NWO KIC grant

A consortium of several UT researchers including four affiliated to the S&T faculty has been awarded funding for their project ‘Diffuse Irradiance Redirector for Efficient ConcenTration (DIRECT)’ within the NWO KIC call for ‘Wind and solar energy innovations’. With their colleagues from the BMS faculty and other institutions, Rebecca Saive (project lead), André ten Elshof, Monica Morales Masis (all three Inorganic Materials Science, IMS) and Annemarie Huijser (Photocatalytic Synthesis, PCS) will work on solar power plants in which the buildings, nature, and agriculture surrounding the solar panels play an important role in solar energy collection. The team will also develop a new type of nanophotonic material which collects sunlight and redirects invisible infrared light towards solar panels. This non-harmful, ‘cold’ light is ideal for high solar cell performance and invisible to the human eye, enabling more solar energy production per square metre and significantly reducing the cost, environmental burden, and land scale alteration. This multidisciplinary team will investigate technical and business opportunities as well as environmental and societal impacts. For more information visit the website of NWO or read our news item on utwente.nl.