The White House today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science will invest $777 million in Energy Frontier Research Centers over the next five years. Caltech, UCLA, and USC were all selected for research centers related to advanced materials and solar energy.

http://www.er.doe.gov/bes/EFRC.html

Select Examples of Notable Research Centers

Caltech

Center for Sustainable Energy Research

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Linde Center for Global Environmental Science*

Materials and Process Simulation Center

Power, Environmental & Energy Research Center

UCLA

California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI)*

Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)

Center for Energy Science and Technology Advanced Research

Institute of the Environment (IoE)

Water Technology Research Center (WaTeR)

USC

Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems

Center for Sustainable Cities

Energy Institute*

Pratt & Whitney Institute for Collaborative Engineering (PWICE)

Stevens Institute for Innovation

Currently, solar cells are difficult to handle, expensive to purchase and complicated to install. The hope is that consumers will one day be able to buy solar cells from their local hardware store and simply hang them like posters on a wall.

A new study by researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has shown that the dream is one step closer to reality. Reporting in the Nov. 26 edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Yang Yang, a professor of materials science and engineering, and colleagues describe the design and synthesis of a new polymer, or plastic, for use in solar cells that has significantly greater sunlight absorption and conversion capabilities than previous polymers.

The research team found that substituting a silicon atom for carbon atom in the backbone of the polymer markedly improved the material's photovoltaic properties. This silole-containing polymer can also be crystalline, giving it great potential as an ingredient for high-efficiency solar cells.

"With the reality of today's energy crisis, a new-game changing technology is required to make solar cells more popular," Yang said. "We hope that our newly synthesized polymer can eventually be used on solar cells far beyond their current rooftop applications. Imagine a house or car covered and powered by flexible solar films. Our dream is to see solar cells used everywhere."

http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-researchers-create-polymer-72064.aspx

The USC Energy Institute is committed to quality research to improve the way we currently extract, transform, and use fossil fuels and reducing global reliance on them. The Institute is developing a cross-disciplinary research program that both advances the science of alternative fuels and energy conversions and addresses the economic, social, environment and policy issues associated with transitioning to a new energy/fuel paradigm.

http://www.usc.edu/research/initiatives/future_fuels/

The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) is a research center at UCLA whose mission is to encourage university collaboration with industry and to enable the rapid commercialization of discoveries in nanosystems. CNSI members who are on the faculty at UCLA represent a multi-disciplinary team of some of the world's preeminent scientists. The work conducted at the CNSI represents world-class expertise in five targeted areas of nanosystems-related research including Renewable Energy; Environmental Nanotechnology and Nanotoxicology; NanoBiotechnology and Biomaterials; NanoMechanical and NanoFluidic systems; and NanoElectronics, Photonics and Architectonics.

http://www.cnsi.ucla.edu/

The Ronald and Maxine Linde Center for Global Environmental Science was established in 2008 by a $18 million grant with a mission to address the complex issue of global climate change from a wide range of disciplines. The Center unites faculty from chemistry, engineering, geology, environmental science, and other fields. Many of the faculty members associated with the center teach and research in Caltech's Environmental Science and Engineering Department a multidivisional program of graduate and undergraduate study.

www.lindecenter.caltech.edu/