ANS TechGlance

Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) announced on November 24, 2010 that AIST successfully demonstrated  operations of  a new type of organic photovoltaic devices (solar cells organic) using optical absorption due to charge transfer between the different organic molecules.  Organic solar cells are expected as new technology for manufacturing solar cell sheets that can be bent, lightweight, and now, have been actively studied and developed worldwide.  This time,  successful photoelectric conversion from near infrared light over the wavelength of one μm  was confirmed using the  photovoltaic devices fabricated using organic molecules consisting of two molecules. This technology based on the new principle w ill enable more effective energy conversion from the light to electricity. Source: AIST's News Release (Japanese) 12/1/10

RIKEN has announced that its researchers have   successfully developed a revolutionary new polymer film that changes shape upon irradiation with UV and visible light.  The announcement continues, " Described in  Science , the film is the largest-ever example of a material whose molecular elements are ordered in three dimensions on a macroscopic length scale, marking a breakthrough in techniques for molecular design and processing." When this technology becomes popular, the direct conversion of light energy into a mechanical force may enable us to obtain a highly efficient energy conversion method from the solar light energy. Source: RIKEN News Release 11/17/10

New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) has announced that the organization, working together with a group of School of Information Science, Hokkaido University, successfully developed a newly structured rotor segment type of axial-gap motor for use of hybrid electric vehicles (HEV).  The output performance of the new motor is comparable with the conventional rare-earth magnet motor although its magnetic material consists of ferrite magnets only without using any rare earth.  A result of actual load testing under a constant torque range shows 51.5KW which is equivalent to conventional HEV battery performance. This technology has been developed as a part of "technology development for the next generation high performance  automobile  battery systems ".   The new technology has strong potential to relieve auto-manufacturers from extremely competitive situation in procurement of the rare-earth material which is supposed to be...

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology of Japan (AIST) announced that its collaboration research team has developed a communication technology which uses the direct current (DC) power line of a solar panel as a communication line. The newly developed communication technology is expected to be used for monitoring of power generation in each solar panel, easy detection of malfunctions and high-efficiency power generation, etc.  Technologies of solar energy generation seem to be moving one step further intelligently to control and maintain the solar panel unit.  For details of the news announcement, please click here. Souse: AIST News Release 9/8/10

There must be a variety of leading edge technologies and components required for Smart Grid which is recently assumed as the next generation electric power distribution network. Electric power has been supplied by an electric power company to every building or facility wherever needed. "Internet" is often used as an analogy of Smart Grid since various information generators are connected to the internet . In this context, the electric power supply network has been used as "down load" only while Smart Grid will enable us to download and upload of the electricity for multiple directions as the information traffic flows on the internet . An important difference from Internet , however, Smart Grid has to assure stable and continuous power supply without no delay. No "Best Effort" is allowed on Smart Grid. Smart Grid sounds pretty smart and beautiful as written and pronounce. However a huge amount of new technologies and efforts for standardizat...

A Japan national project, Japan Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Demonstration Project driven by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry demonstrates its result at the Fuel Cell EXPO 2009. It is important to point out that the result has brought up with a cross border collaboration involving not only Japanese auto manufactures, oil and gas suppliers but also US and Europe based companies, such as Toyota, Nissan, Suzuki, Mazda, General Motors, Mercedes Benz, Nippon Oil, Tokyo Gas and so on. Click here to see a video and text description for further details. Source: DigInfo 5/6/09