Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

The climate crisis requires ramping up usage of renewable energy sources like solar and wind, but with intermittent availability, scalable energy storage is a challenge. Hydrogen —especially carbon-free green hydrogen—has emerged as a promising clean energy carrier and storage option for renewable energy such as solar and wind. It adds no carbon emissions to the atmosphere, but currently is costly and complex to create.

One way to produce green hydrogen is electrochemical water splitting. This process involves running electricity through water in the presence of catalysts to yield hydrogen and oxygen.

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and Geor...

The field of self-repairing materials is rapidly expanding, and what used to be science fiction might soon become reality, thanks to scientists who developed eco-friendly nanocrystal semiconductors capable of self-healing. Their findings describe the process, in which a group of materials called double perovskites display self-healing properties after being damaged by the radiation of an electron beam.

From the Terminator to Spiderman’s suit, self-repairing robots and devices abound in sci-fi movies. In reality, though, wear and tear reduce the effectiveness of electronic devices until they need to be replaced...

Innovative ideas for the energy carrier of the future. An innovative approach could turn nanoparticles into simple reservoirs for storing hydrogen. The highly volatile gas is considered a promising energy carrier for the future, which could provide climate-friendly fuels for airplanes, ships and lorries, for example, as well as allowing climate-friendly steel and cement production — depending on how the hydrogen gas is generated...

Researchers have developed a method to stabilise a promising material, perovskite for cheap solar cells, without compromising its near-perfect performance.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, used an organic molecule as a ‘template’ to guide perovskite films into the desired phase as they form. Their results are reported in the journal Science.

Perovskite materials offer a cheaper alternative to silicon for producing optoelectronic devices such as solar cells and LEDs.

There are many different perovskites, resulting from different combinations of elements, but one of the most promising to emerge in recent years is the formamidinium (FA)-based FAPbI3 crystal.

The compound is thermal...