Next-Gen Energy Storage & Solar Cells to Get Boost from Nano-Flowers

(Before It's News)

This post comes to us from Planetsave.com. For more along these lines, visit Planetsave or some of its most popular categories: Global Warming, Science, Going Green Tips, Animals, or 10 Friday Photos.

 
Nano-flowers, newly created structures composed of germanium sulfide (GeS), have the potential to open the door to next-generation solar cells and energy storage devices. These ‘flowers’, created by researchers from North Carolina State University out of a semiconducting material, feature an enormous surface area, thanks to being covered in many extremely thin petals.

“Creating these GeS nanoflowers is exciting because it gives us a huge surface area in a small amount of space,” says Dr. Linyou Cao, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research. “This could significantly increase the capacity of lithium-ion batteries, for instance, since the thinner structure with larger surface area can hold more lithium ions. By the same token, this GeS flower structure could lead to increased capacity for supercapacitors, which are also used for energy storage.”

 The flower-shaped structures were created by researchers through a process that begins with heating GeS powder in a furnace so that it vaporizes. After that, the vapor gets blown into a cooler area of the furnace, “where the GeS settles out of the air into a layered sheet that is only 20 to 30 nanometers thick, and up to 100 micrometers long. As additional layers are added, the sheets branch out from one another, creating a floral pattern similar to a marigold or carnation.”

“To get this structure, it is very important to control the flow of the GeS vapor,” Cao says, “so that it has time to spread out in layers, rather than aggregating into clumps.”

GeS behaves similarly to graphite, settling into structurally organized layers and sheets. It’s considerably different than graphite with regards to its atomic structure though, GeS is an excellent material for creating solar cells, very effective at converting solar energy into electricity. GeS also happens to be relatively inexpensive and is non-toxic, another huge plus when it comes to solar cells. Currently, many of the manufacturing processes used by solar cell producers are ‘expensive’ and make use of toxic materials, though there have been continuing improvements in these areas the last few years.

The research paper, called “Role of Boundary Layer Diffusion in Vapor Deposition Growth of Chalcogenide Nanosheets: The Case of GeS,” was just published in the journal ACS Nano.

Source: North Carolina State University
Image Credit: North Carolina State University

Reposted from Solar Love with permission.

• Black Silicon Solar Cells Get Efficiency Boosts (Two of Them)
• NASA Develops Ironman-Like Exoskeleton
• Shark Conservation in Arabia: first international workshop concludes
• Free Fall at the Edge of Space: successful jump back to our home planet
• Torches of Freedom
• An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces
• Frackademia: Controversial SUNY Buffalo Shale Institute’s Reputation Unraveling
• What Climate Solutions Can We Achieve Together?
• The Coral Reef Crisis Threatens Nature’s Ability To Help Us Deal With Climate Change
• Antibiotic, Pesticide, and Microbial Contaminants of Honey: Human Health Hazards