surface plasmon Archives – The Green Optimistic

LEDs Using Surface Plasmons Several Times Stronger, Japanese Researchers Report

Ovidiu Sandru — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:34:57 +0000

We all know LED as being the flagship of green lighting, but what if those so-called "efficient" LEDs turned out to be even more energy-effective under certain conditions? The Kyoto University, in collaboration with Stanley Electric Co Ltd found a way to increase the emission intensity of silicon-based thin films by several times.

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Rice University Researchers Use Surface Plasmons to Harvest Light From Lasers: Solar Panels May Benefit

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:12:04 +0000

Doug Natelson and graduate student Dan Ward, from Rice University, have discovered how to make a light-harvesting antenna from two gold tips separated by a gap only a few nanometers wide. As light source they used a laser, whose rays, once trapped in the gold tips, get concentrated into a tiny space, increasing the light intensity in the gap by a thousand times.

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Plasmonic Motor Powered Mechanically and Directly by Light, Developed by UC Berkeley

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:01:36 +0000

Researchers from the University of California Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, a principal investigator with the university's Materials Sciences Division and director of UC Berkeley's Nano-scale Science and Engineering Center (SINAM), demonstrated for the first time practically how light can actually move material nanometric particles of gold by using surface plasmons.

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Caltech Metamaterial Refracts Light Coming From Broad Range of Angles: Suitable for Solar Cells

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:25:15 +0000

Caltech researchers have just discovered a metamaterial with a particular three-dimensional structure that exhibits a negative index of refraction for the light entering it. It simply bends the light in another angle than it would normally be expected, no matter what angle the incident light had.

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Plasmonic Thin Film Solar Cells Producing 30% More Electricity Than Non-Treated Ones

Ovidiu Sandru — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:12:38 +0000

Kylie Catchpole (image), from the Australian National University in Canberra, working to make thin film solar cells more efficient, discovered that nanoparticles of silver deposited on the surface of a thin-film solar cell would not reflect the incident light back, but instead it would deflect the photons so they bounce back and forth withing the cell, allowing longer wavelengths to be absorbed.

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Surface Plasmons Increase PV Efficiency to 30%

Ovidiu Sandru — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:07:35 +0000

Solar-powered electricity generation is heading towards better days, due to nanotechnology research. Dutch scientists Kylie Catchpole and Albert Polman from the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Netherlands, showed that by using nano-sized metal particles in solar cells can render their overall efficiency up to 30%.

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