Nanowires Inside Carbon Nanotubes Can Improve Solar Cell Technology [Study]

Nanowires have a future application for sustainable energy. According to a new study, it can be used for solar cells.

Nanowires for Solar Energy

A hundred thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, tiny materials like nanowires may be employed to advance solar cell technology.

According to a recent study, materials as thin as 1.2 nanometers wide could work in solar cells, which harness solar energy. Carbon nanotubes, which are small tubules made of carbon atoms, serve as templates for the inorganic halide compounds, Phys.org reported.

The finding of such tiny nanowires may result in new features and uses for this form of renewable energy.

Researchers from the University of Warwick, Oxford Materials, and SuperSTEM, a U.K. national center for electron microscopy, worked together to unveil the absolute minimum limit at which halide perovskite-like structures can be created as free-standing materials inside carbon nanotubes. According to NIH, halide perovskites are promising materials in photovoltaic and light-emitting devices. They are frequently employed in solar panels and light-emitting diodes because they have structures comparable to calcium titanate (LEDs).

In contrast to huge "bulk" halide perovskites, we demonstrate that much smaller "picoscale" halide perovskite structures -only one unit cell or even just one-quarter of a unit cell in cross-section - can be enclosed in carbon nanotubes with a diameter of between 1.2 and 1.6 nm.

The study results are strikingly comparable to research done at the University of Berkeley, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), underscoring the potential uses for these small materials in solar cells.

These discoveries' broader ramifications will make it possible to use the amazing optoelectronic properties of halide perovskites to sub- or perhaps picoscale dimensions.

The study was published in Advanced Materials this month.

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Hybrid Nanobot to Identify Healthy, Dying Cells

Nanotechnology has a lot of applications. Aside from using them to promote sustainable energy, a new study also developed a hybrid nanobot that can navigate between cells and identify their state, whether they are healthy or dying.

The micro-robots are about the size of a biological cell and can move around and get various tasks done. For instance, they can collect synthetic and biological cargo, including bacteria and sperm cells.

The new hybrid micro-robots have a lot of applications. It can be used in medicine and as a research tool.

A single cell can now be recognized and captured by the micro-robot without the requirement for labeling, local testing or retrieval, or transfer to external equipment. The research aims to create tiny robots that can carry drugs efficiently inside the body and navigate to specific destinations.

The technology will make it possible to create a "laboratory on a particle" -a microscopic lab designed to perform diagnostics in spaces only accessible to micro-particles-as well as single-cell medical diagnosis, genetic editing, drug delivery inside the body, clearing the environment of polluting particles, and drug development.