Search the Community

NTU scientists discover a way to produce cheaper, more powerful solar cells (From right) Prof Subodh Mhaisalkar, Asst Prof Sum Tze Chien and Dr Nripan Mathews. The Straits Times Monday, Oct 21, 2013 Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have discovered a way to produce cheaper and more powerful solar cells. Get the full story from The Straits Times. Here is the full press release from NTU: In the near future, solar panels will not only be more efficient but also a lot cheaper and affordable for everyone, thanks to research by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) scientists. This next generation solar cell, made from organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite materials, is about five times cheaper than current silicon-based solar cells, due to a simpler solution-based manufacturing process. Perovskite is known to be a remarkable solar cell material as it can convert up to 15 per cent of sunlight to electricity, close to the efficiency of the current solar cells, but scientists did not know why or how, until now. In a paper published last Friday (18 Oct) in the world's most prestigious academic journal, Science, NTU's interdisciplinary research team was the first in the world to explain this phenomenon. The team of eight researchers led by Assistant Professor Sum Tze Chien and Dr Nripan Mathews had worked closely with NTU Visiting Professor Michael Grätzel, who currently holds the record for perovskite solar cell efficiency of 15 per cent, and is a co-author of the paper. Prof Grätzel, who is based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), has won multiple awards for his invention of dye-sensitised solar cells. The high sunlight-to-electricity efficiency of perovskite solar cells places it in direct competition with Silicon solar cells and thin film solar cells which are already in the market and have efficiencies close to 20 per cent. The new knowledge on how these solar cells work is now being applied by the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N), which is developing a commercial prototype of the perovskite solar cell in collaboration with Australian clean-tech firm Dyesol Limited (ASX: DYE). Asst Prof Sum said the discovery of why perovskite worked so well as a solar cell material was made possible only through the use of cutting-edge equipment and in close collaboration with NTU engineers. "In our work, we utilise ultrafast lasers to study the perovskite materials. We tracked how fast these materials react to light in quadrillionths of a second (roughly 100 billion times faster than a camera flash)," said the Singaporean photophysics expert from NTU's School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. "We discovered that in these perovskite materials, the electrons generated in the material by sunlight can travel quite far. This will allow us to make thicker solar cells which absorb more light and in turn generate more electricity." The NTU physicist added that this unique characteristic of perovskite is quite remarkable since it is made from a simple solution method that normally produces low quality materials. His collaborator, Dr Nripan Mathews, a senior scientist at ERI@N, said that their discovery is a great example of how investment in fundamental research and an interdisciplinary effort, can lead to advances in knowledge and breakthroughs in applied science. "Now that we know exactly how perovskite materials behave and work, we will be able to tweak the performance of the new solar cells and improve its efficiency, hopefully reaching or even exceeding the performance of today's Silicon solar cells," said Dr Mathews, who is also the Singapore R&D Director of the Singapore-Berkeley Research Initiative for Sustainable Energy (SinBeRISE) NRF CREATE programme. "The excellent properties of these materials, allow us to make light weight, flexible solar cells on plastic using cheap processes without sacrificing the good sunlight conversion efficiency." Professor Subodh Mhaisalkar, the Executive Director of ERI@N said they are now looking into building prototype solar cell modules based on this exciting class of materials. "Perovskite-based solar cells have the potential to reach 20 per cent solar cell efficiencies and another great benefit of these materials is their amenability to yield different translucent colours, such as red, yellow or brown. Having such colourful solar glass will create new opportunities for architectural design," he added. The NTU team, consisting of six scientists, one postgraduate and one undergraduate, took six months to complete this fundamental research project, which was funded by NTU and the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister's Office, Singapore. [thumbsup]Up for these guys!!!

Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:50am EST By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mutations in the BRCA1 breast cancer gene appear to be linked with the loss of a protein important for putting the brakes on cell growth, a finding that could lead to new therapies, researchers said on Sunday. The breakthrough could lead to more effective therapies for women with an aggressive and especially deadly cancer known as triple-negative that does not respond to current advanced drugs, the researchers said. "It doesn't have a good target for therapy at this point," said Dr. Ramon Parsons of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, who worked on the study. Scientists have known for more than a decade that women with certain alterations in the BRCA1 gene were at high risk for breast cancer. What they have not understood is exactly how a mutation in this gene leads to cancer. Researchers at Columbia, working with at team at Sweden's Lund University, now believe mutations in the BRCA1 gene can leave cells incapable of repairing routine DNA damage. When such damage occurs in a protein called PTEN, which regulates the growth of cells, cell growth is unchecked and tumors form. Women with faulty copies of BRCA1 or BRCA2 have a 50 to 85 percent chance of getting breast cancer. Mutations in these genes account for 5 to 10 percent of breast cancer cases. Most breast tumors are called estrogen-receptor positive, because they are fuelled by the hormone estrogen. About 20 percent are HER2-positive, because a protein called HER2 is involved. A third type is driven by the hormone progesterone. These types of cancer have good treatments. Then there are basal-like or triple-negative tumors, so named because they lack estrogen, progesterone or HER2 receptors needed for most breast cancer drugs to work. UNCHECKED GROWTH "The basic idea is that BRCA1 is a repair enzyme that is involved in coordinating the repair of double strand DNA breaks," said Parsons said in a telephone interview. "When it is mutated, it is no longer present in a cell. If a cut occurs in PTEN, there is no way for this cell to fix it," said Parsons, whose study was published in Nature Genetics. "It is like cutting the brake cable on a car," he said. "If PTEN is broken, you turn on a pathway that tells the cell to grow. It tells the cell to start dividing. It tells the cell, 'don't die.'" Parsons said loss of the protein PTEN is how breast cancer gets started in women who have inherited the BRCA1 gene mutation. His team made the connection between BRCA1 and PTEN by searching for chromosome breaks within the PTEN gene. They scanned 34 biopsies taken from women with BRCA1 tumors. The PTEN gene had been split in two, but inadequately repaired in about one-third of the cancers. In some cases, entire sections of the gene were missing. They said these chromosomal mistakes trace back to the tumor's lack of BRCA1, which is charged with cell repair. He estimates that about 50 percent of BRCA1 breast cancers harbor mutated PTEN. "These tumors have very high frequency loss of the PTEN protein," Parsons said. In breast cancers from women with normal BRCA1, they rarely found large mutations in PTEN. "A lot of drug companies are working on this. There is reasonably good hope that this approach will improve therapy for patients," Parsons said. Basal-like breast tumors are also found in 10 to 20 percent of women whose cancer was not caused by BRCA1 or another gene. The researchers found PTEN is lost in most of these breast tumors as well. (Editing by Jackie Frank)

Hi guys, 12th Discover Malaysia Tourism Fair 2007 at Singapore EXPO Trade & Public - Free Admission Hall 6B 16-Nov-07 to 18-Nov-07 Start Time: 10:00; End Time : 22:00 Should be able to get some great deals for hotel stay in MY. Regards,