We discuss recent developments in III-V multijunction solar cells, focusing on adding a fourth junction to the Ga0.5In0.5P/GaAs/Ga0.75In0.25As inverted three-junction cell. This cell, grown inverted on GaAs so that the lattice-mismatched Ga0.75In0.25As third junction is the last one grown, has demonstrated 38% efficiency, and 40% is likely in the near future. To achieve still further gains, a lower-bandgap GaxIn1-xAs fourth junction could be added to the three-junction structure for a four-junction cell whose efficiency could exceed 45% under concentration. Here, we present the initial development of the GaxIn1-xAs fourth junction. Junctions of various bandgaps ranging from 0.88 to 0.73 eV were grown, in order to study the effect of the different amounts of lattice mismatch. At a bandgap of 0.88 eV, junctions were obtained with very encouraging {approx}80% quantum efficiency, 57% fill factor, and 0.36 eV open-circuit voltage. The device performance degrades with decreasing bandgap (i.e., increasing lattice mismatch). We model the four-junction device efficiency vs. fourth junction bandgap to show that an 0.7-eV fourth-junction bandgap, while optimal if it could be achieved in practice, is not necessary; an 0.9-eV bandgap would still permit significant gains in multijunction cell efficiency while being easier to achieve than the lower-bandgap junction.

This conference paper describes the GaInAsN cells that are measured to retain 933% and 894% of their original efficiency after exposure to 5 X 1014 and 1 X 1015 cm-2 1-MeV electrons, respectively. The rate of degradation is not correlated with the performance at beginning of life (BOL). The depletion width remains essentially unchanged, increasing by< 1%. Temperature-coefficient data for GaInAsN cells are also presented. These numbers are used to project the efficiency of GaInAsN-containing multijunction cells. The GaInAsN junction is not currently predicted to increase the efficiencies of the multijunction cells. Nevertheless, GaInAsN-containing multijunction cell efficiencies are predicted to be comparable to those of the conventional structures, and even small improvements in the GaInAsN cell may lead to higher multijunction cell efficiencies, especially for high-radiation applications and when cell operating temperature is low.

Fermilab is working on the design of an 8 GeV superconducting RF H{sup -} linac called the Proton Driver. The energy of H{sup -} beam will be an order of magnitude higher than the existing ones. This brings up a number of technical challenges to transport and injection of H{sup -} ions. This paper will focus on the subjects of stripping losses (including stripping by blackbody radiation, field and residual gas) and carbon foil stripping efficiency, along with a brief discussion on other issues such as Stark states lifetime of hydrogen atoms, single and multiple Coulomb scattering, foil heating and stress, radiation activation, collimation and jitter correction, etc.

Recently In-Phase and Quadrature (I&Q) was added to both the 53 MHz Feedback and Feedforward Beam Loading Compensation for Slip Stacking in the Fermilab Main Injector. With 53 MHz Feedback, we can now turn the 18 Radio Frequency (RF) Stations off down to below 100 V. In using I&Q on Feedforward, beam loading compensation to the beam on both the upper and lower frequencies of Slip Stacking can be applied as we slip the beam. I&Q theory will be discussed.

We present a 201-MHz RF cavity design for muon cooling channels with non-stressed and pre-curved Be foils to terminate the beam apertures. The Be foils are necessary to improve the cavity shunt impedance with large beam apertures needed for accommodating large transverse size muon beams. Be is a low-Z material with good electrical and thermal properties. It presents an almost transparent window to muon beams, but terminates the RF cavity electro-magnetically. Previous designs use pre-stressed flat Be foils in order to keep cavity from detuning resulted from RF heating on the window surface. Be foils are expensive, and it is difficult to make them under desired tension. An alternative design is to use precurved and non-stressed Be foils where the buckling direction is known, and frequency shifts can be properly predicted. We will present mechanical simulations on the Be foils in this paper.

Article on the ab initio solubility prediction of non-electrolytes in ternary solvents using a combination of Jouyban-Acree and Abraham models.

In this paper, the authors report the absolute intensities of ultraviolet light between 4.9 eV and 24 eV ( 250 nm to 50 mn ) striking a silicon wafer in a number of oxide-etch processing discharges. The emphasis is on photons with energies greater than 8.8 eV, which have enough energy to damage SiO{sub 2}. These discharges were in an inductively-driven Gaseous Electronics Conference reference cell which had been modified to more closely resemble commercial etching tools. Comparisons of measurements made through a side port in the cell and through a hole in the wafer indicate that the VUV light in these discharges is strongly trapped. For the pure halocarbon gases examined in these experiments (C{sub 2}F{sub 6}, CHF{sub 3}, C{sub 4}F{sub 8}), the fluxes of VUV photons to the wafer varied from 1 x 10{sup 15} to 3 x 10{sup 15} photons/cm{sup 2} sec or equivalently from 1.5 to 5 mW/cm{sup 2}. These measurements imply that 0.1% to 0.3% of the rf source power to these discharges ends up hitting the wafer as VUV photons for the typical 20 mT, 200 W rf discharges. For typical ashing discharges containing pure oxygen, the VUV intensities are slightly higher--about 8 mW/cm{sup …

The World Wide Web provides an incredible resource to genomics researchers in the form of dynamic data sources--e.g. BLAST sequence homology search interfaces. The growth rate of these sources outpaces the speed at which they can be manually classified, meaning that the available data is not being utilized to its full potential. Existing research has not addressed the problems of automatically locating, classifying, and integrating classes of bioinformatics data sources. This paper presents an overview of a system for finding classes of bioinformatics data sources and integrating them behind a unified interface. We examine an approach to classifying these sources automatically that relies on an abstract description format: the service class description. This format allows a domain expert to describe the important features of an entire class of services without tying that description to any particular Web source. We present the features of this description format in the context of BLAST sources to show how the service class description relates to Web sources that are being described. We then show how a service class description can be used to classify an arbitrary Web source to determine if that source is an instance of the described service. To validate the effectiveness …

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This paper reviews a testing program conducted at NREL for the past two years that applied voltage, water vapor, and light stresses to thin-film photovoltaic (PV) modules with SnO2:F transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) deposited on soda-lime glass superstrates. Electrochemical corrosion at the glass-TCO interface was observed to result in delamination of the thin-film layers. Experimental testing was directed toward accelerating the corrosion and understanding the nature of the resulting damage.

This paper asserts that materials used for PV encapsulation must be evaluated for their ability to transmit light and to maintain mechanical integrity for extended periods of time under long term UV exposure.

Recent advances in solid-state switches have made it feasible to design programmable, high-repetition-rate pulsers for induction accelerators. These switches could lower the cost of recirculating induction accelerators, such as the ''small recirculator'' at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), by substantially reducing the number of induction modules. Numerical work is reported here to determine what effects the use of fewer pulsers at higher voltage would have on the beam quality of the LLNL small recirculator. Lattices with different numbers of pulsers are examined using the fluid/envelope code CIRCE, and several schedules for acceleration and compression are compared for each configuration. For selected schedules, the phase-space dynamics is also studied using the particle-in-cell code WARP3d.

The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has experienced magnet overheating at high power. Overheating is caused by cooling water passages becoming plugged and is a direct result of the Dean Effect deposition of corrosion products suspended in the water. Salving simplified dynamic model equations of the flow in the magnet tubing bends yielded a relationship for plugging rate as a function of particle size, concentration, velocity, channel width and bend radius. Calculated deposition rates using data from a previous study are promising. Remediation has consisted of submicron filtration, magnet cleaning, and dissolved oxygen removal. Preliminary results are good: no accelerator outages have been attributed to magnet plugging since the remediation has been completed.

To assess whether houses can meet performance expectations, the new practice of residential commissioning will likely use flow hoods to measure supply and return grille airflows in HVAC systems. Depending on hood accuracy, these measurements can be used to determine if individual rooms receive adequate airflow for heating and cooling, to determine flow imbalances between different building spaces, to estimate total air handler flow and supply/return imbalances, and to assess duct air leakage. This paper discusses these flow hood applications and the accuracy requirements in each case. Laboratory tests of several residential flow hoods showed that these hoods can be inadequate to measure flows in residential systems. Potential errors are about 20% to 30% of measured flow, due to poor calibrations, sensitivity to grille flow non-uniformities, and flow changes from added flow resistance. Active flow hoods equipped with measurement devices that are insensitive to grille airflow patterns have an order of magnitude less error, and are more reliable and consistent in most cases. Our tests also show that current calibration procedures for flow hoods do not account for field application problems. As a result, a new standard for flow hood calibration needs to be developed, along with a new measurement …

Metagenome studies have retrieved vast amounts of sequenceout of a variety of environments, leading to novel discoveries and greatinsights into the uncultured microbial world. Except for very simplecommunities, diversity makes sequence assembly and analysis a verychallenging problem. To understand the structure a 5 nd function ofmicrobial communities, a taxonomic characterization of the obtainedsequence fragments is highly desirable, yet currently limited mostly tothose sequences that contain phylogenetic marker genes. We show that forclades at the rank of domain down to genus, sequence composition allowsthe very accurate phylogenetic 10 characterization of genomic sequence.We developed a composition-based classifier, PhyloPythia, for de novophylogenetic sequence characterization and have trained it on adata setof 340 genomes. By extensive evaluation experiments we show that themethodis accurate across all taxonomic ranks considered, even forsequences that originate fromnovel organisms and are as short as 1kb.Application to two metagenome datasets 15 obtained from samples ofphosphorus-removing sludge showed that the method allows the accurateclassification at genus level of most sequence fragments from thedominant populations, while at the same time correctly characterizingeven larger parts of the samples at higher taxonomic levels.

Portable electronic neutron generators (ENGs) may be used to interrogate suspicious items to detect, characterize, and quantify the presence fissionable material based upon the measurement of prompt and/or delayed emissions of neutrons and/or photons resulting from fission. The small size (<0.2 m3), light weight (<12 kg), and low power consumption (<50 W) of modern ENGs makes them ideally suited for use in field situations, incorporated into systems carried by 2-3 individuals under rugged conditions. At Idaho National Laboratory we are investigating techniques and portable equipment for performing active neutron interrogation of moderate sized objects less than ~2-4 m3 to detect shielded fissionable material. Our research in this area relies upon the use of pulsed deuterium-tritium ENGs and the measurement of die-away prompt fission neutrons and other neutron signatures in-between neutron pulses from the ENG and after the ENG is turned off.

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Among the infrequently measured but essential properties for thin-film (T-F) module reliability are the interlayer adhesion and cohesion within a layer. These can be cell contact layers to glass, contact layers to the semiconductor, encapsulant to cell, glass, or backsheet, etc. We use an Instron mechanical testing unit to measure peel strengths at 90{sup o} or 180{sup o} and, in some cases, a scratch and tape pull test to evaluate inter-cell layer adhesion strengths. We present peel strength data for test specimens laminated from the three T-F technologies, before and after damp heat, and in one instance at elevated temperatures. On laminated T-F cell samples, failure can occur uniformly at any one of the many interfaces, or non-uniformly across the peel area at more than one interface. Some peel strengths are &lt;&lt; 1 N/mm. This is far below the normal Instron mechanical testing unit Instron mechanical testing unit; glass interface values of &gt;10 N/mm. We measure a wide range of adhesion strengths and suggest that adhesion measured under higher temperature and relative humidity conditions is more relevant for module reliability.

An extensive peel-test study was conducted to investigate the various factors that may affect the adhesion strength of photovoltaic module encapsulants, primarily ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), on glass substrates of various laminates based on a common configuration of glass/encapsulant/backfoil. The results show that"pure" or"absolute" adhesion strength of EVA-to-glass was very difficult to obtain because of tensile deformation of the soft, semi-elastic EVA layer upon pulling. A mechanically"strong enough" backing foil on the EVA was critical to achieving the"apparent" adhesion strength. Peel test method with a 90-degree-pull yielded similar results to a 180-degree-pull. The 90-degree-pull method better revealed the four stages of delamination failure of the EVA/backfoil layers. The adhesion strength is affected by a number of factors, which include EVA type, formulation, backfoil type and manufacturing source, glass type, and surface priming treatment on the glass surface or on the backfoil. Effects of the glass-cleaning method and surface texture are not obvious. Direct priming treatments used in the work did not improve, or even worsened, the adhesion. Aging of EVA by storage over~5 years reduced notably the adhesion strength. Lower adhesion strengths were observed for the blank (unformulated) EVA and non-EVA copolymers, such as poly(ethylene-co-methacrylate) (PEMA) or poly(ethylene-co-butylacrylate) (PEBA). Their adhesion …

Adsorption of Lanthanum to Goethite in the Presence of Gluconic Acid L. C. HULL,1 S. E. PEPPER2 AND S. B. CLARK2 1Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID (hulllc@inel.gov) 2Washington State University, Pullman, WA (spepper@wsu.edu), (s_clark@wsu.edu) Lanthanide and trivalent-actinide elements in radioactive waste can pose risks to humans and ecological systems for many years. Organic complexing agents, from natural organic matter or the degradation of waste package components, can alter the mobility of these elements. We studied the effect of gluconic acid, as an analogue for cellulose degradation products, on the adsorption of lanthanum, representing lanthanide and trivalent-actinide elments, to goethite, representing natural iron minearals and degradation products of waste packages. Batch pH adsorption edge experiments were conducted with lanthanum alone, and with lanthanum and gluconate at a 1:1 mole ratio. Lanthanum concentrations studied were 0.1, 1, and 10 mM, covering a range from 10% to 1000% of the calculated available adsorption sites on goethite. In the absence of gluconate, lanthanum was primarily present in solution as free lanthanum ion. With gluconate present, free lanthanum concentration in solution decreased with increasing pH as step-wise deprotonation of the gluconate molecule increased the fraction lanthanum complexed with gluconate. Adsorption to …

Novel approaches to high efficiency photovoltaic cells are discussed that are based on the use of semiconductor quantum dots to slow hot electron cooling and thus produce either enhanced photocurrents through impact ionization or enhanced photovoltages through hot electron transport and collection.

Utility-scale wind turbines require active control systems to operate at variable rotational speeds. As turbines become larger and more flexible, advanced control algorithms become necessary to meet multiple objectives such as speed regulation, blade load mitigation, and mode stabilization. At the same time, they must maximize energy capture. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has developed control design and testing capabilities to meet these growing challenges.

Nondestructive evaluation encompasses numerous technologies that assess materials and determine important properties. This paper demonstrates the applicability of several of these technologies to the field of powder metallurgy. The usual application of nondestructive evaluation is to detect and quantify defects in fully sintered product. But probably its most appealing role is to sense problems earlier in the manufacturing process to avoid making defects at all. Also nondestructive evaluation can be incorporated into the manufacturing processes to monitor important parameters and control the processes to produce defect free product. Nondestructive evaluation can characterize powders, evaluate components in the green state, monitor the sintering process, and inspect the final component.

The ATR is a pressurized, light-water moderated and cooled, beryllium-reflected nuclear research reactor with a maximum operating power of 250 MWth. The unique serpentine configuration of the fuel elements creates five main reactor power lobes (regions) and nine flux traps. In addition to these nine flux traps there are 68 additional irradiation positions in the reactor core reflector tank. There are also 34 low-flux irradiation positions in the irradiation tanks outside the core reflector tank. The ATR is designed to provide a test environment for the evaluation of the effects of intense radiation (neutron and gamma). Due to the unique serpentine core design each of the five lobes can be operated at different powers and controlled independently. Options exist for the individual test trains and assemblies to be either cooled by the ATR coolant (i.e., exposed to ATR coolant flow rates, pressures, temperatures, and neutron flux) or to be installed in their own independent test loops where such parameters as temperature, pressure, flow rate, neutron flux, and energy can be controlled per experimenter specifications. The full-power maximum thermal neutron flux is ~1.0 x1015 n/cm2-sec with a maximum fast flux of ~5.0 x1014 n/cm2-sec. The Advanced Test Reactor, now a National …