PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

The mystery of the missing energy - solved

Competition between triplet pair formation and excimer-like recombination controls singlet fission yield

The mystery of the missing energy - solved
2021-03-10
(Press-News.org) The efficiency of solar cells can be increased by exploiting a phenomenon known as singlet fission. However, unexplained energy losses during the reaction have until now been a major problem. A research group led by scientists at Linköping University, Sweden, has discovered what happens during singlet fission and where the lost energy goes. The results have been published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.

Solar energy is one of the most important fossil-free and eco-friendly sustainable sources of electricity. The silicon-based solar cells currently in use can at most use approximately 33% of the energy in sunlight and convert it to electricity. This is because the packets of light, or photons, in the sun's beams have an energy that is either too low to be absorbed by the solar cell, or too high, so that part of the energy is dissipated to waste heat. This maximum theoretical efficiency is known as the Shockley-Queisser limit. In practice, the efficiency of modern solar cells is 20-25%.

However, a phenomenon in molecular photophysics known as singlet fission can allow photons with higher energy to be used and converted to electricity without heat loss. In recent years, singlet fission has attracted increasing attention from scientists, and intense activity is under way to develop the optimal material. However, unexplained energy losses during singlet fission have until now made it difficult to design such a material. Researchers have not been able to agree on the origin of these energy losses.

Now, researchers at Linköping University, together with colleagues in Cambridge, Oxford, Donostia and Barcelona, have discovered where the energy goes during singlet fission.

"Singlet fission takes place in less than a nanosecond, and this makes it extremely difficult to measure. Our discovery allows us to open the black box and see where the energy goes during the reaction. In this way we will eventually be able to optimise the material to increase the efficiency of solar cells", says Yuttapoom Puttisong, senior lecturer in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology at Linköping University.

Part of the energy disappears in the form of an intermediate bright state, and this is a problem that must be solved to achieve efficient singlet fission. The discovery of where the energy goes is a major step on the way to significantly higher solar cell efficiency - from the current 33% to over 40%.

The researchers used a refined magneto-optical transient method to identify the location of energy loss. This technique has unique advantages in that it can examine the 'fingerprint' of the singlet fission reaction at a nanosecond timescale. A monoclinic crystal of a polyene, diphenyl hexatriene (DPH), was used in this study. However, this new technique can be used to study singlet fission in a broader material library. Yuqing Huang is a former doctoral student in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology at Linköping University, and first author of the article now published in a newly established journal, Cell Reports Physical Science:

"The actual singlet fission process takes place in the crystalline material. If we can optimise this material to retain as much as possible of the energy from the singlet fission, we will be significantly closer to application in practice. In addition, the singlet fission material is solution processable, which makes it cheap to manufacture and suitable for integration with existing solar cell technology", says Yuqing Huang.

INFORMATION:

The research has been funded principally by the Swedish Research Council and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

The article: Competition between triplet pair formation and excimer-like recombination controls singlet fission yield Yuqing Huang, Irina A. Buyanova, Chanakarn Phansa, Maria E. Sandoval-Salinas, David Casanova, William K. Myers, Neil C. Greenham, Akshay Rao, Weimin M. Chen, and Yuttapoom Puttisong Cell Reports Physical Science 2021 doi: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2021.100339

Footnote: A nanosecond is a billionth of a second.


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
The mystery of the missing energy - solved

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Multicellular liver-on-a-chip for modeling fatty liver disease

Multicellular liver-on-a-chip for modeling fatty liver disease
2021-03-10
(LOS ANGELES) - Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most prevalent chronic liver disease worldwide. It is found in 30% of people in developed countries and occurs in approximately 25% of people in the United States. Risk factors for the disease include obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol and poor eating habits, although this does not exclude individuals without these risk factors. There is normally a small amount of fat found in the liver; however, if the amount of fat makes up 5% or more of the liver, this is considered to be NAFLD and it must be managed ...

Soft contact lenses eyed as new solutions to monitor ocular diseases

Soft contact lenses eyed as new solutions to monitor ocular diseases
2021-03-10
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - New contact lens technology to help diagnose and monitor medical conditions may soon be ready for clinical trials. A team of researchers from Purdue University worked with biomedical, mechanical and chemical engineers, along with clinicians, to develop the novel technology. The team enabled commercial soft contact lenses to be a bioinstrumentation tool for unobtrusive monitoring of clinically important information associated with underlying ocular health conditions. The team's work is published in Nature Communications. The Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization helped secure a patent for the technology and it is available ...

Class assignment leads to published research

Class assignment leads to published research
2021-03-10
Armando Collazo Garcia III got more than he expected from a graduate course he took last spring. He developed a new understanding of the physics of transonic shocks produced across a laminar flow airfoil with boundary-layer suction and added a published paper to his resume. "When I got the assignment to do a research project, I realized I already had a good data set from my master's thesis that I could use in a new way," Collazo Garcia said. "I was able to apply linear algebra techniques to manipulate the flow field data and decompose the information into modes. The modes provided a snapshot of various aspects of the flow and were ranked by their energy contribution, ...

Both old and young fish sustain fisheries

Both old and young fish sustain fisheries
2021-03-10
Scientists have used modern genetic techniques to prove age-old assumptions about what sizes of fish to leave in the sea to preserve the future of local fisheries. "We've known for decades that bigger fish produce exponentially more eggs," said the lead author of the new study, Charles Lavin, who is a research fellow from James Cook University (JCU) and Nord University in Norway. "However, we also found while these big fish contributed significantly to keeping the population going--they are also rare." Co-author Dr Hugo Harrison from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies ...

COVID-19: Study from 116 countries suggests surgery should be delayed for at least seven weeks following a COVID-19 diagnosis to reduce mortality risk

2021-03-10
New international research published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) concludes that surgery should be delayed for seven weeks after a patient tests positive for SARS-CoV-2, since the data show that surgery that takes place between 0 and 6 weeks after diagnosis is associated with increased mortality. The study is by the COVIDSurg Collaborative: a global collaboration of over 15,000 surgeons working together to collect a range of data on the COVID-19 pandemic. This study's lead authors are Dr Dmitri Nepogodiev (Public Health) and Dr Aneel Bhangu (Surgeon) of the University of Birmingham, UK. While it is known that infection with SARS-CoV-2 during surgery increases mortality and international guidelines recommend ...

Mothers rebuild: Solutions to overcome COVID-19 challenges in academia

Mothers rebuild: Solutions to overcome COVID-19 challenges in academia
2021-03-09
Over the summer and fall, paper after paper revealed that mothers are one of the demographics hardest hit by the pandemic. From layoffs and leaving careers to do caretaking, to submission rate decreases and additional service projects, the data were clear, but the follow up less so. Many of the problems are not new and will remain after the pandemic. But a new paper, published this week in PLOS Biology, outlines methods to help solve them. "In the spirit of the well-worn adage 'never let a good crisis go to waste,' we propose using these unprecedented times as a springboard for necessary, substantive and lasting change," write the 13 co-authors, led by researchers from Boston University and hailing from seven institutions, ...

Chinese immigrants face "alarming" barriers to cancer screening, UCF study finds

Chinese immigrants face alarming barriers to cancer screening, UCF study finds
2021-03-09
Language difficulties and cultural barriers keep an "alarming" number of Chinese Americans from asking for cancer screenings that may protect their health, according to a new University of Central Florida study. Su-I Hou, professor and interim chair of UCF's Health Management & Informatics Department, said her results show that physicians and members of the Chinese community need to improve their communication about the importance of cancer screenings. Her study was recently published in the Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention. Hou surveyed 372 ...

Re-envisioning the nursing PhD degree

2021-03-09
PHILADELPHIA (March 9, 20201) - The PhD degree prepares nurse scientists to advance knowledge through research that improves health, translates into policy, and enhances education. However, as the role of the nurse has changed, and health care has grown more complex, there is a need to re-envision how PhD programs can attract, retain, and create the nurse-scientists of the future and improve patient care. To begin the dialog about the future of PhD education in research-intensive schools, the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) invited 41 educational, governmental, professional, and philanthropic institutions to ...

Study uncovers spawning preferences of mahi-mahi

Study uncovers spawning preferences of mahi-mahi
2021-03-09
MIAMI--In the Florida Straits at night, and under a new moon is the preference for spawning mahi-mahi, according to a new study by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. These new details on the daily life of the highly sought-after migratory fish can help better manage their populations and provide scientists with new information to understand the impacts to the animal from changing environmental conditions. To uncover these important details about the behaviors of mahi-mahi, or dolphinfish, the research team tagged captive spawning ...

Citizens and scientists release 28-year record of water quality in Buzzards Bay

Citizens and scientists release 28-year record of water quality in Buzzards Bay
2021-03-09
WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- A long-lasting, successful relationship between scientists at the MBL Ecosystems Center and the citizen-led Buzzards Bay Coalition has garnered a long-term record of water quality in the busy bay that lies west of Woods Hole. That record has already returned tremendous value and last week, it was published in Scientific Data, a Nature journal. "We hope getting this data out will encourage scientists to use it to test new hypotheses and develop new insights into Bay health," said Rachel Jakuba, science director of the Buzzards Bay Coalition and lead author of the journal article. Since 1992, a large and dedicated team of citizen volunteers, dubbed Baywatchers, has been ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Pink skies

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Key differences between visual- and memory-led Alzheimer’s discovered

% weight loss targets in obesity management – is this the wrong objective?

An app can change how you see yourself at work

NYC speed cameras take six months to change driver behavior, effects vary by neighborhood, new study reveals

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

Novel genes linked to rare childhood diarrhea

New computer model reveals how Bronze Age Scandinavians could have crossed the sea

Novel point-of-care technology delivers accurate HIV results in minutes

Researchers reveal key brain differences to explain why Ritalin helps improve focus in some more than others

Study finds nearly five-fold increase in hospitalizations for common cause of stroke

Study reveals how alcohol abuse damages cognition

Medicinal cannabis is linked to long-term benefits in health-related quality of life

Microplastics detected in cat placentas and fetuses during early pregnancy

Ancient amphibians as big as alligators died in mass mortality event in Triassic Wyoming

Scientists uncover the first clear evidence of air sacs in the fossilized bones of alvarezsaurian dinosaurs: the "hollow bones" which help modern day birds to fly

Alcohol makes male flies sexy

TB patients globally often incur "catastrophic costs" of up to $11,329 USD, despite many countries offering free treatment, with predominant drivers of cost being hospitalization and loss of income

Study links teen girls’ screen time to sleep disruptions and depression

Scientists unveil starfish-inspired wearable tech for heart monitoring

Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

AI effectively predicts dementia risk in American Indian/Alaska Native elders

First guideline on newborn screening for cystic fibrosis calls for changes in practice to improve outcomes

Existing international law can help secure peace and security in outer space, study shows

Pinning down the process of West Nile virus transmission

UTA-backed research tackles health challenges across ages

In pancreatic cancer, a race against time

Targeting FGFR2 may prevent or delay some KRAS-mutated pancreatic cancers

[Press-News.org] The mystery of the missing energy - solved
Competition between triplet pair formation and excimer-like recombination controls singlet fission yield