Introducing light trapping structures into thin-film solar cells has the potential to enhance their solar energy harvesting as well as the performance of the cells; however, current strategies have been focused mainly on harvesting photons without considering the light re-escaping from cells in two-dimensional scales. The lateral out-coupled solar energy loss from the marginal areas of cells ha...

We employ a ZnO nanorod/Si(3)N(4)-coated Si microgroove-based hierarchical structure (HS) for a light-harvesting scheme in 5 inch single crystalline Si solar cells. ZnO nanorods and Si microgrooves were fabricated by a simple and scalable aqueous process. The excellent light-harvesting characteristics of the HS, such as broadband working ranges and omnidirectionality have been demonstrated usin...

The steady state absorption and fluorescence spectroscopic properties of the xanthophylls, violaxanthin, zeaxanthin, and lutein, and the efficiencies of singlet energy transfer from the individual xanthophylls to chlorophyll have been investigated in recombinant CP26 protein overexpressed in Escherichia coli and then refolded in vitro with purified pigments. Also, the effect of the different xa...

The hopping charge transfer in the ionconductive material is analyzed and experimentally investigated as the thermoelectric power generation. The physical model for the phenomenon as well as experimental results are analyzed in means of practical implementation with power conversion for energy harvesting from heat wastes or wide-spectrum solar radiation. Provided analysis addresses the thermoel...

Infiltration phenomenon, has a direct impact on rainwater harvesting in fields under irrigation. In order to solve this problem (reduced infiltration and increased runoff), a few strategies can be suggested. Taking long-term decision for increasing the efficiency of irrigation should be strongly suggested. At the same time, ways in which customized irrigation is optimized must be studied. An ol...

A practical piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting (PVEH) system is usually composed of two coupled parts: a harvesting structure and an interface circuit. Thus, it is much necessary to build system-level coupled models for analyzing PVEH systems, so that the whole PVEH system can be optimized to obtain a high overall efficiency. In this paper, two classes of coupled models are proposed by j...

Harvesting efficiency could be improved significantly by computing optimal harvesting patterns which minimize turning time. Hence, the execution of harvesting operations, especially in case of cooperating harvesters, needs to be carefully planned. In this paper, the operation planning for a fleet of harvesters is formulated as a discrete optimization, multi-Traveling Salesman Problem (m-TSP). G...

0038-1101/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sse.2012.09.008 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 301 405 3735. E-mail address: [email protected] (W. Zhao). All energy-harvesting schemes require some form of ‘‘intermediate’’ storage – batteries or capacitors that reservoir energy harvested from the environment. There are a number of reasons for this requirement. Ambien...

Future deployment of wireless sensor networks will ultimately require a self-sustainable local power source for each sensor, and vibration energy harvesting is a promising approach for such applications. A requirement for efficient vibration energy harvesting is to match the device and source frequencies. While techniques to tune the resonance frequency of an energy harvesting device have recen...