Rainy Sunday in Austin so SciBridge volunteers at UT-Austin met up to finalize the details of our Al-air battery kits. Next step, ordering up all the supplies!
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Today, UT Austin volunteers met up to package up EXTRA supplies for university students in Uganda who will be doing individual research projects on solar cells. We shipped supplies such as titanium dioxide, ITO glass, Kim wipes, gloves, and pipettes. The idea for individual student projects came up after the first workshop at Makerere University due to the incredible excitement and interest of the students to continue researching solar cells. A big thank you goes out to all the UT-Austin volunteers! Check out the photos from our packing day below.
Today, the student and postdoc volunteers at UT Austin met up to continue developing the next experiment kit on aluminum-air batteries. We had a lot of fun perfecting the design of the device and were able to achieve our highest voltages to date! Thank you Martha, Pauline, Siyang, Daniel, and Kevin for coming to the last meet-up of 2014! Check out photos from our meet-up below. -Veronica L-R: Pauline and Kevin testing out the first configuration while Martha takes notes on the procedure. Daniel applying potassium hydroxide electrolyte onto the air cathode. Siyang's optimized device geometry powers a super-bright red LED. Good things happen to the voltage when batteries are connected in series!
How cools is this?! A few weeks after their SciBridge workshops, students at Makerere University have taken their new knowledge of dye-sensitized solar cells and shared it with their community at the 2014 UNESCO World Science Day exhibition! This is what SciBridge is all about - disseminating ideas with hands-on experiments and watching how they spread and grow! We are thrilled to enable these young scientists to innovate and educate! The solar cell exhibit was organized by SciBridge Vice Chair and Makerere University Physics lecturer, John Paul Eneku. John Paul writes: "Today our students (Ireen Ankwasa, Ivan Gimei, & John Bosco Ssebandeke) successfully exhibited dye sensitized solar cells on the World Science Day celebration held here at the university supported by UNESCO. Their exhibition table was the busiest because the idea of a dye sensitized solar cell was rare and visitors were impressed. The table was also visited by the chief guest and visitors from UNESCO, who were impressed." Check out the great photos from the event below! Fantastic job by all!
While the dye-sensitized solar cell workshops are off to a great start in Uganda, SciBridge volunteers at UT Austin have been working on developing a new experiment kit. This time, our goal is to demonstrate energy conversion with aluminum-air (Al-air) batteries. Metal-air batteries have received a lot of attention over the past few years due to their tremendously high theoretical energy densities. Researchers are hard at work trying to make metal-air batteries rechargeable and more efficient. Our goals for the Al-air battery kits are (1) to let the students make working batteries that can light up a LED and (2) ask critical questions about what makes metal-air batteries so hard to re-charge. This discussion naturally leads to electrocatalysis, another highly active research area. Today, UT Austin grad students Benjamin and Siyang and our 1st undergraduate student, Kevin, joined me for a fun morning of playing around with the experiment. Check out the photos below! -Veronica Siyang carefully applying carbon ink onto nickel mesh to make the air cathode. Siyang and Benjamin holding the electrical contacts to the battery. After several configurations, we get the LED brightly lit!
The first-ever SciBridge web seminar was held earlier today at Makerere University! The web seminar was given by Nella Vargas-Barbosa of Penn State University and Joint U.S.-Africa Materials Initiative alum. The web seminar was attended by the students who did the solar cell experiment just last week, and they were organized by John Paul Eneku (SciBridge Vice-Chair) and Alex Okello of the Physics Department at Makerere University.
John Paul writes: "Indeed we have just had the first SciBridge web-based seminar (Alex, I and our students) with our wonderful researcher being Nella Vargas-Barbosa who was online live from U.S.A. It was great, very educative, informative and has inspired the students. The excitement is huge among the students because they have learnt much more about a dye sensitized solar cell, which they ably fabricated a couple of days ago. More so they were able to ask more burning questions and got satisfying responses. Their passion for dye sensitized solar cells has just gotten higher and are desperate to do something to contribute to the global course of solar cell research. As a starting point they will be taking the solar cell activity to the public through exhibition of their recently fabricated dye sensitized solar cells on world science day celebrations coming up on Monday 10 November which is supported by UNESCO and hosted by Makerere University. Later on (in the forthcoming academic semester, February 2015) they will take on individual research projects to explore the potential within a range of our local dyes. We consider this project activity a special gift to us because many students elsewhere deserve the same and yet there is no opportunity for them. We, the instructors and our students, would like to sincerely thank very much our research expert (Nella Vargas-Barbosa) for educating and supporting us; the SciBridge Chair and U.S Organizer (Veronica Augustyn) for thinking about us so passionately and mobilizing all the required resources and delivering them in time; the volunteers in U.S who unconditionally responded to Veronica’s call during resources mobilization; the U.S universities involved especially UCLA and University of Texas at Austin for all the logistical support and Makerere University (Dept. of Physics) for accepting and supporting SciBridge and above all, the SciBridge collaboration for the wonderful opportunity. We will forever be grateful. We will support, promote and stay committed to Scibridge and its activities at all times." Check out the photos from the event below! We have fantastic news to share from Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. John Paul, SciBridge co-chair and Lecturer in Physics, led not one but TWO first-ever SciBridge project workshops last Friday and Saturday on dye-sensitized solar cells for his undergraduate Physics students. John Paul writes: "The students enjoyed the hands-on activity and had some good results. It was very interesting and a moving experience for students who ably fabricated working dye-sensitized solar cells. We now look forward to having a web-seminar on Friday November 6, 2014. Our students are motivated and look forward to taking on individual research topics in dye-sensitized solar cells using a range of local natural dyes of their choices. This they will do as part of their undergraduate program which requires them to conduct research in topics of their interest and it starts in the next academic semester (opening in February 2015)." Check out the photos from the two very succesful workshops at Makerere University below! Preparing conductive glass slides (front to back): Samuel Onoro, Francis Ssendi, Robert Kato, and Levi Kwemoi. Drying the TiO2-coated films (L to R): Panzi John Makawa, Robert Kato, Levi Kwemoi, Sadick Mukasa, Egido Bataringaya, Francis Ssendi, Ireen Ankwasa, and John Bosco Ssebandeke. Coating slides with graphite (L to R): Sadick Mukasa, Levi Kwemoi, John Bosco Ssebandeke, John Paul Eneku, Robert Kato, and Samuel Onoro. Soaking TiO2 slides in anthocyanine dye (L to R): Samuel Onoro, Sadick Mukasa, and Levi Kwemoi. Samuel Onoro measuring the graphite-coated slide conductivity. Samuel Onoro and Sadick Mukasa adding the electrolyte. Washing the glass slides (L to R): Ireen Ankwasa, Francis Ssendi, and Elia Bwengye. Measuring the solar cells! (L to R): Godfrey Opio, Francis Ssendi, Panzi John Makawa, Ireen Ankwasa, Elia Bwengye, and Knoxwell Kamuhimbise. Lab briefing (L to R): John Paul Eneku (SciBridge Vice-Chair & Lecturer), Panzi John Makawa, Knoxwell Kamuhimbise, Francis Ssendi, Ireen Ankwasa, and Elia Bwengye. The students experimenting with a new electrolyte (L to R): Knoxwell Kamuhimbise, Godfrey Opiyo, and Francis Ssendi. The students with their assembled solar cells (L to R): Knoxwell Kamuhimbise, Ireen Ankwasa, John Paul Eneku (SciBridge Vice Chair and Lecturer), Francsi Ssendi, and Elia Bwengye. These workshops would not have been possible without financial support from the Materials Research Society (MRS) Foundation Grassroots Grant Award. We thank the University of California, Los Angeles for the dye-senitized solar cell experiment design. We also thank our home institutions, the University of Texas at Austin and Makerere University, for supporting and encouraging the SciBridge project.
The next stage of the workshop is a web-seminar, to be given by Nella Vargas of Penn State University. Connect with the SciBridge project and join in our discussions on the Facebook page: www.facebook.com/scibridge! Today, I was joined by my students to complete part 2 of the cell construction process and testing. The solar cell was tested under direct sunlight and worked perfectly well. Here are pictures of the moment. We are excited about this result and all is now set for the first workshop on 31st October and 1st Nov. 2014. - John Paul Students at Makerere University testing out the solar cell kit (L to R): Francis Ssendi, John Bosco Ssenbandeke, Panzi John Makawa, and Samuel Onoro. (L to R): SciBridge Vice-Chair John Paul Eneku with his students Francis Ssendi, Panzi John Makawa, and Samuel Onoro outside Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda.
Today, Alex and I commenced a very exciting process of testing the dye sensitized solar cell ahead of the workshop. We did part 1 of the two step cell construction process. That is, we successfully coated the conductive glass with TiO2 and also annealed it. It's been left to cool overnight and part 2 will be completed tomorrow and the cell will then be tested. Watch this space for tomorrow's outcome. - John Paul A special thanks to Dr. Adrian Hightower for supplying the TiO2 paste!
October has been a busy month for SciBridge! Lecturers and SciBridge volunteers John Paul Eneku (SciBridge Vice-Chair) and Alex Okello have been preparing their undergraduate Physics students at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda for the dye-sensitized solar cell experiments by giving a series of lectures. John Paul writes: October 22: Today, Alex and I held a successful briefing of our students on the upcoming dye sensitized solar cell workshop. It was interesting and the students are so excited about the learning opportunity in their hands.Students will be attending an important introductory lecture on Friday October 24, 2014 and the workshop will be held next week. October 24: Today, Alex and I successfully held a 1 hour lecture with the first set of students; it was amazing taking them through the basics of a solar cell and theory of a dye sensitized solar cell. To our satisfaction, they easily understood the operation of the dye sensitized solar cell. They are now motivated to try out several natural dyes found in their rural villages of origin and this they will be doing in the next academic semester (February 2015) when they are required to conduct research in topics of their interest in the field of physics. Their are interest in sharing all progress of their research activities with any research experts of dye sensitized solar cells to ensure they get good supervision and produce quality results. Meanwhile, on Saturday 25, 2014 Alex and I will be holding the same lecture for the second and last batch of students. We are hugely excited by our progress. October 25: We have just held the second lecture for the last set of students. This group equally understood the concept of a dye sensitized solar cell with ease. We the instructors can affirm that these students have adequately understood the theory and appreciate the motivation for the dye sensitized solar cell. They are also determined to take the mantle of exploring the hidden potential in natural dyes of Uganda's vast natural vegetation and will share their findings on this and related platforms. We are therefore happy with our progress. Our students too are happy to learn a new thing and can't wait to make the solar cells. All is now set for the first workshop on Friday October 31 and Saturday November 1, 2014. This will be followed by a web based seminar where a research from the U.S.A will join us online to discuss energy and results of the workshop. Watch this space for more updates of the events to come. Meanwhile, the first experiment kits on dye-sensitized solar cells (using an experiment procedure developed at UCLA/CNSI) have arrived at Makerere University. Here is John Paul opening up a kit with his students: In the U.S., volunteers have been developing the next SciBridge kit on aluminum-air batteries at the University of Texas at Austin: We are excited to have had so much progress this month and look forward to next week's first full workshop!
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