Bismuth oxyiodide light absorbers. Credit: Steve Penney, University of Cambridge

Researchers have demonstrated how a non-toxic alternative to lead could form the basis of next-generation solar cells. The team from the University of Cambridge and the United States, have used theoretical and experimental methods to show how bismuth – the “green element” which sits next to lead on the periodic table, could be used in low-cost solar cells. Their results suggest that solar cells incorporating bismuth can replicate the properties that enable the exceptional properties of lead-based solar cells, but without the same toxicity concerns...

This is the exsolution of a B-site cation with oxygen from layered perovskite in a reducing atmosphere. Credit: UNIST

The commercialization of the ‘natural gas fuel cell’ has finally come to the fore, thanks to the recent development of electrode materials that maintain long-term stability in hydrocarbon fuels. Advantage of using this material includes that it uses internal transition metal as a further catalyst in a fuel cell operating condition. The collaborative results, published online in the June issue of the journal Nature Communications, have emerged as the promising candidate for the next generation direct hydrocarbon solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) technology.

A solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is an electrochemical conversion device that produces electricity by oxidizing a fuel...

10 cubic millimetre cube in the rock, where only the nitrogen fluid blobs are being shown. They are coloured in accordance with how connected they are to other fluid blobs. For example, pink and red blobs are fully connected throughout. Purple are blobs connected only across a handful of pores, and blue nitrogen blobs only inhabit one pore.

The discovery could lead to a range of improvements including advances in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). This is where industrial emissions will be captured by CCS technology, before reaching the atmosphere, and safely stored in rock deep underground. Miles below the surface of Earth different types of fluids are flowing through the microscopic spaces between the grains inside rocks...

Different types of plasma waves triggered by various mechanisms, occupy different regions of space around Earth.
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith

NASA’s Van Allen Probes have observed a new population of space sound waves, called plasmaspheric hiss, which are important in removing high-energy particles from around Earth that can damage satellites. Disturbances in space, can cause waves which occur as fluctuating electric and magnetic fields plow through clumps of ions and electrons that compose the plasma, pushing some to accelerated speeds. This interaction controls the balance of highly energetic particles injected and lost from in the near-Earth environment.

One type of plasma wave fundamental to shaping our near-Earth environment are whistler-mode waves...