Let me preface this glowing remark by commenting that not all was so great even two or three years ago. I had been working for a year in a laboratory

In the Natural Fusion project, I have 15 amazing students serving as project managers from multiple…

As a first-year faculty member in a large engineering department, inside of a large and research-intensive university, my experience is pretty much as I expected—truly overwhelming. There are times that I feel almost crushed by the weight of too much of a good thing. I’m now directing a huge project in which students to design, build, and operate a solar powered home. I’ve met so many interesting people from all of the diverse components of the project: fundraising, integrated design, solar energy conversion, communications between colleges and university offices to arrange a University-wide effort, and even the occasional meeting with a Dean.

As a member of the faculty at the Pennsylvania State University and as the Faculty Director of the 2009 PSU team, I am pleased to announce that Penn State will compete for a second time in the upcoming challenge. The Solar Decathlon is an international competition…

The Decathlon operates within the general goals of the Solar America Initiative of the DOE, to make photovoltaic solar energy cost-competitive with

We’ve been told that “once upon a time”, someone starting out into the academic world was open to develop one’s personal, independent ideas. Funding was talked about as plentiful (or at least more probable to acquire by writing a grant proposal than today). But now we know, those of us trying to break upward into a stable research program. It’s just not a good strategy for a newcomer in grant writing and fund-seeking. Today’s research is cut-throat competitive, and even more so if you try to go it on your own. Working alone is an invitation to blow out your tire before you even get rolling.

You can’t know everything, even regarding a particular subject like solar energy (especially with solar energy). Help from others is needed to strengthen your research. It is important to build a network of skeptical, critical thinking colleagues who can look at your goals from unusual angles. You want a collective of shared interests, because there is power in numbers. They have the same urgent goals for support as you do.

So how does one make unique contributions while maintaining a source of funding? Work in bigger circles. Be open to defining your colleagues by a broader set of criteria. Communicate outside of your discipline and be positive of your own abilities.

It’s scary to look out across that void between disciplines, to reach out and communicate with someone you don’t know when you’re not even remotely an expert. But in order to support modern research, we need to span that void as another form of exploration. Because it very possible that we’re not even aware of the potential from the expert on the other side.

We’re in the process of relocating the whole family to State College, Pennsylvania for my new position as an assistant professor at Penn State, in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering. I will be pursuing my dream of environmentally aware materials science in the pursuit of new photovoltaic devices. I admit, I’m excited and terribly nervous at the same time. I plan to work hard and make progress in my research, and I plan to extend my network of connections with academia, government, and industry. I also really want to be a good mentor to both undergraduates and graduate students. So much of this, you just have to do it rather than make the perfect plan. The system is dynamic and fun, and more like surfing than following a recipe.

So wish me luck, and keep an eye out for new posts from the bench of the new nanomech professor!

• Info: Solar 2007 event on NN
• Website: Solar 2007
  

Now, just one year after the codes were put into effect, Spain is poised to pass the USA as the third largest PV manufacturer in the world.¹

But, the USA is not standing still either. The USA is growing in PV in California and New Jersey. In addition, Nevada and Colorado have large PV installation projects in progress for the 2007 year. So, the former leader in photovoltaic research and development now finds itself in a race for third place. Hey, this is not the time to get upset about rank. The more players in the PV market, the better!

1. Number one is Germany, followed by Japan. Currently, the US market doesn’t actually buy the majority of the PV cells that it manufactures. Instead, industry tends to sell them to the global market. Curious, eh? One might even say, frustrating.

The device is their HIT solar cell, which stands for Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin layer. Basically, this is a monolithic single crystal silicon cell that has been extensively modified on both external surfaces with texturization and heterojuntions² of amorphous silicon thin films. You can see a general schematic of the design at SolarBuzz.

1. Just to be clear, there are multiple junction solar cells on the market that can achieve photoconversion efficiencies above those of First Generation PV (e.g. triple junction GaAs/GaInP/Ge cells). You won’t be purchasing these for your homes any time soon. These cells are prohibitively expensive for the average consumer: $75,000/m², as opposed to $100/m² for silicon solar cells. They are specifically important to energy in space (as in satellites and Mars rovers). This is because long-term energy delivery is at a premium for space technologies. Governments and large industries have the buying power to launch equipment into space, and hence the finances to purchase the best solar energy delivery systems.
2. A heterojunction occurs when one makes an interface of dissimilar materials, with the goal of electron transfer across the interface (or junction). Amorphous silicon is dissimilar to crystalline silicon, in this case (even though they are composed of the same chemistry).

Let’s view the materials in technologies like advanced photovoltaic design from an environmental perspective. And not necessarily as a pejorative concept of “bad for the environment”...

Please begrudge me this series of questions:

Where does any raw material come from? Meaning, where on the surface of this planet can we find an ore body (a mineral reserve) to mine? Reality check: as long as you enjoy your refrigerators, your laptops, your light bulbs, and your transportation vehicles, we will need to mine our mineral reserves. Once you know where an ore body is…

We were deriving plastics from biological materials over 65 years ago? What an amazing head start! Where did that technology lead?

As Ford shifted much of the surrounding industries, this soybean car was not an isolated case of biological components developed for polymer chemistry in industry. Prior to WWII, it appeared that industry was quite involved with using our agrarian culture to develop plants for technologies. How did we get so sidetracked (again) into using primarily petroleum products for all of our plastic needs? We must conclude that following WWII, the USA and many other countries had become “industrialized” and had discovered the wonders of synthetic chemistry. Hence, industry no longer needed contact with agricultural-driven economies, and conversion of biomaterial to technological material was replaced by synthetic methods.

What is the connection to photovoltaics? Well…

Please note: The solar power of today is not the solar power of the 1970s (or the 80s, or the 90s…)! Read on…

Introduction: Chemists should be aware of the environmental implication of their chemistry.

That evening, he did not disappoint (a few summary points that stuck with me):