The technology,which is being marketed by anew startup company—ETC Solar,LLC—could potentially improve the output of solar panels by about 5percent,regardless of the type of photovoltaic material used to make the panels.The translational technology was developed in the engineering and applied science lab of Harry Atwater,Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science and director of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis(JCAP).JCAP is aU.S.Department of Energy(DOE)Innovation Hub that aims to find new and effective ways to produce fuels using only sunlight,water,and carbon dioxide.On June 28,ETC Solar took first place at the DOE‘s 2018 Cleantech University Prize national collegiate business plan competition in Houston."To have been selected as awinner is ahuge point of validation for the concept,both the innovation and also the impact,"says Atwater,who is also aco-founder of ETC Solar."It has helped us to make contacts with potential industrial partners and private equity investors,"Other co-founders of ETC Solar include Atwater group member Thomas Russell,and Rebecca Saive,assistant professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and avisiting associate in Atwater‘s lab.The company beat out 22 other teams for the top prize of$50,000 with asimple solution to alongstanding problem in solar panel technology.When sunlight strikes solar cells,it excites electrons in the cells that are then collected via agrid of metal filaments.This grid is printed on top of the solar cells,much like the circuits on acircuit board.Tiny though the filaments may be,they do cast ashadow on the surface of the solar cell,and this shadow reduces the overall efficiency with which the cell produces energy.ETC‘s design uses metal filaments that have atriangular-shaped cross-section,like asteep A-frame house roof.Instead of casting ashadow on the surface of the solar panel,the filaments reflect light toward the surface.The result is aso-called"effectively transparent contact,"or ETC. 查看详细>>

Entrepreneurs get ajumpstart at Caltech through afund that helps bring research to market Caltech is acommunity filled with brilliant minds and good ideas.But sometimes it takes more than good ideas to generate world-changing technologies.Indeed,there is awell-known gap between the lab and the marketplace known as the"valley of death,"in which high-risk but potentially high-reward research can languish for want of someone to take achance on it.To bridge that gap,Caltech‘s Rothenberg Innovation Initiative(RI2)was created in 2009 under the guidance of Larry Gilbert,the founding father of tech transfer at Caltech,and funded by the late Caltech trustee Jim Rothenberg and his wife,Anne Rothenberg.RI2 provides competitive grants for early-stage research that could one day lead to marketable technologies that are likely to benefit society.Each RI2 award provides up to two years of support,with up to$125,000 in funding per year,to help researchers"de-risk"their innovations,according to Fred Farina,Caltech‘s chief innovation and corporate partnerships officer and head of the Office of Technology Transfer and Corporate Partnerships,or OTTCP,which oversees RI2 with Vice Provost Kaushik Bhattacharya.The goal is to help technologies mature beyond the conceptual stage to the point that it is attractive to venture capitalists and other investors. 查看详细>>