Video: Nanoscale Engineering for High Performance Solar Cells
Very good discussion on current inefficiency of lighting our homes, offices, and appliances.
Introduction (Via MIT World)
How much energy does it take to turn on a lightbulb? Way too much in the U.S., where 22% of all electricity gets channeled into illuminating homes, businesses and thoroughfares. Vladimir Bulovic wants to end the exorbitant use of power for lighting, and simultaneously brighten our lives more pleasantly, with the application of nanostructure materials called quantum dots.
Incandescent bulbs, he tells the MIT Museum audience, are hugely wasteful, with just 5% efficiency converting electricity to light. Fluorescents do the job somewhat better, and light emitting diodes better still, but these more efficient bulbs often emit colors that feel harsh to the eye. Bulovic and other researchers have been designing a fix for both the color and power conversion problems, a new kind of photo cell based on special inorganic crystals called quantum dots. The size of a human hair sliced lengthwise 5,000 times (10 nanometers), these crystals fluoresce in precise, predictable colors at different sizes: bigger chunks look red, smaller ones look blue.
Speaker Background (Via MIT World)
ladimir Bulovic is a principal investigator in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics. Bulovic joined the faculty of MIT in 2000 as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Prior to joining MIT, Bulovic was a Senior Scientist and Project Head of Strategic Technology Development at Universal Display Corporation (UDC). At UDC he worked on the application of organic materials to LEDs for full color flat panel displays and thin film photovoltaics for solar cell and detector applications. Prior to joining UDC he worked in Princeton’s POEM Center as a graduate researcher (1993-1998) and research associate (1998-1999).
Bulovic’s current research interests include studies of physical properties of organic and organic/inorganic nanodot composite thin films and structures, and development of novel optoelectronic organic and hybrid nano-scale devices
