Materials for energy and catalysis articles within Nature

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  • Letter |

    Two-dimensional titanium carbide has been produced by etching out aluminium in a lithium fluoride and hydrochloric acid mixture; it is hydrophilic and mouldable like clay and has excellent volumetric capacitance and cyclability, properties that are desirable for portable electronics.

    • Michael Ghidiu
    • , Maria R. Lukatskaya
    •  & Michel W. Barsoum

  • Letter |

    All-liquid batteries comprising a lithium negative electrode and an antimony–lead positive electrode have a higher current density and a longer cycle life than conventional batteries, can be more easily used to make large-scale storage systems, and so potentially present a low-cost means of grid-level energy storage.

    • Kangli Wang
    • , Kai Jiang
    •  & Donald R. Sadoway

  • Letter |

    MgCl2 is shown to be a cheap and non-toxic replacement for the costly and environmentally unfriendly salt CdCl2 that has long been used as the ‘activation’ step in the production of cadmium telluride solar cells.

    • J. D. Major
    • , R. E. Treharne
    •  & K. Durose

  • Letter |

    The main obstacle to improving the thermoelectric efficiency of a material arises from the common interdependence of electrical and thermal conductivity, whereas one ideally wants to raise the former while lowering the latter: a simple layered crystalline material — SnSe — is now reported that seems to have these qualities built in.

    • Li-Dong Zhao
    • , Shih-Han Lo
    •  & Mercouri G. Kanatzidis

  • Letter |

    Flow batteries, in which the electro-active components are held in fluid form external to the battery itself, are attractive as a potential means for regulating the output of intermittent renewable sources of electricity; an aqueous flow battery based on inexpensive commodity chemicals is now reported that also has the virtue of enabling further improvement of battery performance through organic chemical design.

    • Brian Huskinson
    • , Michael P. Marshak
    •  & Michael J. Aziz

  • Letter |

    Most known ferroelectric photovoltaic materials have very wide electronic bandgaps (that is, they absorb only high-energy photons) but here a family of perovskite oxides is described that have tunable bandgaps, allowing their use across the whole visible-light spectrum.

    • Ilya Grinberg
    • , D. Vincent West
    •  & Andrew M. Rappe

  • Letter |

    The use of organometal halide perovskites as the light-absorbing material in nanostructured solar cells has increased efficiency to practical levels; here it is shown that vapour deposition of the perovskite removes the need for complex nanostructures and will hence simplify large-scale manufacture.

    • Mingzhen Liu
    • , Michael B. Johnston
    •  & Henry J. Snaith

  • Letter |

    A method of producing perovskite-sensitized solar cells by sequential — as opposed to single-step — deposition of the perovskite’s components onto a nanoporous titanium oxide film allows for greater reproducibility of device performance and a record power conversion efficiency of 15 per cent.

    • Julian Burschka
    • , Norman Pellet
    •  & Michael Grätzel

  • Outlook |

    Throughout history, gold has been prized around the world and eagerly sought. But where does it come from, and where does it all go? By Neil Savage.

    • Neil Savage

  • Outlook |

    Gold can speed up a multitude of chemical reactions — so why isn't it widely used in industry?

    • Mark Peplow

  • Letter |

    A series of porous crystalline materials known as metal–organic materials are prepared, and a full sorption study shows that controlled pore size (rather than large surface area) coupled with appropriate chemistry lead to materials exhibiting fast and highly selective CO2 sorption.

    • Patrick Nugent
    • , Youssef Belmabkhout
    •  & Michael J. Zaworotko

  • News & Views |

    By tailoring the architecture of a bulk material at several different length scales, the ability of a semiconductor to convert heat into voltage has been optimized to a groundbreaking level of performance. See Letter p.414

    • Tom Nilges

  • Letter |

    Controlling the structure of thermoelectric materials on all length scales (atomic, nanoscale and mesoscale) relevant for phonon scattering makes it possible to increase the dimensionless figure of merit to more than two, which could allow for the recovery of a significant fraction of waste heat with which to produce electricity.

    • Kanishka Biswas
    • , Jiaqing He
    •  & Mercouri G. Kanatzidis

  • News & Views |

    The spin Seebeck effect has hitherto relied on a temperature gradient in a magnetic system to generate an electric current based on the intrinsic spin of electrons. It has now been demonstrated in a non-magnetic material. See Letter p.210

    • Tero T. Heikkilä
    •  & Yaroslav Tserkovnyak

  • News & Views |

    An inorganic semiconductor can take the place of the liquid electrolyte typically used in dye-sensitized solar cells. This achievement points the way to making these devices more easily manufactured and more stable. See Letter p.486

    • Thomas E. Mallouk

  • News & Views |

    Many naturally occurring substances have a 'handedness' that enables them to interact highly specifically with matter or light. The helical features responsible for this can now be replicated in solid, porous films. See Letter p.422

    • Andreas Stein

  • Letter |

    Some beetle shells exhibit iridescence owing to the chiral organization of chitin making up the beetle's exoskeleton. Inspired by this, these authors fabricate thin glass films with helical pores introduced using a renewable cellulose template. The chiral structure allows the material, which can be free-standing, to selectively reflect light at a specific wavelength that can be tuned across the visible spectrum by altering the ratio of silica to cellulose during synthesis.

    • Kevin E. Shopsowitz
    • , Hao Qi
    •  & Mark J. MacLachlan

  • News Feature |

    Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, largely forgotten as attention turned to biofuels and batteries, are staging a comeback. Jeff Tollefson investigates.

    • Jeff Tollefson

  • News Feature |

    Renewable energy is not a viable option unless energy can be stored on a large scale. David Lindley looks at five ways to do that.

    • David Lindley

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