Making equal-size colloidal quantum dots

Quantum dots (QDs) are semiconductor particles only a few nanometers across that, thanks to their small size, exhibit peculiar optical and electronic properties due to quantum mechanics. With existing and foreseen applications ...

InSight Mars lander gets a power boost

The team behind NASA's InSight Mars lander has come up with an innovative way to boost the spacecraft's energy at a time when its power levels have been falling. The lander's robotic arm trickled sand near one solar panel, ...

Professor works to maximize efficiency of solar light pipes

If you have witnessed the rainbow pattern that dances on the surface of a CD or DVD, then you have seen diffraction at work. The disk acts as a diffraction grating, an optical element that disperses light into various colors ...

A new era of spaceflight? Promising advances in rocket propulsion

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has recently commissioned three private companies, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics, to develop nuclear fission thermal rockets for use in lunar orbit.

Carbon dots from human hair boost solar cells

QUT researchers have used carbon dots, created from human hair waste sourced from a Brisbane barbershop, to create a kind of "armor" to improve the performance of cutting-edge solar technology.

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