| 1. |
- Adler, Anneli, et al.
(författare)
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Lignin-first biorefining of Nordic poplar to produce cellulose fibers could displace cotton production on agricultural lands
- 2022
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Ingår i: Joule. - : Elsevier BV. - 2542-4351. ; 6:8, s. 1845-1858
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Here, we show that lignin-first biorefining of poplar can enable the production of dissolving cellulose pulp that can produce regenerated cellulose, which could substitute cotton. These results in turn indicate that agricultural land dedicated to cotton could be reclaimed for food production by extending poplar plantations to produce textile fibers. Based on climate-adapted poplar clones capable of growth on marginal lands in the Nordic region, we estimate an environmentally sustainable annual biomass production of ∼11 tonnes/ha. At scale, lignin-first biorefining of this poplar could annually generate 2.4 tonnes/ha of dissolving pulp for textiles and 1.1 m3 biofuels. Life cycle assessment indicates that, relative to cotton production, this approach could substantially reduce water consumption and identifies certain areas for further improvement. Overall, this work highlights a new value chain to reduce the environmental footprint of textiles, chemicals, and biofuels while enabling land reclamation and water savings from cotton back to food production.
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| 2. |
- Chen, Tianyang, et al.
(författare)
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High-rate, high-capacity electrochemical energy storage in hydrogen-bonded fused aromatics
- 2023
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Ingår i: Joule. - : Elsevier BV. - 2542-4351. ; 7:5, s. 986-1002
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Designing materials for electrochemical energy storage with short charging times and high charge capacities is a longstanding challenge. The fundamental difficulty lies in incorporating a high density of redox couples into a stable material that can efficiently conduct both ions and electrons. We report all-organic, fused aromatic materials that store up to 310 mAh g−1 and charge in as little as 33 s. This performance stems from abundant quinone/imine functionalities that decorate an extended aromatic backbone, act as redox-active sites, engage in hydrogen bonding, and enable a delocalized high-rate energy storage with stability upon cycling. The extended conjugation and hydrogen-bonding-assisted bulk charge storage contrast with the surface-confined or hydration-dependent behavior of traditional inorganic electrodes.
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| 3. |
- Cui, Yong, et al.
(författare)
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Accurate photovoltaic measurement of organic cells for indoor applications
- 2021
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Ingår i: Joule. - : CELL PRESS. - 2542-4351. ; 5:5, s. 1016-1023
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Photovoltaic (PV) cells offer a convenient energy source to drive micropower electronic devices for indoor applications. However, it is challenging to measure the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of PV cells under indoor lighting and the PV community lacks a feasible and accurate measurement protocol. Here, we start with the fundamental parameters which determine the PCE, and carefully design a series of experiments to examine the origins which might cause measurement errors for organic PV measurements under indoor lighting. We demonstrate the critical importance of: 1, temporal stability and spatial homogeneity of the light sources, 2, calibration of the spectral irradiance and illuminations of the light sources, 3, the area of the cells (1 cm2 or large cells are preferred), 4, the aperture of the mask (an aperture slightly smaller than the cell area is preferred), and 5, stray lights from the measurement environment. Based on these careful investigations, we suggest a feasible measurement method, by which accurate measurement of the indoor PV efficiency is made possible. Our study will promote the healthy development of indoor PV technology for practical applications.
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| 4. |
- DeCarolis, Joseph, et al.
(författare)
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Leveraging Open-Source Tools for Collaborative Macro-energy System Modeling Efforts
- 2020
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Ingår i: Joule. - : Elsevier BV. - 2542-4351. ; 4:12, s. 2523-2526
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The authors are founding team members of a new effort to develop an Open Energy Outlook for the United States. The effort aims to apply best practices of policy-focused energy system modeling, ensure transparency, build a networked community, and work toward a common purpose: examining possible US energy system futures to inform energy and climate policy efforts. Individual author biographies can be found on the project website: https://openenergyoutlook.org/. DeCarolis et al. articulate the benefits of forming collaborative teams with a wide array of disciplinary and domain expertise to conduct analysis with macro-energy system models. Open-source models, tools, and datasets underpin such efforts by enabling transparency, accessibility, and replicability among team members and with the broader modeling community.
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| 5. |
- Fan, Qunping, 1989, et al.
(författare)
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Mechanically Robust All-Polymer Solar Cells from Narrow Band Gap Acceptors with Hetero-Bridging Atoms
- 2020
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Ingår i: Joule. - : Elsevier BV. - 2542-4351. ; 4:3, s. 658-672
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We developed three narrow band-gap polymer acceptors PF2-DTC, PF2-DTSi, and PF2-DTGe with different bridging atoms (i.e., C, Si, and Ge). Studies found that such different bridging atoms significantly affect the crystallinity, extinction coefficient, electron mobility of the polymer acceptors, and the morphology and mechanical robustness of related active layers. In all-polymer solar cells (all-PSCs), these polymer acceptors achieved high power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) over 8.0%, while PF2-DTSi obtained the highest PCE of 10.77% due to its improved exciton dissociation, charge transport, and optimized morphology. Moreover, the PF2-DTSi-based active layer showed excellent mechanical robustness with a high toughness value of 9.3 MJ m−3 and a large elongation at a break of 8.6%, which is a great advantage for the practical applications of flexible devices. As a result, the PF2-DTSi-based flexible all-PSC retained >90% of its initial PCE (6.37%) after bending and relaxing 1,200 times at a bending radius of ∼4 mm.
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| 6. |
- Gao, Feng
(författare)
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A New Acceptor for Highly Efficient Organic Solar Cells
- 2019
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Ingår i: Joule. - : CELL PRESS. - 2542-4351. ; 3:4, s. 908-909
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Research into organic solar cells has gone from pure scientific curiosity to a topic of commercial relevance in the past few years, as a result of rapid development of non-fullerene acceptors. This transition is mainly driven by the development of new materials. Recently in Joule, Zou and co-workers developed a new acceptor material and reached a record efficiency for single-junction organic solar cells.
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| 7. |
- Gao, Jing, et al.
(författare)
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Solar Water Splitting with Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Cell and TiC-Supported Pt Nanocluster Electrocatalyst
- 2019
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Ingår i: Joule. - : CELL PRESS. - 2542-4351. ; 3:12, s. 2930-2941
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Developing efficient, stable, and cost-effective photosystems to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight is of paramount importance for future production of fuels and chemicals from renewable sources. However, the high cost of current systems limits their widespread application. Here, we developed a highly efficient TiC-supported Pt nanocluster catalyst for hydrogen evolution reaction that rivals the commercial Pt/C catalyst with 5 times less Pt loading. Combining with the NiFe-layered double hydroxide for oxygen evolution reaction and driven for the first time by a monolithic perovskite/silicon tandem solar cell, we achieved a solar water splitting system with 18.7% solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency, setting a record for water splitting systems with earth-abundant and inexpensive photo-absorbers.
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| 8. |
- Haywood, Luke, et al.
(författare)
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Why investing in new nuclear plants is bad for the climate
- 2023
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Ingår i: Joule. - : Elsevier. - 2542-4351. ; 7:8, s. 1675-1678
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- There has been a strong push to promote increased investments in new nuclear power as a strategy to decarbonize economies, especially in the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). The evidence base for these initiatives is poor. Investments in new nuclear power plants are bad for the climate due to high costs and long construction times. Given the urgency of climate change mitigation, which requires reducing emissions from the EU electricity grid to almost zero in the 2030s (Pietzcker et al.1), preference should be given to the cheapest technology that can be deployed fastest. On both costs and speed, renewable energy sources beat nuclear. Every euro invested in new nuclear plants thus delays decarbonization compared to investments in renewable power. In a decarbonizing world, delays increase CO2 emissions. Our thoughts focus on new nuclear power plants (not phasing out existing plants) in the US and Europe. In Europe, new nuclear power plants are planned or seriously discussed in France, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. We do not focus on China, where government-set electricity prices and subsidized capital costs make it more difficult to contrast the profitability of different types of energy sources.
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| 9. |
- Huang, Xiaofeng, et al.
(författare)
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Solvent racing crystallization : Low-solvation dispersion cosolvents for high-quality halide perovskites in photovoltaics
- 2023
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Ingår i: Joule. - : Elsevier. - 2542-4351. ; 7:7, s. 1556-1573
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The solvation capacity of dispersion solvents plays a crucial role in the solution processing of metal halide perovskites. For instance, N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF), a widely used dispersion solvent, possesses high solvation capacity but often generates suboptimal film quality due to slow crystallization kinetics. We propose using low-solvation binary cosolvents (nitrile-and ether-type solvents) to achieve a balance between solvation (i.e., sufficient solubility of precursors) and desolvation (i.e., rapid crystallization of films) pro-cesses during perovskite synthesis. The polarity and hydrogen -bonding property of these cosolvents synergistically enhance their solvation capacity, facilitating perovskite precursor dissolution. Moreover, the low-solvation cosolvents accelerate the crystalliza-tion of well-defined intermediate films, yielding higher-quality pe-rovskites than those synthesized with DMF. The optimized modules achieved an active-area efficiency of 22.27%, with a certified aper-ture-area efficiency of 16.10% and corresponding active-area effi-ciency of 20.75%. This research on solvation regulation provides universal guidelines for innovatively preparing high-quality halide perovskites.
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| 10. |
- Ji, Yu -Xia, et al.
(författare)
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Synergistic TiO2/VO2 Window Coating with Thermochromism, Enhanced Luminous Transmittance, and Photocatalytic Activity
- 2019
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Ingår i: Joule. - : Elsevier. - 2542-4351. ; 3:10, s. 2457-2471
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Modern buildings tend to be ‘‘energy guzzlers’’ and have indoor environments with unhealthy air. Glazing with TiO2/VO2 bilayer coatings (1) exhibits enhanced photocatalytic air purification compared with single-layer TiO2 due to heating from the underlying infrared-absorbing VO2 film, (2) is thermochromic thanks to the VO2 and admits less solar energy inflow when there is a cooling demand, and (3) has significantly improved luminous transmittance as a result of antireflection due to TiO2. These coatings were deposited by reactive DC magnetron sputtering onto heated glass; they were nanocrystalline, and the anatase phase prevailed in TiO2. The VO2 coatings showed well-developed thermochromism.The photocatalytic degradation rate of stearic acid was almost doubled for the TiO2/VO2 bilayer film compared with that for single-layer TiO2. Our results demonstrate an important, and hitherto unexplored, synergy between photocatalysis, thermochromism, and high luminous transmittance which exploits spectral-selective material properties for solar illumination.
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