Recognized for advancing solar energy technology
Chemist Alvin W. Czanderna of Denver, Colo., will be honored on March 28 by the world's largest scientific society for advancing solar energy technology and for teaching his broad-based techniques to other researchers. He will receive the Arthur Adamson Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Surface Chemistry from the American Chemical Society at its national meeting in San Francisco.
Czanderna, who retired from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory at the end of 1999, believes that within 10 years it will cost as little to turn sunlight into electricity with photovoltaic cells as to generate electricity by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. Improving the efficiency and lengthening the uselife life of photovoltaic devices are the critical hurdles, the scientist said.
Czanderna has worked on both. A team of researchers he directed analyzed how the sun's rays slowly destroy an insulating material used in photovoltaic cells. Those studies began in 1989 and led to chemical modifications that promise to make the material last at least six times longer.
That material, a polymer called ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA), encapsulates and protects the silicon crystals that turn sunlight into electricity. It also provides an elastic cushion between the inner and outer layers of the photovoltaic cell, preventing cracking by allowing the device to flex slightly as it heats and cools.
The interfaces of these layers are the most vulnerable, said Czanderna. "The molecules on surfaces are 'missing' neighbors, so they try to interact instead with other molecules like oxygen and moisture." These reactions usually reduce the cell's efficiency.
The scientist also helped develop mirror technology, used to concentrate solar energy in commercial collectors, and electrochromic windows, which darken in sunlight and help keep buildings cool. He has taught more than 100 short courses for the ACS and the American Vacuum Society, and spent 12 years as a professor at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y.
The Arthur Adamson Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Surface Chemistry is sponsored by Occidental Petroleum Corp. of Grand Island, N.Y.
A nonprofit organization with a membership of 161,000 chemists and chemical engineers, the American Chemical Society (www.acs.org) publishes scientific journals and databases, convenes major research conferences, and provides educational, science policy and career programs in chemistry. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.