The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Recent advances in solar thermoelectric generator (STEG) performance have raised their prospect as a potential technology to convert solar energy into electricity. This paper presents an analysis of thin-film STEGs. Properties and geometries of the devices are lumped into two p...

A desired reflectance profile versus frequency (wavenumber) can be directly Fourier transformed into the index of refraction profile as a function of thickness which would produce the desired spectral reflectance profile. This tool has existed for some years now but does not seem to be in common use. This paper lays out some of the principles to aid in making the process more understandable, in...

The focus of this thesis is to analyze cost trends and government incentives in the California PV market during 2007-2008. The data show that pre-rebate system costs increased in California during this time period and that this was driven by a surge in worldwide module cost. Systems employing thin film technology did not exhibit a downward impact on cost, which contradicts historical and techno...

Stainless steel based dye solar cells have been upscaled from small, laboratory size test cells of 0.32 cm2 active area to 6 cm x 6 cm "mini-modules" with active areas ca. 15 cm2. Stainless steel works as the photoelectrode substrate whilst the counter electrode is prepared on indium-doped tin oxide coated polyethyleneterephtalate or polyethylenenaphtalate plastic foil (fluorine-doped tin oxide...

A combination of surface energy-guided blade coating and inkjet printing is used to fabricate an all-printed high performance, high yield, and low variability organic thin film transistor (OTFT) array on a plastic substrate. Functional inks and printing processes were optimized to yield self-assembled homogenous thin films in every layer of the OTFT stack. Specifically, we investigated the effe...

A micro power generator for harvesting vibration energy by means of a piezoelectric laminated cantilever with inertial mass was designed, fabricated, and characterized. The device was micro machined from a silicon-on-insulator structure coated with a 2μm thick piezoelectric PZT thin film. Interdigitated electrodes (IDE) were applied to achieve higher voltages. A piezoelectric coupling constant ...

BACKGROUND Determination of lipophilicity as a tool for predicting pharmacokinetic molecular behavior is limited by the predictive power of available experimental models of the biomembrane. There is current interest, therefore, in models that accurately simulate the biomembrane structure and function. A novel bio-device; a lipid thin film, was engineered as an alternative approach to the previo...

The progress in high technology has led to the wide use of thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFTLCD). The evolution of the manufacturing technology of TFT-LCD keeps increasing the size of TFT-LCD since a larger TFT-LCD allows a larger display application and an improved productivity. However, as the size of TFT-LCD increases, the size of TFT-array substrates and color filter substrat...

in this paper a chemical deposition procedure for the preparation of lead sulfide thin film ispresented. the details of the preparation method are described. the influence of hydrazine hydrate onthe microstructure and deposition rate of lead sulfide thin film has been investigated. the concentrationof the lead ions in the deposition bath decreases more slowly when the hydrazine hydrate is added...