Much organically bound carbon is deposited on inland lake bottoms. A portion remains in the sediment, sometimes for thousands of years, while the rest is largely broken down to carbon dioxide and methane, which are released into the atmosphere. Swedish researchers have shown that carbon retention by sediment is highly temperature-sensitive and that a warmer climate would result in increased carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere.
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A new and simple method for producing cheap electronic components has been developed by researchers in Sweden.
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A key advantage with this method of patterning is that it is both simple and scalable, which means that it can be useful in future production of cheap and flexible electronics in an assembly line process.
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Electronic components with various functions can then be created by patterning the film with a specific structure. Until now it has proven to be problematic to carry out this patterning in a simple way without destroying the electronic properties of the organic material.
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Irans nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Iran was ready to co-operate with the international community over the countrys National Fusion Energy Project, the Students News Agency ISNA reported, without mentioning the plan to build the reactor.
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In 2006, Iran said it was pressing ahead with research tests on nuclear fusion, a type of atomic reaction which has yet to be developed for commercial power generation, but this was the first mention in years that the work was continuing.
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A new design principle helps to save costs, too: Until now, the front electrode, the one that faces the sun, has usually been made of expensive indium tin oxide because this material is transparent. But now there is an alternative: The Fraunhofer crew has interconnected a poorly conductive transparent polymer electrode with a highly conductive metal layer on the rear side of the solar cell. This connection is done trough numerous tiny holes in the solar cell .This has the advantage that a low-priced material can be used. The idea has already been patented.
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Nevertheless, organic solar cells are not intended to compete with classic silicon cells ? they are not nearly efficient enough to do that just yet. Because they are flexible, however, they can open up new fields of application: Plastic solar cells could supply the power for small mobile devices such as MP3 players or electronic ski passes. Another possibility would be to combine solar cells, sensors and electronic circuits on a small strip of plastic to form a self-sufficient power microsystem.
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While graphenes existence has been known for decades, it has only been studied extensively since 2004 because of the difficulty of manufacturing it in high quality and in quantity.
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A critical aspect of any OPV photo-electronic device is a transparent conductive electrode through which light can couple with active materials to create electricity. The new work indicates that graphene, a highly conductive and highly transparent form of carbon made up of atoms-thick sheets of carbon atoms, has high potential to fill this role.
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A University of Southern California team has produced flexible transparent carbon atom films that the researchers say have great potential for a new breed of solar cells.
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The technique described in the article describes progress toward a novel OPV cell design that has significant advantages, particularly in the area of physical flexibility.