In materials research, chemistry, biology, and medicine, chemical bonds, and especially their dynamic behavior, determine the properties of a system. These can be examined very closely using terahertz radiation and short pulses. KIT’s FLUTE accelerator will be used for the development of new accelerator technologies for compact and powerful terahertz sources that are supposed to […]
Glasses Generate Power With Flexible Organic Solar Cells
Organic solar cells are flexible, transparent and lightweight, and can be manufactured in arbitrary shapes or colors. Thus, they are suitable for a variety of applications that cannot be realized with conventional silicon solar cells. In Energy Technology, researchers from KIT report sunglasses with colored, semitransparent solar cells applied to the lenses that supply a microprocessor […]
Using Sulfur to Store Solar Energy
Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and their European partners plan to develop an innovative sulfur-based storage system for solar power. Large-scale chemical storage of solar power and its overnight use as a fuel are to be achieved by means of a closed sulfur-sulfuric acid cycle. In the long term, this might be the […]
Using Sulfur To Store Solar Energy
Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and their European partners plan to develop an innovative sulfur-based storage system for solar power. Large-scale chemical storage of solar power and its overnight use as a fuel are to be achieved by means of a closed sulfur-sulfuric acid cycle. In the long term, this might be the […]
Solar Cells With Nanostripes
Solar cells based on perovskites reach high efficiencies: They convert more than 20 percent of the incident light directly into usable power. On their search for underlying physical mechanisms, researchers of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have now detected strips of nanostructures with alternating directions of polarization in the perovskite layers. These structures might […]
First Quantum Photonic Circuit With An Electrically Driven Light Source
Whether for use in safe data encryption, ultrafast calculation of huge data volumes or so-called quantum simulation of highly complex systems: Optical quantum computers are a source of hope for tomorrow’s computer technology. For the first time, scientists now have succeeded in placing a complete quantum optical structure on a chip, as outlined in the Nature […]
Record for Perovskite/CIGS Tandem Solar Module
Thin-film technologies can dramatically reduce the cost of next-generation solar modules. Whereas their production cost is low, it is in particular the combination of complementary absorber materials in a tandem solar module that increases the power conversion efficiency. At the PSCO international conference in Genova, researchers from KIT, ZSW, and the Belgian research institute IMEC […]
Two Become One: How to Turn Green Light Blue
The upconversion of photons allows for a more efficient use of light: Two photons are converted into a single photon having higher energy. Researchers at KIT now showed for the first time that the inner interfaces between surface-mounted metal-organic frameworks (SURMOFs) are suited perfectly for this purpose — they turned green light blue. The result, […]
‘Flower Power’: Photovoltaic Cells Replicate Rose Petals
With a surface resembling that of plants, solar cells improve light-harvesting and thus generate more power. Scientists of KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) reproduced the epidermal cells of rose petals that have particularly good antireflection properties and integrated the transparent replicas into an organic solar cell. This resulted in a relative efficiency gain of twelve […]
Solar Power Home Storage Systems Put to Test
Home storage systems for electricity produced by photovoltaics facilities are gaining attractiveness, as their costs are declining. However, standardized, verifiable criteria for the end client to assess their performance are still lacking. Now, scientists have launched the largest German study so far to analyze commercial systems with respect to safety, quality, and grid suitability and […]