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A new process that simultaneously combines the light and heat of solar radiation to generate electricity could offer more than double the efficiency of existing solar cell technology, say the engineers who discovered it and proved that it works. The process, called 'photon enhanced thermionic emission," or PETE, could reduce the costs of solar energy production enough for it to compete with oil as an energy source.

Quantum dots are man-made atoms that confine electrons to a small space. They have atomic-like behavior that results in unusual electronic properties on a nanoscale. These unique properties may be particularly valuable in tailoring the way light interacts with matter.

Racing against other companies around the globe, International Battery isn the front lines of an effort to build smaller, lighter, more powerful batteries that could help transform the American energy economy by replacing gasoline in cars and making windmills and solar cells easier to integrate into the power grid.

Because the size of these metallic hotspots is far smaller than the wavelength of incident light, a new technique was needed to map the electromagnetic field within a hotspot. The Berkeley researchers developed the BEAST method to capitalize on the fact that individual fluorescent dye molecules can be localized with single nanometer accuracy. The fluorescence intensity of individual molecules adsorbed on the surface provides a direct measure of the electromagnetic field inside a single hotspot. BEAST utilizes the Brownian motion of single dye molecules in a solution to make the dyes scan the inside of single hotspot stochastically, one molecule at a time.