Engineering
Organic solar cells are an emerging technology with a lot of promise. Unlike the ubiquitous silicon solar panel, they have the potential to be lightweight, flexible, and present a variety of colors, making them particularly attractive for urban or façade applications. However, continued advancements in device performance have been sluggish as…
For parts of the U.S., the best place to store massive amounts energy for the electric grid could be right beneath our feet.
Geothermal energy, which relies on hot rock far below the earth’s surface, has long been used as a source of heating and electricity generation. But recent advances in drilling technology have opened up new…
Researchers have discovered a new method for correcting errors in the calculations of quantum computers, potentially clearing a major obstacle to a powerful new realm of computing.
In conventional computers, fixing errors is a well-developed field. Every cellphone requires checks and fixes to send and receive data over messy airwaves…
Most materials – from rubber bands to steel beams – thin out as they are stretched, but engineers can use origami’s interlocking ridges and precise folds to reverse this tendency and build devices that grow wider as they are pulled apart.
Researchers increasingly use this kind of technique, drawn from the ancient art of origami, to…
The Department of Energy has awarded another four years of funding to the Energy Frontier Research Center helmed by Princeton University’s Department of Chemistry: Bio-Inspired Light-Escalated Chemistry (BioLEC).
The $12.6M in funding was announced today by the DOE’s Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences. …
Princeton Engineering researchers have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime, marking a major milestone for an emerging class of renewable energy technology.
The device is the first of its kind to rival the performance of silicon-based cells, which have dominated the market…
Just as it’s hard to understand a conversation without knowing its context, it can be difficult for biologists to grasp the significance of gene expression without knowing a cell’s environment. To solve that problem, researchers at Princeton Engineering have developed a method to elucidate a cell’s surroundings so that biologists can make more…
Extreme flooding events spawned by hurricanes are likely to become far more frequent along the Eastern and Southern U.S. coastlines because of a combination of sea level rise and storm intensification. The findings, contained in new research from Princeton University, show that the two sources of water can produce what researchers call compound…
As a master’s student at Auburn University in the 1970s, H. Vincent Poor switched on an oscilloscope and tweaked its knobs to reveal a pattern of bright, undulating lines on a gridded screen — a visual measurement of background noise picked up by a radio receiver, and an example of the real-world relevance of the communication theory he was…
Deploying a technique that promises to supercharge the development of biofuels, researchers at Princeton University have found a way to make yeast cultures glow when producing next generation fuels that could power cars and airplanes.
The glowing cultures address a major challenge that has slowed biofuel production: developing yeast…