PFI-AIR: Advanced SiNWs: Partnerships for Innovative Research in Energy (ASPIRE)

Suny At Albany, Albany NY

Investigators

Abstract

This NSF Accelerating Innovation Research (AIR) project will build on an existing novel and emerging nanotechnology platform that integrates patent pending branched-SiNWs, obliquely aligned nanorods and lithographically patterned nanostructures into high energy density batteries, solar cells with improved absorption and wire grid polarizers for smart windows, respectively; all with lower cost and improved performance. Additionally, the project will leverage its broader incubation and commercialization efforts that connects university-based research and development activities with private enterprise, funding and expertise; thereby helping to increase the rate and scale of clean energy technology market deployment. The world needs short-, medium-, and long-term solutions to the global energy challenge, and innovative programs such as this AIR project that develops an energy ecosystem is one such answer to that challenge. By introducing a new paradigm of open, circular communication amongst partners, the AIR project will routinely make existing nanostructured-materials platforms accessible to its partners, allowing them to expand on and remix the core product in surprising new ways such as clean energy applications. The most important innovation that will be built within this ecosystem is a network of companies, working collaboratively together, to maximize technological research advances and to identify new opportunities.