My post today is a departure from my usual subject, but following a request for a guest author, I have agreed to pass on her message as this could effect how we recharge our camcorders:
Can you imagine people powering their cellular or music/video device while jogging under the sun?
A University of Southern California team has produced flexible transparent carbon atom films that may have great potential for a brand new variety of solar cells.
In a paper recently published by the journal ACS Nano, researchers stated that organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells have been proposed as an approach to obtain cheap energy due to their ease of manufacture, light weight, and compatibility with flexible substrates.
This work indicates that graphene, a highly conductive and highly transparent kind of carbon consisting of atoms-thick sheets of carbon atoms, has high potential to fill this role.
While graphene’s existence has been known for many years, it has only been studied extensively since 2004 because of the impracticality of manufacturing it in high quality and quantity.
The University of southern California team has produced graphene/polymer sheets ranging in sizes approximately 150 square centimeters that in turn can be used to create dense arrays of flexible organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells.
These organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices convert solar radiation to electricity, but not as efficiently as silicon cells.
The power provided by sunlight on a sunny day is approximately 1,000 watts per meter square. For every 1,000 watts of sunlight that hits a square meter area of the standard silicon solar cell, 14 watts of electricity will be generated. Organic solar cells are less efficient; their conversion rate for that same 1,000 watts of sunlight in the graphene-based solar cell could be only 1.3 watts.
But what graphene organic photovoltaic (OPV) lack in efficiency, can potentially be compensated by its lower price and, greater physical flexibility.
Researchers think it can eventually be possible to cover with inexpensive solar cell layers extensive areas like newspapers, magazines or power generating clothing.
In the meanwhile Prof. Ruoff and his colleagues of the mechanical engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin, are studying the basic science in the introduction of graphene-based ultracapacitors for use in electronics and other fields.
Prof. Ruoff says batteries are relatively slow, they can store energy but require some time to charge up, and then they distribute energy slowly, as time passes.
Ultracapacitors can be charged in a short time, in seconds, and discharge very quickly, but, today, they can’t store very much electrical energy.
The development of stable and less expensive ultracapacitors is seen as a key step in using wind or solar-generated power, particularly if researchers can discover methods to enable capacitors to store energy longer, which is not yet possible.
Even with their current storage capacity, the graphene devices could provide quick energy when needed in certain situations on the green way.
They can be used, for example, to absorb the heat generated in braking a car or train, and store it for a short time, and employ it for the electrical needs of the vehicle (i.e. starting the vehicle or acceleration)
The author – Sophia H. Walker writes for the solar battery charger blog, her personal hobby website related to tips to help individuals save energy using solar powered energy for small accessories.
Watch out for my next reviews of high definition camcorders and reports of some recent announcements about 3D camcorders.
