Predicting Solar Cell Performance from Terahertz and Microwave Spectroscopy

Mobilities and lifetimes of photogenerated charge carriers are core properties of photovoltaic materials and can both be characterized by contactless terahertz or microwave measurements. Here, the expertise from fifteen laboratories is combined to quantitatively model the current-voltage characteristics of a solar cell from such measurements....

Mechanical stretch influence on lifetime of dielectric elastomer films

Film pre-stretching is a widely adopted solution to improve dielectric strength of the DEA systems. However, to date, long term reliability of this solution has not been investigated. In this work it is explored how the dielectric elastomer lifetime is affected by film pre-stretching. The dielectric loss of soft polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) films...

A Reliability Prediction for Integrated LED Lamp with Electrolytic Capacitor-Free Driver

This paper studies the interaction of catastrophic failure of the driver and LED luminous flux decay for an integrated LED lamp with an electrolytic capacitor-free LED driver. Electronic thermal simulations are utilized to obtain the lamp's dynamic history of temperature and current for two distinct operation modes: constant current mode (CCM...

Degradation of CIGS solar cells

Thin film CIGS solar cells and individual layers within these solar cells have been tested in order to assess their long term stability. Alongside with the execution of standard tests, in which elevated temperatures and humidity levels are used, the solar cells have also been exposed to a combination of elevated temperature and humidity and...

The search for the most eco-efficient strategies for sustainable housing transformations

Heat treatment studies of aluminium alloy type 7050 forgings. Interim report no. 2: The effect of heat treatment on a variety of engineering properties

The effect of variety of heat treatments on various engineering properties was studied with the aim to derive an optimum heat treatment. The engineering properties comprised Vickers hardness, short-time tensile strength, fatigue crack propagation resistance, fracture toughness and stress corrosion resistance. The test results were compared with...