Because solar energy is available in large excess relative to current rates of energy consumption, effective conversion of this renewable yet intermittent resource into a transportable and dispatchable chemical fuel may ensure the goal of a sustainable energy future. However, low conversion efficiencies, particularly with CO(2) reduction, as well as utilization of precious materials have limite...

Dye aggregation and concomitant reduction of dye excited-state lifetimes and electron-injection yields constitute a significant mechanism for diminution of light-to-electrical energy conversion efficiencies in many dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs). For TiO2-based DSCs prepared with an archetypal donor-acceptor organic dye, (E)-2-cyano-3-(5'-(5''-(p-(diphenylamino)phenyl)-thiophen-2''-yl)thioph...

Solar-energy conversion usually takes one of two forms: the 'quantum' approach, which uses the large per-photon energy of solar radiation to excite electrons, as in photovoltaic cells, or the 'thermal' approach, which uses concentrated sunlight as a thermal-energy source to indirectly produce electricity using a heat engine. Here we present a new concept for solar electricity generation, photon...

In contrast to lower eukaryotes, most vertebrate cells are characterized by a moderate efficiency of homologous recombination (HR) and limited feasibility of targeted genetic modifications. As a notable exception, the chicken DT40 B cell line is distinguished by efficient homology-mediated repair of DNA lesions during Ig gene conversion, and also shows exceptionally high gene-targeting efficien...

Enhancement of optical absorption in thin-film solar cells (TF-SCs) has been the long-lasting issue to achieve high efficiencies. Grating couplers have been studied for the conversion of incident light into guided modes propagating along TF-SCs to extend optical path for higher optical absorption. However the wavelength band for the efficient conversion remained relatively narrow and the overal...

Pump pulse duration is shown to determine the maximum efficiency of the up conversion process in ytterbium, thulium co-doped fluoride crystals through its role in determining the emitter temperature reached. We show that up-conversion efficiencies should only be measured when using the same pumping conditions as would be used in a proposed application and that thermal management of the up conve...

We study the effect of polymer thickness, hole mobility, and morphology on the device properties of polymer-based photovoltaics consisting of MEH-PPV as the optically active layer, TiO2 as the exciton dissociation surface, and ITO and Au electrodes. We demonstrate that the conversion efficiency in these polymerbased photovoltaics is primarily limited by the short exciton diffusion length combin...

Selective solar absorbers generally have limited effectiveness in unconcentrated sunlight, because of reradiation losses over a broad range of wavelengths and angles. However, metamaterials offer the potential to limit radiation exchange to a proscribed range of angles and wavelengths, which has the potential to dramatically boost performance. After globally optimizing one particular class of s...

Precursor inks development contributed significantly to rapid escalations in solar-to-electrical conversion efficiencies of peorvskite solar cell technology.