shanhui fan Archives – The Green Optimistic green tech news, since 2008 Mon, 08 Dec 2014 12:30:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 2667534 New Material Cools When Exposed to Sunlight, Could Make Us Ditch Air Conditioning https://www.greenoptimistic.com/shanhui-fan-cooling-material-20141208/ https://www.greenoptimistic.com/shanhui-fan-cooling-material-20141208/#comments Mon, 08 Dec 2014 12:30:48 +0000 https://www.greenoptimistic.com/?p=50509 A team of researchers at Stanford have invented a new and weird type of material that cools when exposed to sunlight. It could be used to insulate buildings, and reduce the need for energy-consuming air conditioning. The material, developed by Shanhui Fan, uses optical tricks to radiate heat whose frequency lies in our planet’s “thermal […]

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]]> https://www.greenoptimistic.com/shanhui-fan-cooling-material-20141208/feed/ 1 50509 Nanoscale Thin Film Solar Cell Absorbs 12 Times More Light Than Macro-Sized Counterparts https://www.greenoptimistic.com/nanoscale-thin-film-solar-cell-20100929/ https://www.greenoptimistic.com/nanoscale-thin-film-solar-cell-20100929/#respond Wed, 29 Sep 2010 05:59:12 +0000 https://www.greenoptimistic.com/?p=10755 Light behaves differently in macro- and nano- scale environments, and this could be a starting point for those researchers who want to improve the solar cells' efficiency. It was a starting point for some Stanford engineers, who found out that light ricocheting inside an ultra-thin polymer film solar cell behaves differently than if the film wasn't so thin. The difference is enormous.

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