Thought for the month

"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen" Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. 1870 – 1924

Wednesday, 7 October 2015

Cool it

An interesting but simple piece of work at Stanford University is aimed at improving the efficiency of solar cells. The hotter they get, the less efficient they become at converting photons into electricity. The Stanford solution is to shunt away the heat. The concept is based on a thin, patterned silica material laid on top of a traditional solar cell. The material is transparent to the visible sunlight but absorbs and emits thermal radiation.

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