Hollow Mesoporous Plasmonic Nanoshells for Enhanced Solar Vapor Generation.

In the past decade, nanomaterials have made their way into a variety of technologies in solar energy, enhancing the performance by taking advantage of the phenomena inherent to the nanoscale. Recent examples exploit plasmonic core/shell nanoparticles to achieve efficient direct steam generation, showing great promise of such nanoparticles as a useful material for solar applications. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel technique for fabricating bimetallic hollow mesoporous plasmonic nanoshells that yield a higher solar vapor generation rate compared with their solid-core counterparts.

A micropillar array for sample concentration via in-plane evaporation.

We present a method to perform sample concentration within a lab-on-a-chip using a microfluidic structure which controls the liquid-gas interface through a micropillar array fabricated in polydimethylsiloxane between microfluidic channels. The microstructure confines the liquid flow and a thermal gradient is used to drive evaporation at the liquid-gas-interface. The evaporation occurs in-plane to the microfluidic device, allowing for precise control of the ambient environment.

Solar thermal harvesting for enhanced photocatalytic reactions.

The Shockley-Queisser limit predicts a maximum efficiency of 30% for single junction photovoltaic (PV) cells. The rest of the solar energy is lost as heat and due to phenomena such as reflection and transmission through the PV and charge carrier recombination. In the case of photocatalysis, this maximum value is smaller since the charge carriers should be transferred to acceptor molecules rather than conductive electrodes.