The National Science Foundation (NSF) [3] just posted an interesting and very readable article [4] by a graduate student who traveled to China to make nanostructured thin films for solar cells.

Meghan Schulz, a gradute student at the University of Delaware, was part of the NSF's Integrated Graduate Education Research Traineeship (IGERT) program. The program at the University of Delaware [5] trains students to develop with cross-disciplinary solutions to the energy problems we're facing today. Meghan spent the summer in China completing the international internship component of that program.

I particularly liked her explanation of thin films:

"'Nanostructured thin film' is a fancy way of referring to a very, very thin layer of some specialized material--less than 1/100th of the thickness of a piece of paper.

"Thin films have two major advantages: one, you use a very small amount of material, which is handy if the stuff is expensive. And two, the rules governing materials behavior tend to change when structures get down to the nanoscale; this can lead to greatly improved optical or electronic properties compared to a bulk material."

Read the whole article here [4].

Meghan Schulz, University of Delaware
Meghan Schulz looks out from a watchtower on the Great Wall at Mutianyu

Thanks to Troy Livingston [6] at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC [7] for sending me the link!