Sunday, June 6th, 2010 at
2:11 pm
Although silicon is actually the market normal semiconductor in almost all electronic products, including the solar cells that sun panels utilize to transform sunshine into electricity, it is hardly the most efficient product available. For example, the semiconductor gallium arsenide and related ingredient semiconductors provide close to two times the performance as silicon in photo voltaic units, yet they are rarely utilized in utility-scale applications because of their excessive manufacturing value.
University. of I. (http://illinois.edu/) professors J. Rogers and X. Li researched lower-cost ways to create thin films of gallium arsenide that also granted versatility in the sorts of products they might be integrated into.
If you can decrease considerably the price of gallium arsenide and some other compound semiconductors, then you might increase their variety of applications.
Typically, gallium arsenide is placed in a single thin layer on a small wafer. Either the preferred device is created specifically on the wafer, or the semiconductor-coated wafer is break up into chips of the preferred size. The Illinois group decided to put in numerous layers of the material on a one wafer, producing a layered, “pancake” stack of gallium arsenide thin films.
If you increase ten layers in a single growth, you simply have to load the wafer 1 time. If you do this in ten growths, loading and unloading with temp ramp-up and ramp-down get a lot of time. If you consider exactly what is needed for each growth – the equipment, the preparation, the period, the workers – the overhead saving this method presents is a substantial price reduction.
After that the scientists independently peel off the layers and shift them. To achieve this, the stacks alternate levels of aluminum arsenide with the gallium arsenide. Bathing the stacks in a solution of acid and an oxidizing agent dissolves the levels of aluminum arsenide, freeing the single small sheets of gallium arsenide. A soft stamp-like device selects up the levels, one at a time from the top down, for move to one more substrate – glass, plastic-type or silicon, depending on the application. Then the wafer may be reused for another growth.
By executing this it's possible to create much more material much more rapidly and a lot more cost effectively. This process could produce mass amounts of material, as compared to merely the thin single-layer manner in which it is generally grown.
Freeing the material from the wafer also opens the chance of flexible, thin-film electronics made with gallium arsenide or many other high-speed semiconductors. To make devices which may conform but still keep high performance, which is considerable.
In a paper written and published on-line May twenty in the publication Nature (http://www.nature.com/), the team explains its techniques and displays three types of devices using gallium arsenide chips manufactured in multilayer stacks: light units, high-speed transistors and photo voltaic cells. The creators additionally offer a comprehensive price evaluation.
One more benefit of the multilayer technique is the release from area constraints, specifically essential for photo voltaic cells. As the layers are removed from the stack, they can be laid out side-by-side on one more substrate to make a significantly larger surface area, whereas the standard single-layer process confines area to the size of the wafer.
For photovoltaics, you want big area coverage to get as much sunlight as possible. In an extreme case we may grow adequate layers to have 10 times the area of the conventional.
After that, the team plans to explore more prospective item applications and other semiconductor materials which might adapt to multilayer growth.
About the Source - Shannon Combs writes for the residential solar power installation weblog, her personal hobby website centered on tips to help home owners to save energy with solar power.
Sunday, June 6th, 2010 at
12:02 pm
The Best Homemade Power Generator Guide?
The following 3 products have received more great reviews than any other homemade power guides from a huge number of DIY Renewable Energy enthusiasts, I recommend that you check out our reviews before you decide which one to buy.
The DIY Solar Power and DIY Wind Power guides listed below all cost $49 or less, but will pay for themselves in under 2 months, as well as making savings of well over $3,000 per year, every year.
In our opinion, these are the current top 3 homemade power generator guides available on the market today:
Winner – Earth 4 Energy
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Average User Rating: (9.7 out of 10)
Earth 4 Energy – Awarded Best Homemade Power Guide 2009 & 2010
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Product reviewed: Earth4Energy
First and foremost, Earth4Energy’s latest revised 85 page manual and instructional videos assume that you know nothing about building homemade power generator systems.
The author Michael Harvey has aimed this guide at anyone that can read and follow simple instructions – it’s not aimed at DIY experts like many of the books out there.
The Earth4Energy website is full of real-life examples of ordinary people who are now saving between 45% and 100% of their energy costs – and that’s with a renewable energy 1`system that costs less than $200 to make and install.
The DIY solar power and DIY wind power systems you can build from this guide will work with any family sized home and you can power anything from individual appliances right up to your entire home.
I received my review copy a few months ago and I’ve already received an updated manual and was notified about new instructional videos on the website.
I’ve been in contact with Michael directly a couple of times and all my queries were answered promptly and politely.
This sort of long-term commitment by the author Michael Harvey to improving his products is another great reason to buy this product, which is why I award the full 5 stars and 1st place to Earth4Energy - the best homemade power guide.
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These other guides are also VERY good and worth checking out. I've looked at many homemade power generator guides and these are the best of the rest:
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Average User Rating: (9.5 out of 10)
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Product reviewed: Energy 4 Green
The downloadable manual that comes with Energy 4 Green is very similar to the Earth4Energy guide.
The manual is clear, well laid out, and includes schematics and diagrams that teach you step-by-step how to construct a solar panel that runs up to 200 watts.
As with the other guides, you also get similar instructions for constructing your own homemade windmill.
Also included in the guide are material checklists and tips on where to buy all the materials.
There is a 60 minute step-by-step DVD to making high quality Solar Panels where you can watch a person from start to finish constructing a solar panel. The DVD is very easy to understand.
Yo also get 2 extra ebooks thrown in, which are "Planning and Installing Bio Energy Systems" and "Renewable Energy Technology".
Both these books are well worth a read.
Overall I'd recommend Energy 4 Green as a superb homemade power guide.
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Average User Rating: (7.2 out of 10)
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With Home Made Energy you basically get 2 separate homemade power guides – one for creating a solar power system and one for creating a wind power system.
The materials are fairly clear and accurate – but only if you already know what you are already doing!
Some of the instructions are fairly vague and I think if I had bought this product as a complete novice I'd end up asking for my money back.
I've read other reviews that give this product top marks, but I don't think these people have actually seen the product, or they haven't looked at the better products on the market.
A homemade power guide should teach you how to do everything step-by-step and in detail, not glossing over the real important bits.
Home Made Energy is a good guide if you have some DIY experience, but it come short on extras that the other guides provide.
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There are actually many guides on homemade power, but unfortunately most of them are just rip-offs of the best ones we've recommended above. We've looked at over 10 different guides and many of them provide outdated and inaccurate information and come with zero customer support, plus offer no money back guarantees to protect your purchase.
What you need are clear and easy to use guides, instructional videos, great customer service, and a low price. DIY Solar power and DIY wind power systems are fairly simple to build with the right instructions.
A professional wind power or solar power installation will cost you around 30-50 times the amount it will cost you to build your own homemade power generator system, so I'd strongly recommend you get your hands on one of the guides below and find out how easy it is to build your own DIY renewable energy systems.