Federal authorities arrested a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Thursday at his home in Cambridge for allegedly failing to report his ties to the Chinese government. Gang Chen, the Director of the MIT Pappalardo Micro/Nano Engineering Laboratory and Director of the Solid-State Solar Thermal Energy Conversion Center, faces charges of wire fraud, making false statements to a government agency, and failing to file a foreign bank.
A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in nanotechnology research was arrested on U.S. charges that he failed to disclose his ties to the Chinese government when seeking federal grant money.
Credit: Jin Yang
Scientists in China and Sweden have determined that a pinch of capsaicin, the chemical compound that gives chili peppers their spicy sting, may be a secret ingredient for more stable and efficient perovskite solar cells. The research, published January 13 in the journal
Joule, determined that sprinkling capsaicin into the precursor of methylammonium lead triiodide (MAPbI3) perovskite during the manufacturing process led to a greater abundance of electrons (instead of empty placeholders) to conduct current at the semiconductor s surface. The addition resulted in polycrystalline MAPbI3 solar cells with the most efficient charge transport to date. In the future, green and sustainable forest-based biomaterial additive technology will be a clear trend in non-toxic lead-free perovskite materials, says Qinye Bao, a senior author of the study from East China Normal University. We hope this will eventually yield a fully green perovskite solar cell for a clean energy so