Dr Sheldon p Energy bullshit How to make energy possible to everyone darkside to using energy Does fossil fuel use change the atmosphere The concentration of CO2 in the atmospheres fluctuates seasonally and daily continues to go up everyday divide air vs co2 Balancing the combustion reaction Atmosphere oxygen decreases as CO2 increases Climate is determined by energy balance CO2 goes into the atmosphere the CO2 in the upper atmosphere Causes the main change The small changes in CO2 and change in temperature affect the climate change Projections for Global Warming Different RCP scenarios refer to total radiative forcing in W m 2 We are deviating towards good behavior good news Solar energy is the answer Dwarfs every form of energy with have available Why isn t solar energy the primary source of energy 1 reason we don t use this is because of the cost Land People Taxes Legal fees Materials cost and expense the technical component If the cells are made from melted sand why are they so expensive 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Entropy increases for any spontaneous process Entropy must increase to have more energy Change in G change in H TchangeinS Solar energy thermodynamic limit Max amount of energy possible efficiency depends on energy Solar cells are expensive because current designs have a very low thermodynamic efficiency 33 The Sheldon Lab Nanomaterials and Light Working around the laws of thermodynamics Solar cells are made out of Semiconductors Atoms have orbitals s p d Molecular Orbital Theory Bonds can interfere constructively or reconstructively to make 2 different orbital The more atoms added the more moles of atoms bond and the states then become state energy s bands Band Gap have no energy comes from orbital interactions in the cell Solar Cells us the Photovoltaic Effect Inefficient use of the full solar spectrum Using light to connect bonds and jump the band ga Solar cells need a certain color of light that have enough energy to jump the gaps Solar Cell Doesn t absorb a lot of the light that hits it wasted energy turns into heat Shockley queisser Limit Analyzing the best band gap for solar spectrum given detailed balance limit We re basically there not good enough for lowering cost further Need to figure out how to get solar cells pasted this problem Research Project Luminescent Up Conversion What if er change the color of the photons that aren t gathering the energy at an energy that can get around the thermodynamic difference Low energy green light comes out as high energy red light Nano Materials Are a tunable quantum platform Quantum dots controlling the size and shape can fine tune the structure tunable quantum platform Size dependance is a distinct chemical and physical property o Constrains the electronic wave function How do we make Nanocrystals o Inject special salts into high temp reactions flasks so there are soap molecules that interfere with the crystals so they start to precipitate They stop this process to define the size Image with an electron crystal microscope Prostite is the best o New things can be done every day to try and make new properties in order to take advantage of the properties of the materials Luminescent up conversion in perovskite nanoparticles o Nanocrystals observe energy and is reemitted as a strong energy o Green photon Long wavelength ow energy blue photon short wavelength high energy o Endothermic process o Optically driven cooling by increasing photon energy nano energy gets colder Hypothesis low energy in high energy out Reaction Coordinate Diagrams Chemical Kinetics Using the arrehueus equation Will tell is the activation energy The slope of the activation energy of the slope is 1 activation barrier Working towards other technologies that can use the optical cooling How are we getting to the good news Inflation reduction act in 2022 Substantial that makes a difference in global warming Experience Curve Learning how to make better products cheaper since the 1970s the cost has gone down for sola molecules and continues to go down What s Next Good News Other good news