Via Juan Bisquert’s post: solar cell company Konarka filed for bankrupty yesterday according to Businessweek. It is always hard to be the first… Konarka received its first venture capital in mid 2001.
Howard Berke, CEO of Konarka:
This is a tragedy for Konarka’s shareholders and employees and for the development of alternative energy in the U.S.
Let’s hope that our friends from Konarka find other suitable positions, and that other companies such as Heliatek take up the lead!
Hi, a link list just to keep you occupied;-)
Next week a round of referees will come to Würzburg to decide on another set of grant proposals, so I’ll go back to my preparations now…
Children change the life, how very true. Not that I am less interested in Science in general, 
I do enjoy it! Nevertheless, somehow work seems less important these days – which maybe I should not admit openly ;-)
I received this statement,
Blue suits the lecturer better than pink
as one of the results of the lecture evaluation (Atom Physics for “Teachers to be”). Yes, I also received some other comments, most positive, some negative, all useful (including that one?;-)
Just to say that I am still amongst the living, here some bits and pieces I found during the last weeks, when time allowed. Continue reading “Blue suits him better than pink”
I just changed the comment settings: up to now, a WordPress account was needed in order to be able to comment on my posts. Believe me or not, I did not even know about this setting till today. Now, you only have to give your (or some;-) name and an email address (yours? I do not know). Maybe this lowers the barrier for some of you to ask questions or provide further insights and critical views.
Tomorrow is abstract deadline for the SPIE Optics and Photonics 2011, including the session Organic Photovoltaics XII. See you there:-)
Just came across a posting on Academic Productivity: the Reader Meter can create an analogue to the h-index (or Hirsch index). Instead of measuring how many papers of a certain researcher are cited how often, it determines – based on data of the academic reference management software Mendeley – how many papers have been bookmarked by Mendeley users. Certainly, the software is an alpha version, and the original h-index is a more important measure as citations carry more impact than bookmarks. Nevertheless, the additional information is quite interesting, either general or on a per-paper basis concerning readership and nationality (the journal entry for my review is not correct, however, but the DOI is;-) Find “my” Reader Meter entry here;-)
I mentioned the record bulkheterojunction solar cell from Solarmer recently:
8.13%, although on a small area of 0.1cm2. The evporated small molecule solar cells had almost 6% on a ~10 times larger area. On the SPIE Optics&Photonics conference in August in San Diego I heard inofficially that Heliatek achieved more than 6%, but now on foil. Even better: more than 7% (active area efficiency; about one percent-point less for the complete area) on a module with more than 70cm2! This one is not flexible, I believe. Amazing if you consider that the evaporation is by point sources. If these modules are encapsulated, they are said to have an extrapolated lifetime exceeding 10 years.
Three weeks ago I participated in a very nice Conference on Hybrid-Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV2010) in Assisi, Italy
. Juan Bisquert, member of the Scientific Commitee, had asked me to organise a discussion panel on Carrier lifetime in bulk heterojunction solar cells. Indeed, a lively exchange of concepts and ideas between the panel – James Durrant, Germa Garcia Belmonte, Gytis Juska and myself – and the audience developed. I would like to thank the organisers, the panelists and the participants of this symposium once again: it was great! I am not sure if I will be able to summarise some of the discussion highlights here, considering that even this note took me 20 days… but I strive to improve;-)
Short note: my short review finally came online. Coauthors are Vladimir Dyakonov and Christoph Brabec. In case you have access to IEEE, find the paper here.
The US Department of Energy is to fund 46 so called Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) with 777 million dollars over the course of the next five years (see news here). 
Quite a commitment to basic research in times of a global economic crisis &ndash although the decision has been taken years before, with thematic workshops starting in 2003.
Some of the centers will focus on photovoltaic energy conversion, partly with a strong focus on organics!
The list can be found here, and there are also details available.
Well, strong competition coming up for us European researchers… but what could be better for driving a field forward? ;-)
Today I found a new blog 
(only a few days old) on hybrid and organic photovoltaics by Juan Bisquert, Professor for Applied Physics in Castelló de la Plana, Spain. I know him as author of interesting papers, a recent one being the review-like article on a rather fundamental view on diffusion and its different interpretations in disordered materials [Bisquert 2008]. Also, allow me the unrelated remark (personal interest, so to say;) that his university seems to be just within a wine region, similar to my home of choice.
As fellow blogger with common interest:
Welcome!
I am looking forward to reading your posts.
Carsten
Update 20.2.2009: At the same time, another new blog from the same university started; same topic, different style.
Notes on Disordered Matter 