November 2008 Archives

The Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy's (JRSE's) editor, P. Craig Taylor, was interviewed on NPR's Science Friday with Ira Flatow (listen to the entire broadcast. Dr. Taylor discussed the basic research covered by the journal and in particular discussed one of the first articles that appeared; one of which describes tiny solar cells--each one about a quarter the size of a lowercase "o" in a standard 12-point font--that can be used as a power source for running microscopic sensors (known as MEMs) for detecting dangerous chemicals and toxins.

Dr. Taylor is the Associate Director of the Colorado Energy Research Instutute (CERI) and Professor at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO. AIP is delighted to see such a positive media response for JRSE, and hopes that the journal will grow with the diverse and rapidly expanding renewable and sustainable energy research community.

In addition, the article was covered by Reuters, Scientific American, and Wired.com, among others.

AIP is excited and pleased to announce the launch of the first articles in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, its newest peer-reviewed journal focused on basic research in the renewable fields--here is the table of contents. The editors of the journal, P. Craig Taylor (Colorado School of Mines) and John A. Turner (NREL), have also published a brief editorial to introduce the world to AIP's newest journal.
The journal will look to cover renewable and sustainable energy research and technology--read more about the scope.

The first two research articles are:

• "Fabrication of organic solar array for applications in microelectromechanical systems" by Jason Lewis, Jian Zhang, and Xiaomei Jiang (University of South Florida)
• "Flexible Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells fabricated using alkali-silicate glass thin layers as an alkali source material" by Shogo Ishizuka , Akimasa Yamada, Paul Fons, and Shigeru Niki (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology [AIST], Japan)

Jiang and her colleagues fabricated their array of 20 tiny solar cells as a power source for running a microscopic sensor for detecting dangerous chemicals and toxins. The detector, known as a microeletromechanical system (MEMS) device, is built with carbon nanotubes and has already been tested using ordinary DC power supplied by batteries. When fully powered and hooked into a circuit, the carbon nanotubes can sensitively detect particular chemicals by measuring the electrical changes that occur when chemicals enter the tubes. The type of chemical can be distinguished by the exact change in the electrical signal.