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Category: sustainability

Sunlight split in two: Organic layer promises leap in solar power efficiency

In the race to make solar energy cheaper and more efficient, a team of UNSW Sydney scientists and engineers have found a way to push past one of the biggest limits in renewable technology.

Singlet fission is a process where a single particle of light—a photon—can be split into two packets of energy, effectively doubling the electrical output when applied to technologies harnessing the sun.

In a study appearing in ACS Energy Letters, the UNSW team—known as “Omega Silicon”—showed how this works on an that could one day be mass-produced specifically for use with solar panels.

Tool reveals how your dinner affects risk of 30,875 species land-dwelling animals going extinct

University of Cambridge researchers have developed a new way to measure the impact of our food production on other species’ survival around the world.

It reveals that between 700 and 1,100 species of vertebrate are likely to go extinct in the next 100 years, if global land-use for agriculture does not change. This figure does not account for future population growth, and is probably a huge underestimate.

By considering the productivity of any piece of land, the team can figure out the “per kilogram impact” of each commodity per year on biodiversity.

Scientists create new type of semiconductor that holds superconducting promise

Scientists have long sought to make semiconductors—vital components in computer chips and solar cells—that are also superconducting, thereby enhancing their speed and energy efficiency and enabling new quantum technologies. However, achieving superconductivity in semiconductor materials such as silicon and germanium has proved challenging due to difficulty in maintaining an optimal atomic structure with the desired conduction behavior.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, an international team of scientists reports producing a form of that is superconducting—able to conduct electricity with , which allows currents to flow indefinitely without , resulting in greater operational speed that requires less energy.

“Establishing superconductivity in germanium, which is already widely used in computer chips and , can potentially revolutionize scores of consumer products and industrial technologies,” says New York University physicist Javad Shabani, director of NYU’s Center of Quantum Information Physics and the university’s newly established Quantum Institute, one of the paper’s authors.

Molecular engineering strategy boosts efficiency of inverted perovskite solar cells

Solar cells, devices that can directly convert radiation emitted from the sun into electricity, have become increasingly widespread and are contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. While existing silicon-based solar cells have attained good performances, energy engineers have been exploring alternative designs that could be more efficient and affordable.

Perovskites, a class of materials with a characteristic crystal structure, have proved to be particularly promising for the development of low-cost and energy-efficient solar energy solutions. Recent studies specifically highlighted the potential of inverted perovskite solar cells, devices in which the extraction charge layers are arranged in the reverse order compared to traditional designs.

Inverted perovskite solar cells could be more stable and easier to manufacture on a large-scale than conventional perovskite-based cells. Nonetheless, most inverted cells developed so far were found to exhibit low energy-efficiencies, due to the uncontrolled formation of crystal grains that can produce defects and adversely impact the transport of charge carriers generated by sunlight.

Lignin increases the stability and effectiveness of herbicide nanoparticles, study shows

A recent study has shown that a fraction obtained from lignin, an organic polymer responsible for the rigidity of plant cell walls, was able to improve the performance of nanoparticles with herbicide.

The work is published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering and was recently featured on its cover.

The study was conducted by researchers from three research institutions in the state of São Paulo, Brazil: São Paulo State University (UNESP), the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar).

This Wonder Material Could Revolutionize Renewable Energy

A team of researchers has explored how two-dimensional materials known as MXenes could revolutionize renewable energy and sustainable chemical production. Scientists searching for cleaner and more sustainable technologies are turning their attention to two-dimensional materials that could transfo

AI Boosts Ocean Forecasting Accuracy and Speed

“The ability to resolve the Gulf Stream and its dynamics properly, has been an open challenge for many years in oceanography,” said Dr. Ashesh Chattopadhyay.

How can AI be used to predict ocean forecasting? This is what a recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Machine Learning and Computation hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how AI can be used to predict short-and long-term trends in ocean dynamics. This study has the potential to help scientists and the public better understand new methods estimating long-term ocean forecasting, specifically with climate change increasing ocean temperatures.

For the study, the researchers presented a new AI-based modeling tool for predicting ocean dynamics for the Gulf of Mexico, which is a major trade route between the United States and Mexico. The goal of the tool is to build upon longstanding physics-based models that have traditionally been used for predicting ocean dynamics, including temperature and changes in temperature.

In the end, the researchers found that this new model demonstrates improved performance in predicting ocean dynamics, specifically for short-term intervals of 30 days, along with long-term intervals of 10 years. The team aspires to use this new tool for modeling ocean dynamics worldwide.

Ultra-black nanoneedles absorb 99.5% of light for future solar towers

Using state-of-the-art equipment, researchers in the Thermophysical Properties of Materials group from the University of the Basque Country (EHU) have analyzed the capacity of ultra-black copper cobaltate nanoneedles to effectively absorb solar energy. They showed that the new nanoneedles have excellent thermal and optical properties and are particularly suited to absorbing energy. This will pave the way toward concentrated solar power in the field of renewable energies.

The tests were carried out in a specialized lab that has the capacity to undertake high temperature research. The results were published in the journal Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells.

Renewable energy of the future is concentrated solar power because it can be easily used to store thermal energy. Despite the fact that, historically, it is more expensive and complex than photovoltaic power, in recent years huge advances have taken place in this technology, and concentrated plants are spreading across more and more countries as a resource for a sustainable future.

Perovskites reveal ultrafast quantum light in new study

Halide perovskites—already a focus of major research into efficient, low-cost solar cells—have been shown to handle light faster than most semiconductors on the market.

A new paper, published in Nature Nanotechnology, reports quantum transients on the scale of ~2 picoseconds at low temperature in bulk formamidinium lead iodide films grown by scalable solution or vapor methods. That ultrafast timescale indicates use in very fast light sources and other photonic components. Crucially, these effects appear in films made by scalable processing rather than specialized growth in lab settings—suggesting a practical and affordable route to explore ultrafast quantum technology.

“Perovskites continue to surprise us,” said Professor Sam Stranks, who led the study. “This discovery shows how their intriguing nanoscale structure gives rise to intrinsic quantum properties that could be harnessed for future photonic technologies.”

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