New method to test candidate material for organic solar cells

Hunting for the best material from which to build organic solar cells can be like seeking the proverbial haystack needle, but now scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Naval Research Laboratory may have a better search tool for the nascent industry. The team's research findings in ("Hot photocarrier dynamics...

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Nanowires give 'solar fuel cell' efficiency a tenfold boost

A solar cell that produces fuel rather than electricity. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and FOM Foundation today present a very promising prototype of this in the journal ("Efficient water reduction with gallium phosphide nanowires"). The material gallium phosphide enables their solar cell to produce the clean fuel hydrogen...

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Imaging lipid rafts reveals some surprises

Using a spectroscopic imaging technique known as Raman microscopy, RIKEN researchers have discovered that the lipid sphingomyelin exhibits a gradually varying distribution in artificial membranes ("Sphingomyelin distribution in lipid rafts of artificial monolayer membranes visualized by Raman microscopy"). Artist’s rendering of the distribution of...

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