A team of experts has produced flexible, transparent film of carbon atoms that have great potential for a new class of solar cells.

Organic photovoltaic cells (OPV) have been proposed as a means of obtaining cheap energy because of its ease of production, light weight, and compatibility with flexible substrates. Now, the new technique will enable progress toward an innovative design of OPV cells has important advantages, particularly in the area of physical flexibility. (more…)

For centuries, the fibers have been used as feedstock for the production of fabrics and strings. In the information age, optical fibers carry data over communications networks. But Yoel Fink, a professor of materials science and principal investigator of the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, the threads used in the textile industry and even in the optical fibers are too passive. During the last decade, the laboratory has been working to develop fibers with increasingly sophisticated properties.

Fink and his colleagues have just announced a new milestone on the road to functional fibers: fibers can detect and produce sound. Applications could include clothing that is in itself a sensitive microphone to capture speech or monitor body functions, and small filaments that could measure blood flow in the capillaries or the pressure in the brain. (more…)

Electric batteries could result in increased energy capacity as a result of a new finding of researchers at MIT. They have found that using carbon nanotubes to an electrode of the battery is a significant increase, up to ten times the amount of energy that can provide, to the same weight and same basic material, compared to a conventional battery Lithium-ion.

Such electrodes may be useful for many types of portable devices. In addition, this research could also lead to improvements in batteries to permit their use in applications with higher power consumption. (more…)

A team of researchers are unraveling one of the secrets of spider silk more closely guarded, and finding an explanation of why this silk is so strong.

Researchers at the Center for Science and Engineering Materials of MIT believe that the key to the resistance of certain types of silk, which exceeds that of steel itself, is in some crystals nanometric maintaining a piece of the material.

The investigators, in center for the Science and Engineering of the Materials, assigned to the Technological Institute of Massachusetts (MIT), think that the key of the resistance of certain types of silk, that surpasses to the one of the own steel, is in some nanométric crystals that maintain a piece of the material. (more…)

A newly discovered way to convert sunlight to electricity could improve in the future photovoltaic technology. It has discovered a new mechanism by which can take place the photovoltaic effect in semiconductor thin films. This new path for electricity production is not affected by it suffer some limitation to conventional solar cells in the solid state.

Working with a ceramic made of bismuth, iron and oxygen, which also presents simultaneously ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered the photovoltaic effect can occur spontaneously in the nano field as a result of structural distorted crystal in certain ceramics. They have also shown that the application of an electric field makes it possible to manipulate this crystal structure and thus control the photovoltaic properties. (more…)

A Duke University engineers have created a new generation of lenses that could greatly improve the capabilities of telecommunications and radar systems, providing a wide field of view and a level of detail than that possible today.

But they designed the lens does not look like a lens as usual lens. While traditional lenses are made of transparent substances such as glass or plastic, and have highly polished surfaces, the new lens is more like a shutter in miniature. Despite this, their ability to control the direction of electromagnetic rays that pass through it dramatically exceeds that of a conventional lens. (more…)

For the first time, scientists at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories and Lawrence Berkeley have meticulously reviewed this material and created three-dimensional images for resistance and new potential applications.

Aerogel is a form of nanofoam, a material designed to have a high rate of resistance to the weight. Nanofoam such structures are also present in scientific fields such as geology, bone structure, polymers and structural materials, wherever they are needed the low weight and resistance. (more…)

A new technique for creating films of barium titanate nano particles in a polymer matrix could allow fabrication of improved capacitors able to store as much as twice the energy of conventional devices. The improved capacitors could be used in everyday appliances like mobile phones, and in applications that require both storage of large amounts of energy and the rapid current discharge.

Because of its high dielectric properties, barium titanate has been of interest for a long time for use in capacitors, but until recently scientists had been unable to produce good dispersion of the material within a polymer matrix. (more…)