Emerging Green Energy Technologies
Research Clusters
QUICK LINKS
Some Key Research Teams at WFU
The Nanotechnology Center 2019
Nanotechnology and the importance of being earnestly GREEN...
“It aint easy being green...” the song goes. As human society faces dwindling natural resources, demand for greater power production from expanding populations, and increased earth impacts due to our activities, the need for a more responsible way to live together has become critical. Yet as voices grow for more and more conservation, it quickly becomes apparent that the shear number of the inhabitants of our planet together with population increase every year, will not allow us to conserve our way into sustainability any more than we can continue to expand and grow our economies without bound.
So how do we build a sustainable future? How do we live within the finite biosphere of our planet? Should we retreat to a pre-industrial society to insure that our planet can provide for us? Can we put the Genie back into the bottle? As futurists, we see another way... Our approach is to use nanoscience and nanoengineering to develop radical new technologies in compact, efficient and affordable power generation such as Solar Cells, Thermoelectrics, and Solar-Biofuels as well as power utilization technologies that balance use and production such as Highly Efficient Lighting, Advanced Batteries and Highly Efficient Organic Electronics. The new tools of nano allow us to innovate and manage the resources of our planet.
Dr. David Carroll: Organic and Inorganic Solar Cells, Organic Thermoelectrics and Thermo/piezo materials, High Efficiency Lighting Systems
Dr. Oana Jurchescu: The basis of transport in organic semiconductors, Organic printed circuits, high performance organic transistors
Dr. Abdou Lachgar: Novel Battery/Storage Materials, new catalysts for solar fuels, nano-cage structures
Dr. Richard Williams: Solar Concentrators, ZnO nanoparticles, scintillator technologies