Head Blaze

Imagine having clothes made out of this stuff, this should be interesting when it makes it to market.  Put me down for a couple of yards.

A Tokyo-based venture called ideal Star [JP] has developed a new method that makes it possible to produce solar cells in the form of flexible and thin threads. The company is supported by a total of six Japanese universities and the government.

Source: Thin, flexible “solar threads” to turn fabrics into power generators

The current prototype cell is 5cm long and just 0.8mm in diameter. ideal Star says the core consists of polymer material and is surrounded by an electrode layer, and layers for hole transport, power-generating (this layer is made from fullerene), electron transport and another (transparent) electrode layer.

Once the company finds a way to make the threads longer, they could be woven into power-generating solar sheets or solar power fabrics for clothing or curtains. As a first practical application, sheets consisting of these threads will be used on rice paddies (while they are being rested) to generate solar power.

The solar threads feature an energy conversion efficiency of just around 3%, but ideal Star claims 10% are possible. The picture above shows amperage being measured from one of the threads that’s exposed to light.

ideal Star estimates mass-production of their products would be cheaper than that of standard silicon solar cells. For example, all layers in the threads are coated down, meaning production requires no expensive semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The company hopes to commercialize the technology within the next five years.

Researchers at Florida State University have discovered crystals that could lead to super security chips as well as contribute to the discovery of materials that expand the capacity of electronic storage devices by 1,000 to 1 million times.

The security chips could store encrypted data written two different ways — electrically and magnetically — making extraction of the data more complex and so more difficult for attackers to decrypt. Continue Reading »

Microelectromechanical devices gave us the Wii and the digital movie projector. MIT researchers have found a new way to make them.
Microelectromechanical devices — tiny machines with moving parts — are everywhere these days: they monitor air pressure in car tires, register the gestures of video game players, and reflect light onto screens in movie theaters. But they’re manufactured the same way computer chips are, in facilities that can cost billions of dollars, and their rigidity makes them hard to wrap around curved surfaces. Continue Reading »

UPTON, NY — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have obtained the first glimpse of miniscule air bubbles that keep water from wetting a super non-stick surface. Detailed information about the size and shape of these bubbles — and the non-stick material the scientists created by “pock-marking” a smooth material with cavities measuring mere billionths of a meter — is being published online today in the journal Nano Letters. Continue Reading »

We like to think that we’ve got hydrogen, one of the most basic of elements, figured out. However, hydrogen can still surprise, especially once scientists start probing its properties on the most fundamental levels. “We ran simulations in order to provide a quantitative map of the molecular to atomic transition in liquid hydrogen,” Isaac Tamblyn tells PhysOrg.com. “Some of what we found was surprising, and could change the basic equations of state used in models involving hydrogen.” Continue Reading »

Issam Mudawar a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, and doctoral student Milan Visaria display their first- and second-generation heat exchangers, a crucial component of a hydrogen storage system for cars. The final design is a coil of stainless steel tubing that fits inside a hydrogen storage “pressure vessel” 4 inches in diameter. Purdue has filed a final patent on the heat exchanger. Continue Reading »

Devices developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that could save the U.S. trucking industry $10 billion a year in diesel fuel are being tested at NASA Ames Research Center, home of the world’s largest wind tunnel.

LLNL and heavy truck and military vehicle-maker Navistar Inc. turned to NASA Ames to further develop and test the devices that are designed to sharply reduce the aerodynamic drag affecting semi-trucks, the project partners said this week.
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Scientists in France have transformed the chemical energy generated by photosynthesis into electrical energy by developing a novel biofuel cell. The advance offers a new strategy to convert solar energy into electrical energy in an environmentally-friendly and renewable manner. In addition, the biofuel cell could have important medical applications.

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This is real thinking cap stuff but I like anything that uses a Non-Newtonian fluid. This could be a real winner and I’ll be interested in seeing how this works for athletes and what the benefits are, if any.  I’d be willing to give a pair of these shoes a try.  Non-Newtonian fluid also know as Ooblick is fun to play with and is also the inspiration for The Walking Lakes of Freggaire.

Brooks Sports, Inc. (www.brooksrunning.com), the only company in the world that offers footwear, apparel, and accessories exclusively for the runner, continues its pioneering history in the performance running industry by announcing today the launch of Brooks DNA, an innovative, first-of-its-kind cushioning system that adapts to the unique needs of each runner, offering customized cushioning and protection every step of every run.
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Hopefully this is for real and not another hurry up and wait. We need solar now more than ever before.

IBM researchers have developed a new class of solar-powered electricity-generating cells that they claim will bring photovoltaic cells closer to cost parity with conventional energy sources.

The researchers from IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York have published their findings in a paper entitled “High-Efficiency Solar Cell with Earth-Abundant Liquid-Processed Absorber,” available here (PDF).
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