{"id":3118,"date":"2014-09-29T11:38:43","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T16:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=3118"},"modified":"2014-09-29T11:38:43","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T16:38:43","slug":"gold-nanoparticle-antennae-could-boost-solar-cell-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/gold-nanoparticle-antennae-could-boost-solar-cell-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Gold nanoparticle \u2018antennae\u2019 could boost solar cell performance<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_3103\" style=\"width: 368px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pngbase64c415126e4727fa1f.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3103\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3103\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pngbase64c415126e4727fa1f.png\" alt=\"A small and portable solar cell module constructed with nano-sized gold \u201cantennae\u201d that help gather and concentration light, boosting the cell\u2019s efficience by up to 10 per cent. (Photo credit: Henry Leparskas)\" width=\"358\" height=\"346\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pngbase64c415126e4727fa1f.png 358w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pngbase64c415126e4727fa1f-300x289.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 358px) 100vw, 358px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3103\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A small and portable solar cell module constructed with nano-sized gold \u201cantennae\u201d that help gather and concentration light, boosting the cell\u2019s efficience by up to 10 per cent. (Photo credit: Henry Leparskas)<\/p><\/div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Researchers have created tiny gold antennae that gather and concentrate light in order to increase the efficiency of solar cells by up to ten\u00a0per cent. Solar cells often don\u2019t absorb very well in the red or infrared part of the solar spectrum.\u00a0Previous researchers have tried to use gold nanoparticles &#8211; which do capture and concentrate light at these frequencies &#8211; to boost performance.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The new antennas look more like filaments assembled to form sparse nets and use a much smaller amount of gold &#8211; \u00a0the building block are clusters of as little as 144 atoms.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The process for making them is simple and inexpensive, and could be used on ordinary silicon solar cells as well as emerging technologies like organic solar cells, which are cheaper but currently limited by low efficiency.<\/p>\n<h4 dir=\"ltr\">More photos are available.<\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.rsc.org\/en\/content\/articlelanding\/2014\/nr\/c4nr01821d#!divAbstract\" target=\"_blank\">Original research paper<\/a><\/span>\u00a0published in the journal\u00a0<em>Nanoscale\u00a0<\/em>on\u00a0<strong>May 6, 2014<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4>Giovanni Fanchini, Canada Research Chair in Carbon-based Nanomaterials and Nano-optoelectronics, Western University, Ontario<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Researchers have created tiny gold antennae that gather and concentrate light in order to increase the efficiency of solar cells by up to ten\u00a0per cent. Solar cells often don\u2019t absorb very well in the red or infrared part of the solar spectrum.\u00a0Previous researchers have tried to use gold nanoparticles &#8211; which do capture and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3103,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[644,1011],"class_list":["post-3118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-energy","tag-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pngbase64c415126e4727fa1f.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-Oi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3123,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118\/revisions\/3123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}