Lifeboat Foundation

Earlier this spring, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner casually announced his intention to develop spacecraft that can travel at up to 20 percent the speed of light and reach Alpha Centauri within twenty years. From the outset, it was clear that no humans would be making the warp jump—the mission will involve extremely lightweight robotic spacecraft. A new fleet of tiny satellites hints at what those future interstellar voyagers will look like and be capable of.

Meet Sprites: sticky note-sized devices that sure look like the result of the Pentagon’s long-anticipated floppy disk purge, but are in fact state-of-the-art spacecraft complete with solar cells, a radio transceiver, and a tiny computer. Later this summer, a Cornell-led project called Kicksat-2 will launch 100 of these puppies to the International Space Station. There, the satellites will spend a few days field-testing their navigational hardware and communications systems before burning up in orbit.

The project’s lead engineers, Zachary Manchester and Mason Peck, are on the advisory committee for Breakthrough Starshot, an ambitious effort to reach our nearest neighboring star system within a generation. (In fact, the potato chip-sized computer Milner held up during a highly publicized press conference in April was Manchester’s own design.) Sprites, and the “chipsat” technology they’re based on, are a step toward that goal of interstellar travel. More generally, they’re an indication of the future of space exploration.

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It’s about solar power.

A family of compounds known as perovskites, which can be made into thin films with many promising electronic and optical properties, has been a hot research topic in recent years. But although these materials could potentially be highly useful in applications such as solar cells, some limitations still hamper their efficiency and consistency.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT and elsewhere say they have made significant inroads toward understanding a process for improving perovskites’ performance, by modifying the material using intense light. The new findings are being reported in the journal Nature Communications, in a paper by Samuel Stranks, a researcher at MIT; Vladimir Bulovic, the Fariborz Maseeh (1990) Professor of Emerging Technology and associate dean for innovation; and eight colleagues at other institutions in the U.S. and the U.K. The work is part of a major research effort on perovskite materials being led by Stranks, within MIT’s Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory.

Tiny defects in perovskite’s crystalline structure can hamper the conversion of light into electricity in a solar cell, but “what we’re finding is that there are some defects that can be healed under light,” says Stranks, who is a Marie Curie Fellow jointly at MIT and Cambridge University in the U.K. The tiny defects, called traps, can cause electrons to recombine with atoms before the electrons can reach a place in the crystal where their motion can be harnessed.

Australian solar technicians with the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium have announced that they will soon put a new printable solar cell technology on the market.

Nice new method in producing Q-Dots which seems to be more cost effective, efficient and reliable.

Large-scale technique to produce quantum dots.

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Using the power of nano to solar power our homes at night.

MIT researchers have built a new experimental solar cell which could greatly enhance power efficiency. The “Shockley-Queisser’ limit is the estimated maximum efficiency of a solar cell, which is commonly about 32%; that means almost 70% of energy is wasted in the form of heat.

One way to reduce energy loss is by stacking cells. However if sunlight could be turned into heat and then be re-emitted as light, the solar cells could utilize more energy. Solar cells work best with visible light which occurs midway of the radiation spectrum. As a result the radiations with shorter and greater wavelengths usually go to waste.

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Got to luv this.

Is this brand new type of battery the key to clean energy and off-grid electricity?

Lithium-ion batteries are having a moment. After becoming the de facto battery in laptops and cell phones over the years, they’re now starting to power electric cars (like those made by Tesla) and plug into the power grid.

Continue reading “A Battery Made From Metal and Air Is Electrifying the Developing World” »

Q-Dots ORNL style.

VIDEO: A method to produce significant amounts of semiconducting nanoparticles for light-emitting displays, sensors, solar panels and biomedical applications has gained momentum with a demonstration by researchers at Oak Ridge National… view more

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Nice.

NILES, Ill., May 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — MicroLink Devices is proud to announce that Airbus Defence and Space has issued a production contract for MicroLink’s epitaxial liftoff (ELO)-based multijunction solar sheets for use on the new Zephyr S platform.

Photo — http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160517/368562

Continue reading “Airbus Defence and Space Enters Solar Cell Production Contract with MicroLink Devices for Next Generation Zephyr HAPS” »