By CrunchGear, on 2009.11.26, 11:00.21 am
Sanyo is in the news today, and again it’s about the company’s green tech power. The company today announced [JP] it will do everything to become Japan’s top player in the domestic solar industry by 2012 and eventually one of the top three solar companies on a global level. At the same time, the Nikkei reports [registration required, paid subscription] that Sanyo has succeeded in developing a solar cell that’s thinner than a human hair.
The company says it will benefit greatly from a new feed-in tariff program by the Japanese government introduced this month for green energy firms. Another factor for Sanyo’s self-confidence should be the speed with which it innovates. Their new prototype solar cell is just 58 micrometers thick, about one-fourth of most solar cells currently out there. (Sorry, there’s no picture available yet)
It’s made of two types of silicon whose structure Sanyo optimized to achieve a conversion efficiency of 22%. It’s said to be as bendable as paper, meaning it can be used for a variety of purposes, for example on uneven surfaces.
Sanyo says this technology might help reduce prices by as much as 25% when compared to solar cells available today. The company wants to commercialize the solar cells by 2020.
By CrunchGear, on 2009.10.07, 08:00.38 pm
 Man has long been on a quest for a better battery. This has resulted in some less then ideal solutions, such as the potato battery (it was half baked) and the onion battery (too smelly). Finally, researchers at the University of Missouri have developed a smaller, more efficient, and hopefully radiation free nuclear battery.
To be fair, there are already a few nuclear batteries around, but the problem with them is they break down rather quickly. This is due to the obvious problem of radioactivity causing the semiconductor to break down. The current versions of the nuclear batteries are used in satellites and pacemakers.
Where the innovation comes in, is the size and how it’s made. The researchers have stated that their goal is to create a battery that is the size of a penny, using a liquid instead of a solid semiconductor. The long term goal, is to take the technology even farther, and create a nuclear battery that is smaller then the thickness of a human hair. Sounds like a great idea to me.
[via BoingBoing]
By CrunchGear, on 2009.09.09, 02:30.19 pm
While the developed nations of the world spend huge amounts of money trying to eek out just a little more efficiency from traditional solar panels made from silicon, an industrious young lad from Nepal has figured out how to use human hair to get 9V of electricity from the sun. The fine articles are a little light (ha!) on the science, but even if there’s some hyperbole in these reports you’ve got to admit that it’s still wicked cool to use human hair to convert solar rays into electricity.
Milan Karki has been on a quest to find reliable, renewable energy for his little village for some time. When he realized that Melanin, the pigment in hair that produces color, is a conductor of electricity he knew he was on to something.
‘First I wanted to provide electricity for my home, then my village. Now I am thinking for the whole world,’ said Milan, who attends school in the capital, Kathmandu.
Solar power via human hair is not only remarkably cheap, it’s also something that could be field serviced by nearly anyone, which I think is the real take-away from this story. It’s one thing to install a solar power solution, but it’s another to maintain it over the long haul. If villagers in Nepal can service these things themselves, look out world!
Via Daily Mail, by way of Dvorak.
By CrunchGear, on 2009.07.07, 10:00.42 pm
“Biomimetic miniature flying platforms” appears to be the theme this week. Just a few days ago we saw a meant to hover in and out of buildings, and now there’s this ro-bat being put together at North Carolina State University. Here is my question: were there not enough bats in the world already?
The idea is that these micro air vehicles, or MAVs, would carry small sensors and be able to investigate, say, a radioactive or toxic area that other robots can’t access. Check out the way the bat works:
We’re using an alloy that responds to the heat from an electric current. That heat actuates micro-scale wires the size of a human hair, making them contract like ‘metal muscles.’
Yeah, I’m sure the machines will never be using these terrifying metal muscles against us when the time comes. At least these bat-things don’t have the power of flight yet; the researchers are putting together a full prototype with super-light materials (the whole thing weighs under 6g) so they can figure out just how to make that bat-flight thing work.
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