| 1. |
- Cannone, Carla, et al.
(författare)
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Addressing Challenges in Long-Term Strategic Energy Planning in LMICs : Learning Pathways in an Energy Planning Ecosystem
- 2023
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Ingår i: Energies. - : MDPI AG. - 1996-1073. ; 16:21
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents an innovative approach to addressing critical global challenges in long-term energy planning for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The paper proposes and tests an international enabling environment, a delivery ecosystem, and a community of practice. These components are integrated into workflows that yield four self-sustaining capacity-development outcomes. Planning long-term energy strategies in LMICs is particularly challenging due to limited national agency and poor international coordination. While outsourcing energy planning to foreign experts may appear to be a viable solution, it can lead to a reduction in government agency (the ability of a government to make its own informed analysis and decisions). Additionally, studies commissioned by external experts may have conflicting terms of reference, and a lack of familiarity with local conditions can result in misrepresentations of on-the-ground realities. It is argued here that enhancing national agency and analytical capacity can improve coordination and lead to more robust planning across line ministries and technical assistance (TA) providers. Moreover, the prevailing consulting model hampers the release and accessibility of underlying analytics, making it difficult to retrieve, reuse, and reconstruct consultant outputs. The absence of interoperability among outputs from various consultants hinders the ability to combine and audit the insights they provide. To overcome these challenges, five strategic principles for energy planning in LMICs have been introduced and developed in collaboration with 21 international and research organizations, including the AfDB, IEA, IRENA, IAEA, UNDP, UNECA, the World Bank, and WRI. These principles prioritize national ownership, coherence and inclusivity, capacity, robustness, transparency and accessibility. In this enabling environment, a unique delivery ecosystem consisting of knowledge products and activities is established. The paper focuses on two key knowledge products as examples of this ecosystem: the open-source energy modeling system (OSeMOSYS) and the power system flexibility tool (IRENA FlexTool). These ecosystem elements are designed to meet user-friendliness, retrievability, reusability, reconstructability, repeatability, interoperability, and audibility (U4RIA) goals. To ensure the sustainability of this ecosystem, OpTIMUS is introduced—a community of practice dedicated to maintaining, supporting, expanding, and nurturing the elements within the ecosystem. Among other ecosystem elements, training and research initiatives are introduced, namely the Energy Modelling Platform for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific as well as the ICTP Joint Summer School on Modelling Tools for Sustainable Development. Once deployed via workflows, the preliminary outcomes of these capacity-development learning pathways show promise. Further investigation is necessary to evaluate their long-term impacts, scalability, replication, and deployment costs.
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| 2. |
- Chao, Yimin, et al.
(författare)
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Evaporation and deposition of alkyl-capped silicon nanocrystals in ultrahigh vacuum
- 2007
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Ingår i: Nature Nanotechnology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1748-3395 .- 1748-3387. ; 2:8, s. 486-489
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Nanocrystals are under active investigation because of their interesting size- dependent properties(1,2) and potential applications(3-5). Silicon nanocrystals have been studied for possible uses in optoelectronics(6), and may be relevant to the understanding of natural processes such as lightning strikes(7). Gas-phase methods can be used to prepare nanocrystals, and mass spectrometric techniques have been used to analyse Au-8,(9) and CdSe clusters(10). However, it is difficult to study nanocrystals by such methods unless they are synthesized in the gas phase(11). In particular, pre-prepared nanocrystals are generally difficult to sublime without decomposition. Here we report the observation that films of alkyl-capped silicon nanocrystals evaporate upon heating in ultrahigh vacuum at 200 degrees C, and the vapour of intact nanocrystals can be collected on a variety of solid substrates. This effect may be useful for the controlled preparation of new quantum-confined silicon structures and could facilitate their mass spectroscopic study and size- selection(12).
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| 3. |
- Mehta, Manan, et al.
(författare)
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Synthesis of MoS2-TiO2 nanocomposite for enhanced photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical performance under visible light irradiation
- 2018
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Ingår i: Vacuum. - : Elsevier BV. - 0042-207X. ; 155, s. 675-681
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this work, we have prepared MoS2 nanoflakes modified TiO2 nanoparticles (MoS2-TiO2 nanocomposite) with varying concentration of MoS2 (2.5–10 wt.%) by a two-step hydrothermal synthesis method involving specific preparation conditions for the TiO2 nanoparticles and MoS2 nanoflakes. The prepared samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) techniques. The photocatalytic activity of the pristine TiO2 nanoparticles and MoS2-TiO2 nanocomposite samples were evaluated by examining the photocatalytic degradation of Rhodamine B (RhB). The photoelectrochemical activity of these samples were measured by performing solar water splitting experiments under visible light irradiation. It was observed that the MoS2-TiO2 nanocomposite with 7.5 wt.% MoS2 exhibits highest photocatalytic and photoelectrochemical activity as it has the optimum amount of MoS2 nanoflakes which probably minimizes the recombination of photogenerated charge carriers as compared to other concentrations of MoS2 in MoS2-TiO2 nanocomposite and pristine TiO2 nanoparticles. In addition, a rather high photocatalytic reaction rate constant was observed for MoS2-TiO2 nanocomposite with 7.5 wt.% MoS2 nanoflakes.
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