NextGen Nano is high-tech company working to decentralise power generation from traditional grids and national governments and empower the individual through access to energy. This aim is combined with a desire to reduce global reliance on finite resources and pollutants, resulting in a net benefit to the wider environment as well as to society. The research behind this work has been conducted in line with the climate policy and CO2 emission goals as set by the UK government and by governments around the world.
Duncan Clark, NextGen Nano‘s Director of Operations, has a long-standing passion for research into sustainable alternatives across the entire energy industry. The UK was the first nation to commit to net zero emissions goals by 2050 – you can find out more about this in the embedded short video.
NextGen Nano’s technologies have the potential to help the UK and other nations work towards climate change goals and achieve this target.
PolyPower® Technology
Nextgen Nano has created patented PolyPower® technology, which has the potential to open endless opportunities within the energy markets through the decentralisation of power generation.
There are many benefits to introducing PolyPower® technology. These include benefits to both the environment and the economy, with the breakthrough technology using earth-friendly biopolymers to replace existing solutions that currently use finite material resources that are both expensive and polluting.
Organic solar could reach a new all-time high in terms of record power efficiencies. The robust and versatile NextGen technology can replace existing solar cells, which, while viable alternatives to fossil fuel power generation, are rigid, heavy and brittle, which limits their applications.
PolyPower® technology can be applied to almost any surface and is both transparent and flexible.
New Fusion
New Fusion from NextGen Nano focuses on the OLED market, creating low voltage organic light emitting diodes. More information about OLEDs can be seen in the PDF attachment to this post.
The innovative OLED technology utilises compounds that are earth-friendly and renewable, in contrast to existing technologies that use rare, irreplaceable metals from the earth. The voltage required to operate NextGen Nano OLEDs is low drive – around half the voltage required by phosphorescent OLEDs at present – which results in a far longer lifespan. The technology has the potential to introduce triplet-triplet annihilation to the global OLED market.
TTA is a mechanism of energy transfer that occurs between tow molecules when both are in their triplet state, meaning one of those molecules is promoted to a higher excited state while the first returns to ground state, achieving photon upconversion resulting in fluorescence.
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is an umbrella term used to describe all forms of technology, science and engineering which takes place at the nanoscale, or the study of extremely small things and their applications. The nano scale is approximately 1 to 100 nanometres, with one nanometre equating to 100,000th of the thickness of a single sheet of newspaper.
Users of nanotechnology are able to see and control individual molecules and atoms, utilising special high-concentration tools such as atomic force microscopes and scanning tunnelling microscopes. These types of microscopes have only been invented relatively recently, within the past three decades, meaning nanotechnology is still in its infancy.
OLEDs created from renewables could form part of the ongoing battle to achieve climate change objectives and sustainable development goals and drive the energy transition. The infographic attachment looks at some more of the top renewables trends for 2020.