Credit: DOE Basic Energy Sciences.

Friday afternoon, Cyrus Wadia posted a notice on the blog of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy that the DOE is planning on making available $12 million each year for funding several efforts related to the administration’s Materials Genome Initiative.

Wadia points to a new “Expression of Interest” announcement from DOE’s division of Basic Energy Science, in which BES says it “has an interest in enhancing support for research which could lead to a theory/modeling design paradigm, validated through experiment, which could enhance the rate of discovery of new or vastly improved materials, material systems, and chemical processes.”

That could cover a lot of territory, however the BES announcement mentions several (not necessarily exclusive) examples of what it is interested in (note: some of these descriptions have been edited) —

Electron Correlation: Many materials of importance to BES goals contain localized electrons which are not well described by the widely used Density Functional Theory (DFT). This includes oxide superconductors, magnetic materials, and photocatalysts.

Excited States: Excited electronic states, and their coupling to the environment, play a critical role in many energy related processes. Improved descriptions of excited states would impact photovoltaic materials, exciton transport in organic semiconductors, and light absorption in photo-catalysts. They would also provide a fundamental understanding of chemical reactivity enabling validated theories, models and computational tools for predicting rates, products, and dynamics of chemical processes involved in energy utilization and transformations.

Multiple Length and Time Scales: Projects which couple length scales, advance multi-scale modeling, or extend the time scale for dynamical simulations would be appropriate.

Electron & Ion Transport: Projects which advance the theoretical understanding of non-equilibrium effects in transport or provide validated algorithms for transport properties would be appropriate.

Novel Approaches: Efforts that utilize simulation and digital data in novel ways, such as “inverse design”, “genetic algorithms” or scanning large data sets including those with mixed theoretical and experimental data would be appropriate.

Coupling Chemistry and Turbulent Flow: Of particular note are two central issues that have been identified as required to advance the state of the art for predictive simulation of internal combustion engines: the dynamics of fuel-injection sprays and stochastic combustion processes.

BES also says it plans on dividing up the awards to three categories of projects: 1) Small groups or single investigator awards; 2) ”Glue” funding awards (”to support collaborations between funded BES activities through shared postdoctoral staff, short-term exchange of principal investigators, capability development, and related activities; and 3) Centers for materials or chemical sciences software innovation.

Interested? If so, move fast! BES says that preapplications are required and must be submitted by March 1, 2012.

Share

Mitsubishi i-MIEV battery electric vehicle was rated highest in latest environmental rankings provided by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. See story below. Credit: Mitsubishi.

Here is what we are hearing:

DOE to launch new Energy Innovation Hub focused on advanced batteries and energy storage

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced plans to launch a new Energy Innovation Hub for advanced research on batteries and energy storage with an investment of up to $120 million over five years. The hub, which will be funded at up to $20 million in fiscal year 2012, will focus on accelerating research and development of electrochemical energy storage for transportation and the electric grid. Letters of Intent to apply are due on March 1, 2012 with full applications due on May 31, 2012. Universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations, and private firms are eligible to compete and are encouraged to form partnerships when submitting their proposals. The award selection is expected this summer.

Commission clears acquisition of joint control of Maxam by Advent, investors

The European Commission has cleared the proposed acquisition of joint control of the Spanish company MaxamCorp Holding S.L. by US-based Advent International Corp. and approximately 110 individuals including Maxam’s current managers, technical experts, other employees and co-investors. The Commission examined the vertical links created by the proposed transaction and concluded that the merged entity would continue to face sufficient competition. Advent manages a number of investment funds. It also controls H.C. Starck GmbH, which is active mainly in refractory metals and advanced ceramics, and OXEA S.a.r.l., which primarily produces chemicals.

Hot news on advanced materials from Harper

We’ve launched on Twitter! Follow our feed to stay up to date on news in advanced materials including research developments, emerging applications, hot topics, as well as updates on Harper’s upcoming events, press releases, and more. Everyday, we’re helping customers create the next generation of materials for tomorrow’s applications. Get your updates from the world’s leading thermal processing experts at @HarperIntl.

Nanocerox redesigns new analytical lab (pdf)

Nanocerox recently invested in a new analytical lab at its corporate headquarters located in Ann Arbor, Mich. “Nanocerox continues to invest internally in our infrastructure to ensure the quality of our nanopowders,” says Todd Stefanik, vice president of technology. “As a result of our recent construction of a cleanroom facility for processing nanopowders into transparent ceramic parts, we realized significant improvements in the optical quality of optical parts produced at Nanocerox. With this redesign of our analytical laboratories, we allow ourselves to measure ceramic powder, slurry and transparent part characteristics to ensure consistent production of high optical quality laser, window and scintillator components.”

Webcast of Ceradyne Inc. presentation at Cowen and Company’s 33rd Annual Aerospace/Defense Conference available

Ceradyne CEO Joel P. Moskowitz spoke at Cowen and Company’s 33rd Annual Aerospace/Defense Conference in New York on Feb. 8, 2012. He addressed the company’s business fundamentals and growth strategies. Ceradyne develops, manufactures, and markets advanced technical ceramic products and components for defense, industrial, automotive/diesel, and commercial applications. In many high performance applications, products made of advanced technical ceramics meet specifications that similar products made of metals, plastics or traditional ceramics cannot achieve.

U.S. Silica goes public after 111 years

Shares of U.S. Silica Holdings Inc. started trading Feb. 1, 2012, as the mining firm with roots going back more than a century raised $200 million in its initial public offering. The producer of silica used in hydraulic fracturing and solar panels was acquired in 2008 by affiliates of Golden Gate Private Equity Inc. It ranks as the second-largest producer in the United States after Unimin, a unit of Belgium-based Sibelco Group. The company originated in West Virginia as a supplier of raw material for glass used in the manufacturing sector in Pittsburgh, before it moved to its current headquarters in Frederick, Md. The company’s growth prospects are tied partially to the rise in domestic shale oil and gas production, which uses sand to break up rock underground to free-up fossil fuel in the hydraulic fracturing process, also known as fracking.

Electric car tops out greenest vehicle list

For the first time in the 12-year history of the Greencars.org Greenest Vehicle List, an electric vehicle has topped the list, based on the 14th annual comprehensive environmental rankings provided by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The Mitsubishi i-MIEV battery electric vehicle claimed the top spot from the Honda Civic Natural Gas, which, up until this year, had held the top spot for 8 years running. The i-MIEV scored a high score of 58, the highest Green Score ever awarded since the ACEEE rankings were started back in 1998. The Mitsubishi i-MIEV managed a combined city and highway fuel economy of 112 miles per gallon equivalent.

Share

 

Conversion efficiencies of the best research solar cells worldwide from 1976 through 2011 for various photovoltaic technologies; efficiencies determined by certified agencies/laboratories. Credit: NREL.

The steady march to grid parity for solar energy devices continues: A Santa Clara, Calif., maker of gallium arsenide photovoltaic panels, Alta Devices, announced Tuesday that the NREL verified that its top-line panels operate at 23.5% efficiency. The ability to deliver an entire high-efficiency panel is a big step forward for the company’s business, which last year achieved verified record-setting efficiencies as high as 28.2% with a single, single-junction PV cell.

This looks to be a record efficiency-level for PV panels. Although, as the chart above indicates, NREL has verified higher efficiencies in other PV arrangements, these have been for a single or small sets of PV cells, not full panels. (It should probably be noted that Sanyo asserts that its in-production silicon heterostructure (HIT) panels come near to the numbers achieved by Alta, but this has not been verified by NREL.)

In a news release, Alta Devices explains a little bit about its interest in GaAs-based devices. The company says, “Alta chose to focus on GaAs because of its intrinsic efficiency advantages as well as its ability to generate electricity at high temperatures and in low light. This means that Alta’s panels have substantially higher energy density than other technologies, generating more kilowatt–hours of energy over the course of a year in real life conditions.”

Some investors have been cautious about GaAs-based solar technologies because they generally have appeared to require higher-priced materials than, for example, silicon. But the company says, “though GaAs is known for being expensive to produce, Alta has invented a manufacturing technique that enables extremely thin layers of GaAs that are a fraction of the thickness of earlier GaAs solar cells. Alta’s cells are about one micron thick… In utilizing very thin devices that have the highest energy density possible, the cost of the material needed in Alta panels remains low and the potential costs of an entire solar energy system based on Alta’s technology could be dramatically reduced.”

Alta deposits the GaAs on a thin, flexible film substrate. By focusing on this form factor, Alta says its film “has the potential to be integrated in wholly unique ways and into a variety of applications, including roof and building materials, and numerous military, consumer and transportation products.”

The company was cofounded by two well known California scientists engaged in academic-based energy research, CalTech’s Harry Atwater and University of California at Berkeley’s Eli Yablonovitch. Atwater is director of the Energy Frontier Research Center on Light-Matter Interactions and director of the Resnick Institute for Science, Energy and Sustainability, and Yablonovitch is director of the NSF Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science, at their respective schools. Alta has received venture capital funding from high profile groups, such as August Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

In a recent story on the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab website, Yablonovitch offered a fundamental defense of GaAs. He said, “Gallium arsenide absorbs photons 10,000 times more strongly than silicon for a given thickness but is not 10,000 times more expensive,” says Yablonovitch. “Based on performance, it is the ideal material for making solar cells.”

But the trick is to extract the high efficiency from GaAs. In a June 2011 release, Yablonovitch explained, “Up until now it was understood that to increase the current from our best solar materials, we had to find ways to get the material to absorb more light. But, the voltage is a different story. It was not recognized that to maximize the voltage, we needed the material to generate more photons inside the solar cell. Counterintuitively, efficient light emission is the key for these high efficiencies.”

How are these efficiencies and energy density being achieved? For one thing, it required some open-mindedness. The LBL story describes that a leap in logic had to occur: “Past efforts to boost the conversion efficiency of solar cells focused on increasing the number of photons that a cell absorbs. Absorbed sunlight in a solar cell produces electrons that must be extracted from the cell as electricity. Those electrons that are not extracted fast enough, decay and release their energy. If that energy is released as heat, it reduces the solar cell’s power output. [LBL's Owen Miller] calculated that if this released energy exits the cell as external fluorescence, it would boost the cell’s output voltage. ‘This is the central counter-intuitive result that permitted efficiency records to be broken,’ Yablonovitch says.”

“In the open-circuit condition of a solar cell, electrons have no place to go so they build up in density and, ideally, emit external fluorescence that exactly balances the incoming sunlight. As an indicator of low internal optical losses, efficient external fluorescence is a necessity for approaching the [theoretical efficiency] limit,” Miller said.

In other words, the Alta Devices PV panels achieve high efficiency by emitting certain light while converting solar energy, instead of allowing excess electron energy to build up internal heat.

On the processing side of things, the company says it “is making substantial progress on the build-out of its pilot manufacturing line, which uses mostly off–the–shelf equipment with some proprietary optimizations unique to Alta’s process. Moreover, Alta is starting to plan for full–scale production, with activities such as building strategic manufacturing partnerships and selecting its first large, commercial manufacturing site.”

Share

Photographs of sample films at room temperature. Credit, Gao et al.; RSC Energy Environ. Sci.

The notion of making functional and flexible ceramic foils is fascinating, but a little counterintuitive, isn’t it?

Thus, I am always intrigued when new techniques and applications are discovered. A while back I wrote about a group from ETH Zurich that mastered ultrathin, transparent and flexible foils using yttria stabilized polycrystalline tetragonal zirconia.

This weeks brings news of another transparent and flexible film based on vanadium dioxide developed by Chinese researchers at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, including ACerS member Yanfeng Gao. The new VO₂ film is being eyed for use in thermochromic windows, which retain transparency in the visible range but dynamically regulate the passage of wavelengths that transfer solar heat and energy in the ultraviolet and infrared ranges.

Smart window researchers have had an interest in VO₂ because they’d like to exploit a particular property: At 68°C (in the case of VO₂ bulk single crystals), the material undergoes a reversible, thermally induced phase transition that shifts the optical properties in the near-infrared region from a low-temperature transparent state to a more reflective state.

In an email, Gao says materials based on VO₂ nanoparticles, particularly VO₂ foils that easily can be used with glass panels, are attractive for applications in construction and automotive industries. Heretofore, making such foils from solutions of nanoparticles has been tricky and unreliable because of the instability of the nanoparticles. But, Gao and his colleagues report in a paper in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal, Energy and Environmental Science, that they have figured out a new process that solves previous shortcomings and may be scalable to large-area mass production.

Gao, who works in SIC’s State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure, says, “In this paper, we report a novel all-solution process that can be used to prepare transparent, stable and flexible VO₂-based composite films. These films exhibit UV-shielding properties and an excellent temperature-responsive thermochromism in the near infrared region.”

The breakthrough? Gao says the answer came when the group coated the VO₂ nanoparticles with a thin SiO₂ shell. “The shell, Gao says, “significantly improved their anti-oxidation and anti-acid abilities.”

Essentially, the VO₂ nanoparticles are given a SiO₂ shell using tetraethyl orthosilicate (the thickness of the shell can be fine-tuned) and treated with a silane couple to increase dispersion. The last step is to cast the suspension on a PET substrate.

At 13.6% solar modulation efficiency, the researchers report in the paper that their VO₂-based film is able to match the efficiency levels of other thermochromic films. This is also considerably higher than VO₂ films produced by sputtering and other methods.

Gao says, “Traditional glass foils are usually based on thin notable metal layers for reflection of solar irradiation or organic dyes that can absorption solar heat. … The stability of these kinds of foils is still questionable. To our knowledge the current research reports on the first VO₂ ceramic foils, and more importantly, the foils show excellent optical properties (visible transmittance and solar modulation ability, maybe the best in the world.).

As far as “smart” performance goes, Gao et al. report in the paper that they observed while testing a typical sample of the VO₂ film, “… in a heating cycle from 35°C to 85°C, the transmittance at 1500 nm decreased from 57.7% (at 35°C) to 14.9% (at 81°C) gradually…  In a cooling cycle, the transmittance of film increased from 14.9% (at 75°C) to 57.7% (at 35°C).”

The promise of increased energy efficiency via thermochromic windows has drawn worldwide attention. Gao says it is a big concern for developing countries, such as China, which already has buildings occupying 52 billion square meters “waiting new techniques to improve their energy efficiency and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We are aiming to develop a new material along with a novel process that can be finally commercialized and used to for building glasses.”

Gao says scaling the group’s technique to large-area production is the next challenge, and says that a collaborative effort is worthwhile. “This method should be considered as a basis for mass production,” he says, “The method should combine with some techniques to efficiently fabricate and to improve performance-cost ratios. … We hope that colleagues working in related fields can join to consider innovations based on the current technology. As an important part of an eco-home, we hope that such kind of smart windows can be applied practically in the near future.”

Share

Check ‘ em out:

On relaxations and aging of various glasses

Slow relaxation occurs in many physical and biological systems. “Creep” is an example from everyday life. When stretching a rubber band, for example, the recovery to its equilibrium length is not, as one might think, exponential: The relaxation is slow, in many cases logarithmic, and can still be observed after many hours. The form of the relaxation also depends on the duration of the stretching, the “waiting time.” This ubiquitous phenomenon is called aging, and is abundant both in natural and technological applications. Here, we suggest a general mechanism for slow relaxations and aging, which predicts logarithmic relaxations, and a particular aging dependence on the waiting time. We demonstrate the generality of the approach by comparing our predictions to experimental data on a diverse range of physical phenomena, from conductance in granular metals to disordered insulators and dirty semiconductors, to the low temperature dielectric properties of glasses.

Built to withstand almost anything

Thanks to researchers at Department of Homeland Security S&T, communities can fortify today’s critical structures — and design tomorrow’s — to absorb blows and remain open if assaulted by extreme earth, wind, water, fire, or man. A new publication series, aimed at engineers, architects, building owners, city planners, and emergency managers, makes available years of government, industry, and academic research on designs and materials to make buildings and tunnels terror-resistant and terror-resilient. The Building and Infrastructure Protection Series provides architects and engineers a set of aids for designing critical infrastructure to withstand all kinds of hazards…at a cost that won’t break the budget.

Boise State researchers create new way to study ground fractures

Boise State geophysics researchers have created a new way to study fractures by producing elastic waves, or vibrations, through high-intensity light focused directly on the fracture itself. The new technique developed in the Physical Acoustics Lab may help determine if there is a fluid, such as magma or water, or natural gas inside fractures in the Earth. Typically, scientists create sound waves at the surface to listen for echoes from fractures in the ground, but this new technique could provide more accurate information about the cracks because sound does not have to travel to the fracture and back again. The new technique aims to enhance scientists’ abilities to image faults in the Earth, including those man-made through the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Antennaless RFID tags developed at NDSU solve problem of tracking metal and liquids

Tracking and identifying metal objects can prove difficult for some radio frequency identification systems. A patent-pending technology developed by a research team at the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering at North Dakota State University, Fargo, could solve these RFID tracking problems. The antennaless RFID tag developed at CNSE could help companies track products as varied as barrels of oil to metal cargo contaRFID tag bottleiners. A typical RFID tag is made up of an integrated circuit and an antenna. While there are different types of tags available, many don’t work well on metal objects or on containers filled with liquid. Previous attempts to solve this problem have resulted in bulky tags that are easily destroyed by routine handling. Researchers at the center have developed a patent-pending novel approach, with an antennaless RFID tag, allowing for an inexpensive and manufacturable product tracking solution that meets EPCglobal Standards.

MIT envisions DIY solar cells made from grass clippings

Research scientist Andreas Mershin has a dream to bring inexpensive solar power to the masses, especially those in developing countries. After years of research, he and his team at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, along with University of Tennessee biochemist Barry Bruce, have worked out a process that extracts functional photosynthetic molecules from common yard and agricultural waste. If all goes well, in a few years it should be possible to gather up a pile of grass clippings, mix it with a blend of cheap chemicals, paint it on your roof and begin producing electricity. Talk about redefining green power plants!

Share