USC liberation method (via USC)

A problem with hydrogen for use as a fuel comes when the vehicle is in a crash. The hydrogen leaks out, and any sparks or fire will ignite the gas. Another problem is a hydrogen fire is invisible. (I toured a manufacturing facility once where they had hydrogen tanks for use in the factory. They had the "broom test" for testing if there is a hydrogen fire. People would walk down a hallway waiving brooms in front of them to see if the bristles catch fire. It is a scary thought. The same would happen with hydrogen vehicles.)

The use of hydrogen as a fuel is still on its way to reality. A common method of making hydrogen safe for transport is placing it into a harmless chemical. One method is a formic-acid storage. Another popular option is ammonia borane, a nitrogen-boron complex.

The University of Southern California (USC) has developed a way to extract hydrogen from ammonia borane. They took their research further and devised a way to extract the hydrogen at a rate that is usable as a fuel.  Unlike other boron and metal hydride hydrogen storage and release systems, the USC system is air-stable and re-usable. Read more of their findings at the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

You have liberated hydrogen, now you have to safe place to store it, and a great way to use it.

Eavesdropper

By adding gold nanoparticles to organic photovoltaic panels, a research team from UCLA, China, and Japan have increased the solar efficiency. By using the plasmonic effect, where the metal helps absorb more sunlight, the team pushed the overall light to energy output efficiently from 5.22 to 6.24, for a 20% increase. The construction places a gold layer between two light absorbing subcells, called a tandem polymer solar cell. Their method of layering has sidestepped all past difficulties of adding metal nanostructures into devices.

The success of the plasmonic effect of gold nanoparticles will lead to future development of polymer solar cells. The interlayer structure is being considered for other materials and "opening up opportunities" for higher efficiency, milt-stack, tandem solar cells. However, with gold currently at $1,800 USD per oz, the gains in efficiency may be diminished by manufacturing costs.

The project lead is professor Yang Yang of UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and director of the Nano Renewable Energy Center at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute. The research team includes Xing Wang Zhang from the Key Lab of Semiconductor Materials Science at the Institute of Semiconductors at Beijing's Chinese Academy of Science and Ziruo Hong from the Graduate School of Science and Engineering at Japan's Yamagata University.

Three people, alone, changed organic solar cells forever.

Eavesdropper