Diamonds So Hot They Produce Electricity!

Diamonds are getting hot enough to generate electricity! Bristol lab physicist Neil Fox spends his day manipulating delicate films of diamonds as thin as a human hair. Fox aims to turn these diamond films into a new kind of solar cell, one that generates electricity by absorbing heat rather than visible-light wavelengths. He is exploiting “thermionic emission”, the propensity of some materials to spit out electrons when heated, and it turns out that ultra thin diamond is better at this than most, reports New Scientist.

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Solar Metamaterials

In an advance that could lead to solar cells that more fully utilize sunlight, researchers at Caltech have designed materials that can bend visible light at unusual but precise angles, no matter its polarization. The scientists hope the materials are a step toward perfectly transparent solar-cell coatings that would direct all the sun’s rays into the active area to improve solar power output.

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