Break-thru

BRT has talked about solar ad nauseum as yours truly believes that solar will eventually become the prime driver to sustainable energy production. The holdback to this tech has been efficiency, cost and form factor as expensive, large glass encased silicon solar cells with 12% efficiency, does not compute if solar is to replace the environmentally catastrophic fossil fuel tech that currently powers the world today.

Enter epitaxy,  a better way to do solar, courtesy a collaboration between Arizona State University and Georgia Tech using a new way to grow gallium nitride crystals (InGaN), the critical component that will change how solar gets power from the sun.

Did you know that crystals form the basis for the penetrating icy blue glare of car headlights and could be fundamental to the future in solar energy technology?

Crystals are at the heart of diodes. Not the kind you might find in quartz, formed naturally, but manufactured to form alloys, such as indium gallium nitride or InGaN. This alloy forms the light emitting region of LEDs, for illumination in the visible range, and of laser diodes (LDs), in the blue-UV range... 

In an article recently published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the ASU group, in collaboration with a scientific team led by professor Alan Doolittle at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has just revealed the fundamental aspect of a new approach to growing InGaN crystals for diodes, which promises to move photovoltaic solar cell technology toward record-breaking efficiencies.

Imagination is more important than knowledge - Einstein