Recent advances in solar cell technology use polycrystalline perovskite films as the active layer, with an increase to efficiency of as much as 24.2%. Hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites are especially successful, and they ...
Condensed Matter
Jul 30, 2019
0
648
On an intuitive level, you'd expect a shark's skin to reduce drag. After all, the purpose of sharkskin-inspired riblets—the micro-grooved structures found in aircraft wings, wind turbine blades and Olympic-class swimsuits—is ...
Soft Matter
Mar 15, 2016
2
31
Conventional electronics rely on controlling electric charge. Recently, researchers have been exploring the potential for a new technology, called spintronics, that relies on detecting and controlling a particle's spin. This ...
General Physics
Jan 29, 2018
0
141
Silicon solar cells dominate 90 percent of the global photovoltaic market today, yet the record power conversion efficiency of silicon photovoltaics has progressed merely from 25 percent to 25.6 percent during the past 15 ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 24, 2015
4
841
A new, environmentally-friendly electronic alloy consisting of 50 aluminum atoms bound to 50 atoms of antimony may be promising for building next-generation "phase-change" memory devices, which may be the data-storage technology ...
Electronics & Semiconductors
Sep 13, 2013
2
0
Terahertz radiation, the no-man's land of the electromagnetic spectrum, has long stymied researchers. Optical technologies can finagle light in the shorter-wavelength visible and infrared range, while electromagnetic techniques ...
General Physics
Aug 4, 2015
3
127
Near the end of the movie Apollo 13, which depicts the harrowing journey of the three astronauts aboard the aborted 1970 lunar mission, the tension mounts in textbook fashion. As the spacecraft hurdles into Earth's atmosphere ...
Plasma Physics
Jun 16, 2015
3
1478
Despite their hefty price tag, smartphones have an average consumer lifetime of about three years. The lithium ion batteries that power them, however, can last for about five years—meaning that just about every discarded ...
Energy & Green Tech
Apr 19, 2016
3
1397
Droplets in space can grow freakishly large and bounce off nonwetting surfaces in truly unearthly ways. Astronauts frequently encounter huge droplets, and Scott Kelly recently demonstrated their unusual behavior aboard the ...
Condensed Matter
Oct 18, 2016
0
483
Avalanching sand from dune faces in Death Valley National Park and the Mojave Desert can trigger loud, rumbling "booming" or short bursts of "burping" sounds—behaving as a perfectly tuned musical instrument.
Soft Matter
Oct 27, 2015
0
93
