The field of photovoltaic cells has been dominated so far by solid state p-n junction devices made of crystalline or amorphous silicon, CdTe and copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) profiting from the experience and material availability of the semiconductor industry. However, there is an increasing awareness of the possible advantages of devices based on mesoscopic inorganic or organic semiconductors commonly referred to as “bulk“ junctions due to their interconnected three-dimensional structure.

Amory Lovins is widely considered among the world’s leading authorities on energy—especially its efficient use and sustainable supply—and a fertile innovator in integrative design. As Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Lovins pioneered the concept of “soft energy paths” involving efficient energy use, diverse and renewable energy sources, and special reliance on “soft energy technologies” based on solar, wind, biofuels, geothermal, etc., matched in scale and quality to their task, and widely accessible across society.

Nanocrystal Solids: A Modular Approach to Materials Design

Computing today operates in distributed, dynamic and sensor rich environments. Consequently, designing computer systems for low power entails not only the use of the best design practices in various components from processors, memories to radios but also awareness of power-related decision making across subsystems and functional abstractions. What then are the engineering principles that can be applied to guide system designer with low power consumption as a key design criterion?

Organic semiconductors represent an opportunity to revolutionize the manufacture of large area electronics. Applications for these materials range from low-cost displays and e-readers to solar cells. Our understanding of the connection between materials and device characteristics for organic semiconducting polymers are still in the early stages. The role of interfaces on transport is of particular importance. Recent work on understanding polymeric dielectrics in transistors and the influence of nanostructuring on photovoltaics will be described.

The determinants of successful development, commercialization and diffusion of solid state lighting (SSL) are not well understood particularly in a global context. Patent data provide one means to gain insight into these corporate and national R&D activities. However, existing SSL patent analyses have focused primarily on US patents. This study analyzes patents granted worldwide to probe differences between the U.S., Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, countries poised to play a key role in SSL’s future.

LED Lighting Half-Time Report
An Executive Roundtable Discussion With The Scientist Who Develop Them And The Companies That Sell Them
February 9, 2010 | 5:30pm | Corwin Pavilion, UCSB 
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Photovoltaic (PV) technology is currently enjoying substantial growth and investment, owing to worldwide sensitivity to energy security and the importance of renewable energy as a means to mitigate carbon emissions. This talk will describe approaches to control of light-matter interactions leading to enhanced absorption in solar photovoltaic structures. Conventionally, it is thought that semiconductor photovoltaic absorbers should have a physical thickness comparable to the ‘optical thickness’ to enable nearly complete light absorption and photocarrier current collection.

A number of important breakthroughs in the past decade have focused attention on Si as a photonic platform. We review  recent progress in this field, focusing on efforts to make lasers on or in silicon and on silicon photonic integrated circuits. The impact active silicon photonic integrated circuits could have on telecommunications and on silicon electronics is presented.

Scientific and technical computing is a major element in the energy consumption and carbon emissions of universities and research organisations. Europe’s largest high performance computing (HPC) based research centre has an energy bill approaching $100 million annually. And HPC was found to be 14% of the almost $2 million per annum computing-related electricity bills in a middle-tier, mid-size, UK university, with a similar amount associated with science related conventional computing.