Researchers from Japan and Canada have produced the first ever solar cell containing an integrated 3D silicon photonic crystal. The cell is based on an intrinsic silicon layer with an inverse opal structure — a 3D photonic crystal with an omnidirectional photonic bandgap — sandwiched between n- and p-doped crystalline silicon layers. The cell traps light and prolongs the lifetime of charge carriers, thus reducing leakage current and improving the cell’s fill factor.

– Nature Photonics

Read the highlight here and the paper here.

– Materials Views

– Materials Views

“The Toronto-Based start-up Opalux has been developing a technology based on polymers that mimic the diffraction properties of gemstone opals,” the article said, adding that the technology is currently used to combat counterfeiting.

Read the full story here.

Congratulations to all of you!!

The citation reads:

A pioneer of nanochemistry, Ozin has inspired innovative, transformative, technological advances around the world. He was one of the first scientists in the field to identify the importance of a chemical approach to nanostructured materials, driving many of today’s nanotechnologies in biology, physics and engineering. Through his Ontario company Opalux, Ozin is commercializing photonic crystal technology – which holds the potential to create full-colour displays that use dramatically less energy than current products.The company is also developing food packaging that changes colours when the contents go bad, photocatalysts that clean up pollution and privacy protecting printable serial numbers and security codes that can become invisible to the human eye when necessary.

“The book Concepts can serve as a superb guide into nanochemistry for university teachers, students, and the interested general public. It can be emphatically recommended. Read it, or you will be missing something extraordinary.”

–Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Read the review.

Leonardo D. Bonifacio ¹, Daniel P. Puzzo ¹, Simon Breslav ², Barbara M. Willey ³, Allison McGeer ³, Geoffrey A. Ozin ^{1 *}

On p. 1351, Geoffrey Ozin and co-workers report on a novel artificial nose system dubbed the photonic nose, which is based on a simple and cost-effective pixelated array of surface-functionalized nanoporous Bragg mirrors that enable discrimination of different vapor phase analytes, exemplified by alkanes and alcohols as well as molecules comprising the headspace of different bacteria, detected and analyzed by diagnostic changes in red, green and blue color levels recorded by a digital camera.

Read the front cover story here.