News & Views

Aqueous batteries have drawbacks related to their low energy densities. Now, highly concentrated hetero-halogen electrolytes can be used to enable fast multielectron transfer, leading to cost-effective, reversible and high-energy-density aqueous batteries.

The shift towards low-carbon heating technologies and associated infrastructure often disrupts citizens’ lives. Research now demonstrates how the socio-psychological context may influence the circumstances under which citizens are willing to accept heating transitions and related construction work, and those where reactance and rejection is to be expected.

The activation barriers of interfacial energy conversion reactions are key to controlling the efficiency of electrolysers. Work on the structural dynamics of water during charge transfer at electrified solid/liquid interfaces now brings greater understanding of the components of the activation barriers for water dissociation and hydrogen evolution.

One of the major challenges in realizing lithium (Li)-metal batteries is the instability of Li metal in the electrolyte. Now, a study unveils the significant role of lithium oxide in protecting Li metal, thereby contributing to stable battery operation.

Wide band gap perovskite solar cells suffer from halide segregation, which hampers their use in tandem solar cells. Now, researchers develop an additive with redox and defect passivating capabilities to suppress halide migration, enabling perovskite–organic tandems with over 25% efficiency.

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.

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.

Non-flammable electrolytes are essential for ensuring the safe operation of sodium-metal batteries; however, challenges arise in applications due to limited stability between the electrolytes and electrodes. Now, an electrolyte engineering approach using salts as a diluent is proposed to achieve both high interfacial stability and improved safety.

Injecting hydrogen into subsurface environments could provide seasonal energy storage, but understanding of technical feasibility is limited as large-scale demonstrations are scarce. Now, field tests show that hydrogen can be stored and microbially converted to methane in a depleted underground hydrocarbon reservoir.

The scarcity of raw materials and complex synthesis procedures have impeded the development of electrolytes for Mg and Ca metal batteries. Research now reports a facile synthesis of organoborate electrolytes through cation replacement reactions, offering highly reversible Mg or Ca electrochemistry.

Inhomogeneities in the optoelectronic properties of polycrystalline Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ absorbers can limit solar cell performance. Now, researchers quantify the spatial distribution of charge carrier concentration with nanometre resolution and show how different alkali-metal post-deposition treatments reduce the grain-to-grain fluctuations.

Carbon monoxide can be reacted with water to synthesize hydrocarbons, but low activity and poor selectivity has plagued the conventional thermal catalytic route. Now, leveraging photocatalytic and thermocatalytic effects, a TiO_2–x/Ni catalyst is shown to produce C₂₊ hydrocarbons directly from carbon monoxide and water with high yield and selectivity.

Polymer nanocomposite-based dielectric capacitors are promising candidates for high- power-density energy storage devices. However, they exhibit poor performance at high temperatures. A polymer nanocomposite based on sub-nanosheets shows high energy density at elevated temperatures due to the unique structure, geometry, and high surface area to volume ratio of the nanosheets.

The operational stability of perovskite solar cells is often tested in the laboratory environment but its correlation to real-world operation is still unclear. New research shows that the outdoor ageing behaviour of the devices can be modelled with temperature-dependent degradation rates from laboratory stability tests that apply both heat and light stressors.

Bipolar membranes are emerging as an enabling component in numerous energy-relevant electrochemical devices, but a greater understanding of how they operate in complex electrolytes is needed. Research now reveals that ionic species in mixed-ion electrolytes can block the heart of the membrane, the bipolar junction, hampering its performance.

The diverse structures of energy system models result in disparities in computed energy and climate outcomes. Through a systematic quantification of five diagnostic indicators, new research offers a comprehensive ‘energy model fingerprint’ that will enable better contextualization and comparison of models in climate mitigation studies.

As the climate gets more extreme, buildings need to dramatically reduce energy use for heating and cooling. A new model reproduces the relationship between local climate and hourly building energy use, allowing us to reliably quantify the impact of modified indoor or outdoor climatic conditions such as thermostat adjustment or climate change.

The long-term operational stability of perovskite photovoltaics is critical to their successful real-world deployment. New research shows that ammonium cations with a high acid-dissociation constant can inhibit degradation reactions and impart excellent long-term stability in solar cells operating at high temperatures.

Electrochemical methods are emerging as potential ways to electrify the production of ammonia (NH₃). Now, researchers have discovered a copper–tin electrocatalyst that can efficiently and selectively achieve high production rates of ammonia from nitric oxide (NO) feedstocks, marking a key step forward in decarbonizing ammonia synthesis.