important and widely used semiconducting materials. Its optoelectronic and mechanical properties make it ideal for a variety of applications, including light-emitting diodes (LEDs), high-temperature transistors, sensors and biocompatible ...

Electric current at record speed

Scientists have generated the fastest electric current that has ever been measured inside a solid material

27-Oct-2016 - In the field of electronics, the principle 'the smaller, the better' applies. Some building blocks of computers or mobile phones, however, have become nearly as small today as only a few atoms. It is therefore hardly possible to reduce them any further. Another factor for the performance of ...

LANXESS increases focus on E&E industry

24-Oct-2016 - The use of thermoplastics in the electrical and electronics industry (E&E) will continue to grow strongly in the future thanks to megatrends such as Industry 4.0, LED lighting and the digital networking of building services engineering, household appliances and entertainment electronics. ...

Crystal clear imaging

Infrared brings to light nanoscale molecular arrangement

17-Oct-2016 - Detailing the molecular makeup of materials -- from solar cells to organic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and transistors, and medically important proteins -- is not always a crystal-clear process. To understand how materials work at these microscopic scales, and to better design materials to ...

Ultra-thin ferroelectric material for next-generation electronics

17-Oct-2016 - 'Ferroelectric' materials can switch between different states of electrical polarization in response to an external electric field. This flexibility means they show promise for many applications, for example in electronic devices and computer memory. Current ferroelectric materials are highly ...