High Performance Electric Motorcycle Developed

This project, known as e-Moto, was created and developed by LGN Tech Design, aspin-offcompany that has its origins in a line of research begun in the Laboratorio de Máquinas (MAQLAB -- Machine Laboratory) of UC3M and receives support from the University's Vice-Chancellor's Office of Research through the Business Incubator UC3M Science Park."The technology that we have developed is a result of the design of a platform for the modeling, analysis and evolution of racing motorcycles, which was then applied to the development of the e-Moto," comments the head of the MAQLAB, Professor Juan Carlos García Prada, of the Mechanical Engineering Department at UC3M.

The prototype of the e-Moto recently participated in the first FIM E-Power electric motorcycle world championship (100% electric), organized by the International Motorcycling Federation. The model came in third, a position of merit according to its creators, who point out that, although there were only three contestants on the track at the Magny-Cours circuit in France, the motorcycle managed to finish the race with no mechanical problems whatsoever.

This is a vehicle that was conceived as an electric motorcycle from the very beginning, with battery recharging systems that offer quite remarkable results, and which are similar to those of an automobile. Among the technical features of the prototype, its light weight (145 Kg.) in comparison with other existing models stands out, as does its alternating current motor, which boasts a maximum 95 horsepower. It also features a system for recharging its batteries when braking and an innovative front suspension based on a system that has already been tested in other research projects.

A global e-motorcycle

This first prototype, according to its promoters, is the beginning of the worldwide development of electric motorcycles that goes beyond current electric motorcycles, the majority of which are of the scooter type. The creators of this project recognize that in this phase of the development of Spanish electric motorcycles, the support of public and private institutions is needed, in order to allow for the evolution of what will be the first Spanish company to develop high performance electric motorcycles.

The idea is that an electric motorcycle offers great advantages over a conventional motorcycle."The most important thing, when considering its use in society, is the nearly complete elimination of gasses and the considerable reduction of noise and vibrations," explains Juan Carlos García Prada. Summing up, this is a Spanish research project that attempts to take advantage of advanced technology in order to create a more sustainable future.

The results of the different projects carried out within the university setting have lead to the creation of the UC3M LGN Tech Design Chaired Professorship."We have created this professorship in order to offer technological support to the students who have developed this project and who have carried out other research projects as well," comments Professor García Prada. A direct consequence of all of this interrelated activity by the university and the productive world is the stimulation of new teaching (through students' final projects, practicums, etc), as well as of R + D within UC3M in the automobile components area, within the context of the potentially huge market, considering both the institutional demand and that of society at large.

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Engineers Scale Up Process That Could Improve Economics of Ethanol Production

Now he knows the idea, which produces a new animal feed and cleans water that can be recycled back into ethanol production, works more efficiently in batches of up to 350 gallons than on a lab bench.

"We're learning we can reliably produce good quality and good quantities," said van Leeuwen, Iowa State's Vlasta Klima Balloun Professor of Engineering in the department of civil, construction and environmental engineering.

What van Leeuwen and a team of Iowa State researchers are producing is a fungus, Rhizopus oligosporus, that makes a high-quality, high-protein animal feed from the leftovers of ethanol production. The process of growing the fungus also cleans water from ethanol production so that it can be recycled back into fuel production. And the process, called MycoMeal, could one day produce a low-cost nutritional supplement for people.

The project has two patents pending and has won several major awards, including a 2008 R&D 100 Award presented by R&D Magazine, the 2008 Grand Prize for University Research presented by the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and a 2011 Honor Award in University Research from the academy. The project also contributed to R&D Magazine naming van Leeuwen its 2009 Innovator of the Year.

The research team working on the project is led by van Leeuwen and includes Nick Gabler and Mike Persia, assistant professors of animal science; Mary Rasmussen, a post-doctoral research associate in food science and human nutrition; Daniel Erickson, Christopher Koza and Debjani Mitra, graduate students; and Brandon Caldwell, a graduate of Iowa State. The project is supported by a three-year,$450,000 grant from the Iowa Energy Center and a Smithfield grant from the Office of the Iowa Attorney General. Lincolnway Energy of Nevada, Cellencor Corp. of Ames and Iowa State's Center for Crops Utilization Research and BioCentury Research Farm are also supporting the project.

Here's how their process works to improve dry-grind ethanol production:

For every gallon of ethanol produced, there are about five gallons of leftovers known as stillage. The stillage contains solids and other organic material. Most of the solids are removed by centrifugation and dried into distillers dried grains that are sold as livestock feed, primarily for cattle.

The remaining liquid, known as thin stillage, still contains some solids, a variety of organic compounds and enzymes. Because the compounds and solids can interfere with ethanol production, only about 50 percent of thin stillage can be recycled back into ethanol production. The rest is evaporated and blended with distillers dried grains to produce distillers dried grains with solubles.

The researchers add fungus to the thin stillage and it feeds and grows into a thick mass in less than a day -- van Leeuwen calls it"lightning-speed farming." The fungus removes about 60 percent of the organic material and most of the solids, allowing the water and enzymes in the thin stillage to be recycled back into production.

The fungus is then harvested and dried as animal feed that's rich in protein, certain essential amino acids and other nutrients. It can also be blended with distillers dried grains to boost its value as a livestock feed and make it more suitable for feeding hogs and chickens.

Van Leeuwen said the production technology can save United States ethanol producers up to$800 million a year in energy costs. He also said the technology can produce ethanol co-products worth another$800 million or more per year, depending on how it is used and marketed.

Now that the project has moved from a campus lab to the Iowa Energy Center's BECON facility in Nevada, van Leeuwen said researchers are working to improve the process at larger scales.

"We're adding and subtracting, doing things differently and redesigning our process all the time," he said.

Even so, the process has developed enough that researchers can use simple screens to harvest pellets of the fungus from the project's 20-foot high reactor. They're feeding some of the fungus to chickens and will soon start feeding tests with hogs. A next step could be testing the fungus for human consumption. (University leaders have tried the fungi and researchers regularly eat it, van Leeuwen said.)

As the project has successfully scaled up, so has van Leeuwen's optimism that the process could help the biofuels industry.

"Implementation of this process addresses criticism of biofuels by substantially lowering energy inputs and by increasing the production of nutritious animal feed," van Leeuwen said."The MycoMeal process could truly revolutionize the biofuels industry."

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What Electric Car Convenience Is Worth

Results of one study show the electric car attributes that are most important for consumers: driving range, fuel cost savings and charging time. The results are based on a national survey conducted by the researchers, UD professors George Parsons, Willett Kempton and Meryl Gardner, and Michael Hidrue, who recently graduated from UD with a doctoral degree in economics. Lead author Hidrue conducted the research for his dissertation.

The study, which surveyed more than 3,000 people, showed what individuals would be willing to pay for various electric vehicle attributes. For example, as battery charging time decreases from 10 hours to five hours for a 50-mile charge, consumers' willingness to pay is about$427 per hour in reduction time. Drop charging time from five hours to one hour, and consumers would pay an estimated$930 an hour. Decrease the time from one hour to 10 minutes, and they would pay$3,250 per hour.

For driving range, consumers value each additional mile of range at about$75 per mile up to 200 miles, and$35 a mile from 200-300 miles. So, for example, if an electric vehicle has a range of 200 miles and an otherwise equivalent gasoline vehicle has a range of 300, people would require a price discount of about$3,500 for the electric version. That assumes everything else about the vehicle is the same, and clearly there is lower fuel cost with an electric vehicle and often better performance. So all the attributes have to be accounted for in the final analysis of any car.

"This information tells the car manufacturers what people are willing to pay for another unit of distance," Parsons said."It gives them guidance as to what cost levels they need to attain to make the cars competitive in the market."

The researchers found that battery costs would need to decrease substantially without subsidy and with current gas prices for electric cars to become competitive in the market. However, the researchers said, the current$7,500 government tax credit could bridge the gap between electric car costs and consumers' willingness to pay if battery costs decline to$300 a kilowatt hour, the projected 2014 cost level by the Department of Energy. Many analysts believe that goal is within reach.

The team's analysis could also help guide automakers' marketing efforts -- it showed that an individual's likelihood of buying an electric vehicle increases with characteristics such as youth, education and an environmental lifestyle. Income was not important.

In a second recently published study, UD researchers looked at electric vehicle driving range using second-by-second driving records. That study, which is based on a year of driving data from nearly 500 instrumented gasoline vehicles, showed that 9 percent of the vehicles never exceeded 100 miles in a day. For those who are willing to make adaptations six times a year -- borrow a gasoline car, for example -- the 100-mile range would work for 32 percent of drivers.

"It appears that even modest electric vehicles with today's limited battery range, if marketed correctly to segments with appropriate driving behavior, comprise a large enough market for substantial vehicle sales," the authors concluded.

Kempton, who published the driving patterns article with UD marine policy graduate student Nathaniel Pearre and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology, pointed out that U.S. car sales are around 12 million in an average, non-recession year. Nine percent of that would be a million cars per year -- for comparison to current production, for example, Chevy plans to manufacture just 10,000 Volts in 2011.

By this measure, the potential market would justify many more plug-in cars than are currently being produced, Kempton said.

The findings of the two studies were reported online in March and February inResource and Energy EconomicsandTransportation Research, respectively.

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Lasers Take the Lead in Auto Manufacturing

The era of gas guzzlers that clatter through streets and pollute the air is over. Cars rolling off the assembly line today are cleaner, quieter and -- in terms of their performance weight -- more efficient than ever before. Nevertheless, development continues. Ever-stricter environmental regulations and steadily rising fuel costs are increasing the demand for cars that further reduce their impact on the environment. But customer demands are often tough for manufacturers to meet: car bodies should be safe yet light-weight and engines durable yet efficient. Year after year, new models must be developed and built that can claim to be better, more efficient, and more intelligent than the last.

The race against time and competitors places high demands on manufacturers and their suppliers. Lasers can help them win the race. Resistant to wear and universally applicable, laser light is an ideal tool in the manufacture of vehicles. Lasers can be used to join, drill, structure, cut or shape any kind of material. Surfaces can be engineered for motors and drive trains that create less friction and use less fuel. Lasers are not only a decisive key towards faster, more efficient and economical production, but also towards energy-saving vehicles. At Laser 2011, Fraunhofer scientists will demonstrate how we can use lasers to save time, money and energy.

A weight-loss program in automotive manufacturing

Extra pounds cost energy. They have to be accelerated and slowed down every time you drive -- over the entire lifespan of the car. To reduce weight, manufacturers are increasingly turning to the use of fiber-reinforced plastics, which are 30 to 50 percent lighter than metal. The disadvantage, however, is that these new materials are difficult to process. Fiber-reinforced plastics are brittle, meaning cutting and drilling tools are quickly worn out and the conventional assembly techniques used for metal components are often not appropriate."Lasers represent an ideal alternative here," explains Dr. Arnold Gillner of the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen."Lasers can cut fiber-reinforced plastics without wear and can join them too. With the appropriate lasers, we can cut and ablate components with minimal thermal side-effects. Lasers can also be used for welding light-weight components -- a viable alternative to conventional bonding technology. We can even join fiber-reinforced plastics to metals with laser welding. The laser roughens the metal surface, while the plastic, briefly-heated, penetrates the pores of the metal and hardens. The results are very stable."

Weight reduction can also be achieved with high-strength metallic materials. These, however, are difficult to process."Joining combinations of various materials allows us to make optimal use of the individual materials' specific properties. But this proves to be difficult in many cases," explains Dr. Anja Techel, Deputy Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden. Her team believes in lasers:"With our newly-developed integrated laser tools, we can now even weld together combinations of materials, free of fissures or cracks." At Laser 2011, Fraunhofer scientists will present, for the first time, a new welding head capable not only of focusing with extreme precision but of moving back and forth across the seam with high frequency to mix the molten materials. When they harden, they create a stable bond.

Laser replaces chemistry

Lasers also save time and money in tool design. The molds used in the production of plastic fixtures and steering wheels, for example, have to be structured to give the finished component a visually and tactilely appealing surface. Most car manufacturers order a design from their suppliers, whose surface typically has the appearance of leather. Until now, the negative pattern used to create the design has been etched out of the steel tools used in injection molding -- a tedious and time-consuming process."With lasers, the steel surface can not only be patterned more quickly, but also with greater scope for variety," explains Kristian Arntz of the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT."We can transfer any possible design directly from the CAD model to the tool surface: What will later become a groove in the plastic is preserved as a ridge, while the surrounding material is vaporized. The process is efficient, fully automatic, and highly variable."

Saving energy with low friction motors

Laser technology is also in demand in engine optimization. Engineers strive to keep friction as low as possible in order to improve efficiency."That is true not only for the electric engines currently being developed, but also for classic internal combustion engines and diesel motors, as well as transmissions and bearings," says Arnold Gillner of the ILT. Ceramic, high-performance coatings are especially desirable, because they are not only resistant to wear but also smooth, which generates less friction. Coated metal components have until now been prohibitively expensive, being produced in plasma chambers in which the ceramic was vaporized and applied to the surface of the components. Fraunhofer scientists have now developed a less expensive and faster method in which work pieces are coated with ceramic nano-particles, then treated with a laser. This finishing process has already been applied to gear wheels and bearings.

Lasers can even be used to make specific modifications to the properties of engine parts."Friction between the cylinder wall and piston is responsible for a big part of a motor's energy consumption. That is why we try to minimize it. This is especially important for engines featuring modern, automatic start-stop functions that are stressed by frequent ignition," says Gillner."To protect them, we have to ensure that the cylinder is always coated with a film of oil. Laser technology can help reduce friction with special structuring processes that improve oil adhesion." Fraunhofer researchers aim to increase the engine's life-span and reduce energy consumption in this way.

Fitness program for electric cars

Lasers can even increase the efficiency and life-span of electric batteries. That is good news for manufacturers and owners of electric cars, since batteries continue to be extremely expensive. The engineers and scientists at Fraunhofer are currently working on various solutions to make batteries more durable and less expensive. One approach is to increase the surface area of the electrodes with appropriate coating in order to increase their efficiency. Another approach involves analyzing and optimizing production processes.

Manufacturers produce batteries using one anode and one cathode cell, which they then connect. In theory that sounds pretty simple, but in practice the fusing of copper anodes with aluminum cathodes creates brittle connections that break easily. That presents a problem for application in cars that sometimes drive on cobblestone or dirt roads. With the help of lasers, researchers at the ILT have succeeded in forming durable connections between electrodes without creating the culprit brittle alloys. Researchers at the IWS in Dresden have developed an alternative solution in which a laser warms the surfaces and rollers press them together."Using roll plating with lasers and inductive pre-heating, we were able to create very stable connections with high electrical conductivity, with only a minimal loss of power," reports Anja Techel."The finished batteries are very efficient. And since only small amounts of electrical energy are transformed into heat, these batteries do not require as much cooling."

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Toward Faster Transistors: Physicists Discover Physical Phenomenon That Could Boost Computers' Clock Speed

In this week's issue of the journalScience,MIT researchers and their colleagues at the University of Augsburg in Germany report the discovery of a new physical phenomenon that could yield transistors with greatly enhanced capacitance -- a measure of the voltage required to move a charge. And that, in turn, could lead to the revival of clock speed as the measure of a computer's power.

In today's computer chips, transistors are made from semiconductors, such as silicon. Each transistor includes an electrode called the gate; applying a voltage to the gate causes electrons to accumulate underneath it. The electrons constitute a channel through which an electrical current can pass, turning the semiconductor into a conductor.

Capacitance measures how much charge accumulates below the gate for a given voltage. The power that a chip consumes, and the heat it gives off, are roughly proportional to the square of the gate's operating voltage. So lowering the voltage could drastically reduce the heat, creating new room to crank up the clock.

MIT Professor of Physics Raymond Ashoori and Lu Li, a postdoc and Pappalardo Fellow in his lab -- together with Christoph Richter, Stefan Paetel, Thilo Kopp and Jochen Mannhart of the University of Augsburg -- investigated the unusual physical system that results when lanthanum aluminate is grown on top of strontium titanate. Lanthanum aluminate consists of alternating layers of lanthanum oxide and aluminum oxide. The lanthanum-based layers have a slight positive charge; the aluminum-based layers, a slight negative charge. The result is a series of electric fields that all add up in the same direction, creating an electric potential between the top and bottom of the material.

Ordinarily, both lanthanum aluminate and strontium titanate are excellent insulators, meaning that they don't conduct electrical current. But physicists had speculated that if the lanthanum aluminate gets thick enough, its electrical potential would increase to the point that some electrons would have to move from the top of the material to the bottom, to prevent what's called a"polarization catastrophe." The result is a conductive channel at the juncture with the strontium titanate -- much like the one that forms when a transistor is switched on. So Ashoori and his collaborators decided to measure the capacitance between that channel and a gate electrode on top of the lanthanum aluminate.

They were amazed by what they found: Although their results were somewhat limited by their experimental apparatus, it may be that an infinitesimal change in voltage will cause a large amount of charge to enter the channel between the two materials."The channel may suck in charge -- shoomp! Like a vacuum," Ashoori says."And it operates at room temperature, which is the thing that really stunned us."

Indeed, the material's capacitance is so high that the researchers don't believe it can be explained by existing physics."We've seen the same kind of thing in semiconductors," Ashoori says,"but that was a very pure sample, and the effect was very small. This is a super-dirty sample and a super-big effect." It's still not clear, Ashoori says, just why the effect is so big:"It could be a new quantum-mechanical effect or some unknown physics of the material."

There is one drawback to the system that the researchers investigated: While a lot of charge will move into the channel between materials with a slight change in voltage, it moves slowly -- much too slowly for the type of high-frequency switching that takes place in computer chips. That could be because the samples of the material are, as Ashoori says,"super dirty"; purer samples might exhibit less electrical resistance. But it's also possible that, if researchers can understand the physical phenomena underlying the material's remarkable capacitance, they may be able to reproduce them in more practical materials.

Triscone cautions that wholesale changes to the way computer chips are manufactured will inevitably face resistance."So much money has been injected into the semiconductor industry for decades that to do something new, you need a really disruptive technology," he says.

"It's not going to revolutionize electronics tomorrow," Ashoori agrees."But this mechanism exists, and once we know it exists, if we can understand what it is, we can try to engineer it."

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Super Energy Storage: Activated Graphene Makes Superior Supercapacitors for Energy Storage

"Those properties make this new form of carbon particularly attractive for meeting electrical energy storage needs that also require a quick release of energy -- for instance, in electric vehicles or to smooth out power availability from intermittent energy sources, such as wind and solar power," said Brookhaven materials scientist Eric Stach, a co-author on a paper describing the material published inScienceon May 12, 2011.

Supercapacitors are similar to batteries in that both store electric charge. Batteries do so through chemical reactions between metallic electrodes and a liquid electrolyte. Because these chemicals take time to react, energy is stored and released relatively slowly. But batteries can store a lot of energy and release it over a fairly long time.

Supercapacitors, on the other hand, store charge in the form of ions on the surface of the electrodes, similar to static electricity, rather than relying on chemical reactions. Charging the electrodes causes ions in the electrolyte to separate, or polarize, as well -- so charge gets stored at the interface between the electrodes and the electrolyte. Pores in the electrode increase the surface area over which the electrolyte can flow and interact -- increasing the amount of energy that can be stored.

But because most supercapacitors can't hold nearly as much charge as batteries, their use has been limited to applications where smaller amounts of energy are needed quickly, or where long life cycle is essential, such as in mobile electronic devices.

The new material developed by the UT-Austin researchers may change that. Supercapacitors made from it have an energy-storage capacity, or energy density, that is approaching the energy density of lead-acid batteries, while retaining the high power density -- that is, rapid energy release -- that is characteristic of supercapacitors.

"This new material combines the attributes of both electrical storage systems," said University of Texas team leader Rodney Ruoff."We were rather stunned by its exceptional performance."

The UT-Austin team had set out to create a more porous form of carbon by using potassium hydroxide to restructure chemically modified graphene platelets -- a form of carbon where the atoms are arrayed in tile-like rings laying flat to form single-atom-thick sheets. Such"chemical activation" has been previously used to create various forms of"activated carbon," which have pores that increase surface area and are used in filters and other applications, including supercapacitors.

But because this new form of carbon was so superior to others used in supercapacitors, the UT-Austin researchers knew they'd need to characterize its structure at the nanoscale.

Ruoff had formed a hypothesis that the material consisted of a continuous three-dimensional porous network with single-atom-thick walls, with a significant fraction being"negative curvature carbon," similar to inside-out buckyballs. He turned to Stach at Brookhaven for help with further structural characterization to verify or refute this hypothesis.

Stach and Brookhaven colleague Dong Su conducted a wide range of studies at the Lab's Center for Functional Nanomaterials, the National Synchrotron Light Source, and at the National Center for Electron Microscopy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, all three facilities supported by the DOE Office of Science."At the DOE laboratories, we have the highest resolution microscopes in the world, so we really went full bore into characterizing the atomic structure," Stach said.

"Our studies revealed that Ruoff's hypothesis was in fact correct, and that the material's three-dimensional nanoscale structure consists of a network of highly curved, single-atom-thick walls forming tiny pores with widths ranging from 1 to 5 nanometers, or billionths of a meter."

The study includes detailed images of the fine pore structure and the carbon walls themselves, as well as images that show how these details fit into the big picture."The data from NSLS were crucial to showing that our highly local characterization was representative of the overall material," Stach said.

"We're still working with Ruoff and his team to pull together a complete description of the material structure. We're also adding computational studies to help us understand how this three-dimensional network forms, so that we can potentially tailor the pore sizes to be optimal for specific applications, including capacitive storage, catalysis, and fuel cells," Stach said.

Meanwhile, the scientists say the processing techniques used to create the new form of carbon are readily scalable to industrial production."This material -- being so easily manufactured from one of the most abundant elements in the universe -- will have a broad range impacts on research and technology in both energy storage and energy conversion," Ruoff said.

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Pairing Quantum Dots With Fullerenes for Nanoscale Photovoltaics

"This is the first demonstration of a hybrid inorganic/organic, dimeric (two-particle) material that acts as an electron donor-bridge-acceptor system for converting light to electrical current," said Brookhaven physical chemist Mircea Cotlet, lead author of a paper describing the dimers and their assembly method inAngewandte Chemie.

By varying the length of the linker molecules and the size of the quantum dots, the scientists can control the rate and the magnitude of fluctuations in light-induced electron transfer at the level of the individual dimer."This control makes these dimers promising power-generating units for molecular electronics or more efficient photovoltaic solar cells," said Cotlet, who conducted this research with materials scientist Zhihua Xu at Brookhaven's Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN).

Scientists seeking to develop molecular electronics have been very interested in organic donor-bridge-acceptor systems because they have a wide range of charge transport mechanisms and because their charge-transfer properties can be controlled by varying their chemistry. Recently, quantum dots have been combined with electron-accepting materials such as dyes, fullerenes, and titanium oxide to produce dye-sensitized and hybrid solar cells in the hope that the light-absorbing and size-dependent emission properties of quantum dots would boost the efficiency of such devices. But so far, the power conversion rates of these systems have remained quite low.

"Efforts to understand the processes involved so as to engineer improved systems have generally looked at averaged behavior in blended or layer-by-layer structures rather than the response of individual, well-controlled hybrid donor-acceptor architectures," said Xu.

The precision fabrication method developed by the Brookhaven scientists allows them to carefully control particle size and interparticle distance so they can explore conditions for light-induced electron transfer between individual quantum dots and electron-accepting fullerenes at the single molecule level.

The entire assembly process takes place on a surface and in a stepwise fashion to limit the interactions of the components (particles), which could otherwise combine in a number of ways if assembled by solution-based methods. This surface-based assembly also achieves controlled, one-to-one nanoparticle pairing.

To identify the optimal architectural arrangement for the particles, the scientists strategically varied the size of the quantum dots -- which absorb and emit light at different frequencies according to their size -- and the length of the bridge molecules connecting the nanoparticles. For each arrangement, they measured the electron transfer rate using single molecule spectroscopy.

"This method removes ensemble averaging and reveals a system's heterogeneity -- for example fluctuating electron transfer rates -- which is something that conventional spectroscopic methods cannot always do," Cotlet said.

The scientists found that reducing quantum dot size and the length of the linker molecules led to enhancements in the electron transfer rate and suppression of electron transfer fluctuations.

"This suppression of electron transfer fluctuation in dimers with smaller quantum dot size leads to a stable charge generation rate, which can have a positive impact on the application of these dimers in molecular electronics, including potentially in miniature and large-area photovoltaics," Cotlet said.

"Studying the charge separation and recombination processes in these simplified and well-controlled dimer structures helps us to understand the more complicated photon-to-electron conversion processes in large-area solar cells, and eventually improve their photovoltaic efficiency," Xu added.

A U.S. patent application is pending on the method and the materials resulting from using the technique, and the technology is available for licensing. This work was funded by the DOE Office of Science.

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