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A Cheap Material Boosts Solar Cells by 50 Percent
Putting a new kind of photovoltaic material on top of a conventional solar cell can boost overall power output by half. Researchers at Stanford University added a type of material known as a perovskite to a silicon solar cell, validating an idea for cheaply increasing the efficiency of solar power that was first proposed several years ago.
Perovskites are materials with a particular crystalline structure. The perovskite used by the Stanford team contains relatively abundant and cheap materials including ammonia, iodine, and lead.
Materials scientists started demonstrating the photovoltaic potential of perovskites in 2009. Since then, different research groups have created perovskites with photovoltaic efficiencies comparable to those of many commercial solar cells. But perovskites also convert certain parts of the solar spectrum into electricity more efficiently than silicon, and vice versa, so the biggest efficiency gain may come from using perovskites to augment, rather than replace, the silicon in most solar cells (see “A Material that Could Make Solar Power ‘Dirt Cheap’ and “What’s Tech is Next for the Solar Industry?”). Now researchers at Stanford have shown that the idea can work.
One of the main challenges with pairing perovskite cells with silicon ones has been rendering the former transparent, so that light they don’t absorb can pass through to the silicon cells beneath. The perovskite solar cells made previously used an opaque material on the back to collect electrical current. The Stanford researchers developed a manufacturing method that involves producing a transparent electrode made of silicon nanowires.
The researchers took a cheap silicon solar cell with an efficiency of 11.4 percent and increased it to 17 percent by adding the perovskite cell.
Much work remains to be done before such cells are ready for market, however. Perovskite cells currently don’t last very long, and researchers are still trying to develop versions that don’t use lead, which is toxic.
The way light interacts with the two materials is also not yet well understood. When the Stanford group added perovskite to silicon solar cells whose efficiency was already 17 percent, for example, they measured a much smaller increase in power output, to 17.9 percent.
Even so, perovskites could be a boon for the solar industry. The researchers believe that perovskite-silicon cells will convert over 30 percent of the energy in sunlight into electricity. Such a boost would cut the number of solar panels for some installations almost in half, greatly lowering installation costs.
Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/534511/a-cheap-material-boosts-solar-cells-by-50-percent/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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