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A new study from Moritz Wussow and colleagues assesses solar deployment equity across residential and non-residential sectors and discusses pathways for policy action to promote non-residential solar in disadvantaged communities.
Using a hybrid fixture, application of an appropriate external pressure on Li-metal pouch cells with a liquid electrolyte considerably reduces cell swelling. Mapping of the pressure distribution across the cell surface provides insight into the electroplating process that could inform strategies to overcome uneven Li plating on the Li-metal surface.
During extreme storms, the failure of a small fraction of transmission lines can trigger a cascade of outages in a power grid. Going beyond static approaches, it is now demonstrated that resolving the spatio-temporal interactions between the storm and the power grid is key to identifying these critical lines.
Cell swelling poses a considerable obstacle in the development of lithium-metal batteries. Here the authors report the use of a hybrid pressure-application fixture to substantially reduce swelling, analyse the pressure distribution across the cell surface and provide insights for further battery stabilization.
Recycling spent batteries is crucial for a circular battery economy, yet knowledge of solid-state battery (SSB) recycling lags behind that of lithium-ion batteries. This study evaluates SSB recycling techniques, emphasizing the need for specific, energy-efficient methods tailored to distinct electrolytes.
Factors such as wealth might be expected to affect the transition to clean cooking, specifically the transition choices of uptake, primary use, and exclusive use of liquefied petroleum gas. Data from Ghana’s largest household energy survey show, however, that eleven out of thirteen factors considered do not have a significant or consistent role across these transition choices.
Ion solvation at solid–electrolyte interfaces is crucial in various components of energy conversion technologies, including water splitting electrocatalysts and bipolar membranes, but is poorly understood. Here the authors study ion solvation kinetics in these systems, highlighting the key role of interfacial capacitance in determining behaviour.
Copper catalysts hold promise for producing multi-carbon chemicals through electrochemical CO2 reduction, but improving performance is challenging due to the limited tunability of the copper surface. Now, research uses organic functionalization to modify the surface oxidation state of copper, yielding improved energy efficiency for ethylene production.
To date, organic-based redox flow batteries (RFBs) have relatively low open-circuit voltages (OCVs), limiting their commercial viability. Achieving higher OCVs with pH-decoupled RFBs faces challenges due to severe ion crossover, prompting new research that proposes an acid–base regeneration cell to address this limitation.
Understanding how power systems fail—and the nature of cascading failures—as a result of hurricanes is important to increase future resilience. Here the authors present a co-evolution approach to modelling wind-induced power line failures caused by hurricanes and assess the potential impact of line hardening on grids.
Surface reconstruction, chemo-mechanical degradation, and interfacial side reactions are major factors limiting the cyclability of Ni-rich cathodes. A strategy based on entropy-assisted epitaxial coating is now shown to effectively mitigate these issues, leading to improved battery performance and promising advances in electrochemical energy storage.
Layered Ni-rich oxide cathodes are susceptible to challenges with surface reconstruction and strain propagation, limiting their cyclability. The authors propose a solution involving oriented attachment-driven reactions, utilizing Wadsley–Roth nanocrystals and layered oxide to induce an epitaxial entropy-assisted coating, effectively addressing these issues.
deQuilettes et al. show that hexylammonium bromide forms an iodide-rich 2D structure and bromide gradient at the surface of 3D perovskite, both of which limit interfacial charge and energy losses in perovskite solar cells.