michael Grätzel Archives – The Green Optimistic

Record Efficiency for Organic Solar Cells Obtained by Michael Gratzel

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 15:45:56 +0000

Michael Gratzel, the inventor of organic solar cells and a professor at EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) in Switzerland is hitting headlines again with the latest achievement in the field of organic photovoltaics: an efficiency figure of 15 percent. His new solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) are two percent more efficient than the last […]

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Water and Rust as Solar-Powered Hydrogen Storage

Mila Luleva — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:58:28 +0000

The journal Nature Photonics published an article that might hold the solution to storing solar energy regardless of the time of day. The technology that transforms light energy into hydrogen is developed and presented by a team of scientists from EPFL. Kevin Sivula and his team aimed to develop an economically viable method to produce […]

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Grätzel's New Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells: Cheaper and More Efficient

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:34:34 +0000

As our loyal readers already know, Michael Grätzel invented dye-sensitized solar cells 20 years ago, but, despite their low price, these organic cells have proved rather inefficient. However, Grätzel now found a solution for the cells to be cheaper and more efficient. Grätzel’s cells use organic dyes to absorb sunlight, which hits the titanium dioxide […]

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Atom-Thick Coating Helps Researchers Achieve Artificial Photosynthesis

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 11 May 2011 18:24:32 +0000

By growing layers of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide on a semiconductor surface, researchers from the ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Â°cole polytechnique fÃƒÆ’©dÃƒÆ’©rale de Lausanne (EPFL) have managed to create solar cells that can ultimately extract hydrogen from water under the direct action of sunlight, just like leaves do their natural photosynthesis.

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Michael Grätzel Receives 800,000 Euros Millennium Technology Prize for Inventing Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells

Ovidiu Sandru — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 07:35:19 +0000

Michael Grätzel, one of the world’s most famous scientists and innovators in the field of solar power, has received the best prize any scientist could get in a lifetime, besides the Nobel: The Millennium Technology Prize, weighing 800,000 Euros. The most versatile and promising dye-sensitized solar cells bear his name today, after Grätzel, a respected […]

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G24 Innovations Sells Grätzel's Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells for the First Time

Ovidiu Sandru — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:23:10 +0000

Dye-sensitized solar cells, or Grätzel cells, have been invented by Michael Grätzel in 1991. Grätzel is a chemistry professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and since now they didn’t have any commercial purpose, being developed just for research. The first company who is about to commercialize Grätzel’s cells is G24 Innovations, […]

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