{"id":237369,"date":"2026-05-19T02:24:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T07:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/how-wasted-infrared-light-could-boost-solar-panels-night-vision-and-3d-printing"},"modified":"2026-05-19T02:24:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T07:24:17","slug":"how-wasted-infrared-light-could-boost-solar-panels-night-vision-and-3d-printing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/how-wasted-infrared-light-could-boost-solar-panels-night-vision-and-3d-printing","title":{"rendered":"How wasted infrared light could boost solar panels, night vision and 3D printing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-wasted-infrared-light-could-boost-solar-panels-night-vision-and-3d-printing2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers at UNSW Sydney have developed a nanoscale device that converts low-energy infrared and red light into higher-energy visible light, a breakthrough that could eventually improve solar panels, sensing technologies, and advanced manufacturing systems.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41566-026-01915-1\" target=\"_blank\">Published in <i>Nature Photonics<\/i><\/a>, the research addresses a longstanding problem in photonics: how to stop energy from being lost before it can be used.<\/p>\n<p>That mechanism allowed the device to achieve <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2022-03-ultrathin-cesium-antimonide-efficient-photocathodes.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">photon conversion<\/a> efficiencies of 8.2%, among the strongest reported for this type of architecture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers at UNSW Sydney have developed a nanoscale device that converts low-energy infrared and red light into higher-energy visible light, a breakthrough that could eventually improve solar panels, sensing technologies, and advanced manufacturing systems. Published in Nature Photonics, the research addresses a longstanding problem in photonics: how to stop energy from being lost before it [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,4,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-nanotechnology","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}