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Antimony chalcogenides are emerging photovoltaic materials, yet difficulties in fabricating high-quality films limit device performance. We show that hydrothermal synthesis affords good morphology and reduced defects in antimony selenosulfide films, enabling solar cells with an efficiency of 10%.
Interconnecting layers are critical to the efficiency of tandem solar cells and a high number of layers is typically needed to ensure good electrical properties. Yu et. al show that a fullerene/tin-oxide interconnecting layer enables 24.4% efficiency and improved stability in all-perovskite tandem solar cells.
The upscaling of layer treatments and processing that afford high efficiency and stability in small-area perovskite solar cells remains challenging. Liu et al. show how the efficiency and stability of perovskite modules can be improved using an integrated approach to interface and layer engineering.
The COVID 19 pandemic and consequent lockdown has had a substantial impact on mobility and therefore fuel demand and it is not clear when demand will recover. Ou et al. use a machine learning model that integrates health recovery scenarios to project the near-term future of gasoline demand.
Carbon emission reduction measures have widely differing energy consumptions that have not been systematically compared. Babacan et al. estimate comparable energy use per unit emission reduction of various emission reduction measures, from efficiency improvements to renewable electricity generation to carbon removal.
Understanding Li transport is important in the development of fast-rate batteries. Here the authors uncover an ultrafast charge transfer across a cathode–electrolyte interface with the aid of single-particle measurements and ascribe the solvation of electrolyte salts to be key for the interfacial kinetics.
Autonomous driving is being implemented in electric vehicles, but its energy impact is unclear. Here the authors build physics models to analyse the energy demand of autonomous electric vehicles and suggest that the influences of automation on vehicle range and battery longevity are small.
Use of electric vehicles in ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft is rising but their impact on environment and emissions remains difficult to assess. Using data from more than 100,000 rides, Alan Jenn shows the substantial emission reduction potential of electric vehicle use in ride-hailing in California.
In addition to high energy, batteries need to possess high power and to be able to operate in all climates. Here, the authors present an electrochemically active monolayer-coated current collector that is used to produce high-performance Li metal batteries under low-temperature and high-rate-charging conditions.
The realization of the full potential of Li metal batteries requires high-performance electrolytes. Here Z. Bao and colleagues develop low-concentration electrolytes with a single-solvent and single-salt formulation, offering promise for high-energy and long-cycling batteries.
Building-integrated installation of semi-transparent solar cells is limited by a trade-off between transparency and efficiency. Now, Huaulmé et al. demonstrate dye-sensitized solar cells with photochromic sensitizers that adjust their light transmission and power conversion efficiency with light exposure.
Defects are believed to detrimentally affect the efficiency of quantum-dot-sensitized solar cells. Now, we show that charge-trapping defects actually assist the photoconversion process, while the quantum dot density in the mesoporous electrode is a primary limiting factor in device performance.
Activating methane at ambient temperature is challenging due to its stability, but could ultimately give access to a variety of other fuels and chemicals. Here, the authors present a photochemical looping strategy based on silver chemistry that converts methane to ethane under illumination at room temperature.
The electroreduction of CO2 to ethanol could enable the clean production of fuels using renewable power. This study shows how confinement effects from nitrogen-doped carbon layers on copper catalysts enable selective ethanol production from CO2 with a Faradaic efficiency of up to 52%.
Using photosynthetic microorganisms may be a route to sustainable hydrogen production from solar energy, but hydrogen generation is typically short lived. Here the authors address this challenge by engineering cyanobacteria to construct photosystem I–hydrogenase fusions that produce hydrogen in vivo.
It is not clear what factors drive sustained use of clean cooking fuels after adoption in places such as India and China. With India achieving a liquified petroleum gas penetration of 95%, Mani et al. use longitudinal data from a survey of more than 8,000 rural households to identify the reasons for the uptake and sustained use of the clean fuel.
Hot carrier solar cells offer greater conversion efficiency than single junction cells but they have yet to be demonstrated in real devices. Esmaielpour et al. show that hot carriers are harnessed from metastable valleys in III–V heterojunction devices at voltages greater than the absorber bandgap.
Chunsheng Wang and colleagues develop an electrolyte strategy to enable the use of commercially available microsized alloys, such as Si–Li, as high-performance battery anodes. They ascribe its success to the formation of robust LiF-rich layers as the solid–electrolyte interface.
Stacking multiple junctions with different bandgaps and operating under concentrated light allows solar cells to reach efficiencies beyond the limits of standard devices. Geisz et al. present a six-junction solar cell based on III–V materials with a 47.1% efficiency—the highest reported to date.
Transition from coal to gas, retrofitting and retirement of coal power plants are expected to reduce air pollution and therefore have positive health effects. Casey et al. present direct evidence of this phenomenon by reporting improved asthma outcomes in the wake of coal plant closure and retrofit in Louisville, Kentucky.