Tag Archives: David Parlevliet

Pop and rock music lead to better solar cells

Leave a reply

A Nov. 6, 2013 news item on Nanowerk reveals that scientists at the Imperial College of London (UK) and Queen Mary University of London (UK),

Playing pop and rock music improves the performance of solar cells, according to new research from scientists at Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College London.

The high frequencies and pitch found in pop and rock music cause vibrations that enhanced energy generation in solar cells containing a cluster of ‘nanorods’, leading to a 40 per cent increase in efficiency of the solar cells.

The study has implications for improving energy generation from sunlight, particularly for the development of new, lower cost, printed solar cells.

The Nov. 6, 2013 Imperial College of London (ICL) news release, which originated the news item, gives more details about the research,

The researchers grew billions of tiny rods (nanorods) made from zinc oxide, then covered them with an active polymer to form a device that converts sunlight into electricity.

Using the special properties of the zinc oxide material, the team was able to show that sound levels as low as 75 decibels (equivalent to a typical roadside noise or a printer in an office) could significantly improve the solar cell performance.

“After investigating systems for converting vibrations into electricity this is a really exciting development that shows a similar set of physical properties can also enhance the performance of a photovoltaic,” said Dr Steve Dunn, Reader in Nanoscale Materials from Queen Mary’s School of Engineering and Materials Science.

Scientists had previously shown that applying pressure or strain to zinc oxide materials could result in voltage outputs, known as the piezoelectric effect. However, the effect of these piezoelectric voltages on solar cell efficiency had not received significant attention before.

“We thought the soundwaves, which produce random fluctuations, would cancel each other out and so didn’t expect to see any significant overall effect on the power output,” said James Durrant, Professor of Photochemistry at Imperial College London, who co-led the study.

“The key for us was that not only that the random fluctuations from the sound didn’t cancel each other out, but also that some frequencies of sound seemed really to amplify the solar cell output – so that the increase in power was a remarkably big effect considering how little sound energy we put in.”

“We tried playing music instead of dull flat sounds, as this helped us explore the effect of different pitches. The biggest difference we found was when we played pop music rather than classical, which we now realise is because our acoustic solar cells respond best to the higher pitched sounds present in pop music,” he concluded.

The discovery could be used to power devices that are exposed to acoustic vibrations, such as air conditioning units or within cars and other vehicles.

This is not the first time that music has been shown to affect properties at the nanoscale. A March 12, 2008 article by Anna Salleh for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation featured a researcher who tested nanowire growth by playing music (Note: Links have been removed),

Silicon nanowires grow more densely when blasted with Deep Purple than any other music tested, says an Australian researcher.

But the exact potential of music in growing nanowires remains a little hazy.

David Parlevliet, a PhD student at Murdoch University in Perth, presented his findings at a recent Australian Research Council Nanotechnology Network symposium in Melbourne.

Parlevliet is testing nanowires for their ability to absorb sunlight in the hope of developing solar cells from them.

I’ve taken a look at the references cited by researchers in their paper and there is nothing from Parleviet listed, so, this seems to be one of those cases where more than one scientist is thinking along the similar lines, i.e., that sound might affect nanoscale structures in such a way as to improve solar cell efficiency.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the ICL/University of Queen Mary research paper,

Acoustic Enhancement of Polymer/ZnO Nanorod Photovoltaic Device Performance by Safa Shoaee, Joe Briscoe, James R. Durrant, Steve Dunn. Article first published online: 6 NOV 2013 DOI: 10.1002/adma.201303304
© 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

Proteins which cause Alzheimer’s disease can be used to grow functionalized nanowires

Leave a reply

This is the first time I’ve ever heard of anything good resulting from Alzheimer’s Disease (even if it’s tangential). From the May 24, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

Prof. Sakaguchi and his team in Graduate School of Science, Hokkaido University,jointly with MANA PI Prof. Kohei Uosaki and a research group from the University of California, Santa Barbara, have successfully developed a new technique for efficiently creating functionalized nanowires for the first time ever.

The group focused on the natural propensity of amyloid peptides, molecules which are thought to cause Alzheimer’s disease, to self-assemble into nanowires in an aqueous solution and controlled this molecular property to achieve their feat.

The May 23, 2013 National Institute for Materials press release, which originated the news item, offers insight into why functionalized nanowires are devoutly desired,

Functionalized nanowires are extremely important in the construction of nanodevices because they hold promise for use as integrated circuits and for the generation of novel properties, such as conductivity, catalysts and optical properties which are derived from their fine structure. However, some have remarked on the technical and financial limitations of the microfabrication technology required to create these structures. Meanwhile, molecular self-organization and functionalization have attracted attention in the field of next-generation nanotechnology development. Amyloid peptides, which are thought to cause Alzheimer’s disease, possess the ability to self-assemble into highly stable nanowires in an aqueous solution. Focusing on this, the research team became the first to successfully develop a new method for efficiently creating a multifunctional nanowire by controlling this molecular property.

The team designed a new peptide called SCAP, or structure-controllable amyloid peptide, terminated with a three-amino-acid-residue cap. By combining multiple SCAPs with different caps, the team found that self-organization is highly controlled at the molecular level. Using this new control method, the team formed a molecular nanowire with the largest aspect ratio ever achieved. In addition, they made modifications using various functional molecules including metals, semiconductors and biomolecules that successfully produced an extremely high quality functionalized nanowire. Going forward, this method is expected to contribute significantly to the development of new nanodevices through its application to a wide range of functional nanomaterials with self-organizing properties.

You can find the published paper here,

Formation of Functionalized Nanowires by Control of Self-Assembly Using Multiple Modified Amyloid Peptides by Hiroki Sakai, Ken Watanabe, Yuya Asanomi, Yumiko Kobayashi, Yoshiro Chuman, Lihong Shi, Takuya Masuda, Thomas Wyttenbach, Michael T. Bowers, Kohei Uosaki, & Kazuyasu Sakaguchi1. Advanced Functional Materials. doi: 10.1002/adfm.201300577 Article first published online: 23 APR 2013

The study is behind a paywall.

I have written about nanowires before and, in keeping with today’s theme of peculiar relationships  (Alzheimer’s disease), prior to this, the most unusual nanowire item I’ve come across had to do with growing them to the sounds  of music. From the Nanotech Mysteries (wiki), Scientists get musical page (Note: Footnotes have been removed),

After testing Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water‘, Chopin’s ‘Nocturne Opus 9 no. 1‘, Josh Abraham’s ‘Addicted to Bass‘, Rammstein’s ‘Das Model‘, and Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen‘, David Parlevliet found that music can be used to grow nanowires but they will be kinky.

Scientists want to grow straight nanowires and one of the popular methods is to “[blast] a voltage through silane gas to produce a plasma that pulses on and off at 1000 times a second. Over time the process enables molecules from the gas to deposit on a glass slide in the form of a mesh of crystalline silicon nanowires.”

Parlevliet, a PhD student at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, plugged in a music player instead of a pulse generator usually used for this purpose and observed the results. While there are no current applications for kinky nanowires, the Deep Purple music created the densest mesh. Rammstein’s music grew nanowires the least successfully. In his presentation to the Australian Research Council Nanotechnology Network Symposium in March 2008, Parlevliet concluded that music could become more important for growing nanowires if applications can be found for the kinky ones.