Energy science and technology articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The accelerated growth of thermoelectric technology that efficiently converts waste heat to electricity necessitates the development of high-performance materials. Here, the authors experimentally demonstrate a 2D electron system with enhanced two-dimensionality and thermoelectric power factor.

    • Yuqiao Zhang
    • , Bin Feng
    •  & Hiromichi Ohta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The economic operation of a carbon dioxide capture technique of calcium looping necessitates highly effective CaO-based CO2 sorbents. Here, the authors report a facile one-pot synthesis approach to yield highly effective, MgO-stabilized, CaO-based CO2 sorbents featuring highly porous multishelled morphologies.

    • Muhammad Awais Naeem
    • , Andac Armutlulu
    •  & Christoph R. Müller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Interference patterns in photoexcited dynamics of many materials have historically been attributed to electronic and vibrational coherences. Here, the authors demonstrate a simple model based on wavefunction symmetry suggesting these coherences originate from non-adiabatic transitions for optically active molecules.

    • Tammie R. Nelson
    • , Dianelys Ondarse-Alvarez
    •  & Sergei Tretiak

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon capture and storage can help reduce CO2 emissions but the confidence in geologic CO2 storage security is uncertain. Here the authors present a numerical programme to estimate leakage from wells and find that under appropriate regulation 98% of injected CO2 will be retained over 10,000 years.

    • Juan Alcalde
    • , Stephanie Flude
    •  & R. Stuart Haszeldine

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Antimony selenide possess several advantages for solar cell applications but state-of-the-art vapor transport deposition methods suffer from poor film quality. Here Wen et al. develop a fast and cheap method to reduce the defect density by 10 times and achieve a certified power conversion efficiency of 7.6%.

    • Xixing Wen
    • , Chao Chen
    •  & Jiang Tang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biologically ### produced electrical currents and hydrogen are new energy sources. Here, the authors find that low presser microfluidizer treatment produced cyanobacterium that can utilize electrons from respiratory and photosynthesis to promote current and hydrogen generation, without the addition of exogenous electron mediators.

    • Gadiel Saper
    • , Dan Kallmann
    •  & Noam Adir

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rechargeable lithium metal batteries could offer a major leap in energy capacity but suffer from the electrolyte reactivity and dendrite growth. Here the authors apply neutron depth profiling to provide quantitative insight into the evolution of the Li-metal morphology during plating and stripping.

    • Shasha Lv
    • , Tomas Verhallen
    •  & Marnix Wagemaker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The nonfullerene-based small molecules start to attract more attention for solar cell research than the fullerene acceptors due to their wider tunability. Here Baran et al. demonstrate nonfullerene-based solar cells with high power conversion efficiency of 12% and quantum efficiencies approaching 100%.

    • Derya Baran
    • , Nicola Gasparini
    •  & Iain McCulloch

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Contradictory models are being debated on the dominant pathways of charge generation in organic solar cells. Here Kurpiers et al. determine the activation energy for this fundamental process and reveal that the main channel is via thermalized charge transfer states instead of hot exciton dissociation.

    • Jona Kurpiers
    • , Thomas Ferron
    •  & Dieter Neher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The electron–phonon coupling is the key to understand optoelectronic properties in lead halide perovskites but it is difficult to probe. Here Batignani et al. observe two new phonon modes with impulsive vibrational spectroscopy providing the evidence of the polaronic nature of the photo-excitation.

    • Giovanni Batignani
    • , Giuseppe Fumero
    •  & Tullio Scopigno

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Communication networks and power grids may be subject to cascading failures which can lead to outages. Here the authors propose to investigate cascades using dynamical transients of electrical power grids, thereby identifying possible vulnerabilities that might remain undetected with any static approach.

    • Benjamin Schäfer
    • , Dirk Witthaut
    •  & Vito Latora

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Electrocaloric materials can be electrically driven to pump heat and hold promise for use in efficient solid-state refrigeration. Here, the authors demonstrate an approach to recycle recoverable energy from electrocaloric cycles, offering a method to enhance performance in electrocaloric refrigeration systems.

    • E. Defay
    • , R. Faye
    •  & N. D. Mathur

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A major challenge facing solar-to-fuel technologies is the integration of light-absorbing and catalytic components into efficient water-splitting devices. Here, the authors construct a photochemical diode array to harvest visible light and split pure water at high solar-to-hydrogen efficiencies.

    • Faqrul A. Chowdhury
    • , Michel L. Trudeau
    •  & Zetian Mi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The application of strain to semiconducting materials can be used to engineer electric fields through a varying energy gap. Here, the authors observe an inverse charge-funnel effect in atomically thin HfS2, enabled by strain-induced electric fields.

    • Adolfo De Sanctis
    • , Iddo Amit
    •  & Saverio Russo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Uranium extraction is important for both uranium recovery and nuclear waste management. Here, inspired by the high sensitivity of proteins towards specific metal ions, Ma and colleagues demonstrate that introducing secondary coordination spheres into amidoxime-functionalized porous polymers can enhance their uranyl chelating abilities.

    • Qi Sun
    • , Briana Aguila
    •  & Shengqian Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The hydrogen evolution reaction is a promising route to produce clean hydrogen fuel; however, its efficient electrolytic generation relies on expensive platinum. Here, the authors show how modulating electron density in a metal sulfide, NiCo2S4, boosts hydrogen desorption to achieve high catalytic activity.

    • Yishang Wu
    • , Xiaojing Liu
    •  & Gongming Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    One major energy loss in electronics is heat dissipation due to induced polarization in dielectric materials in the presence of electric fields. Kim et al. utilize large polarization in liquids to harvest dielectric loss via an energy-loss return gate design, which converts energy back to electricity.

    • Taehun Kim
    • , Hyungseok Yong
    •  & Sangmin Lee

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In order to displace fossil fuel technologies, it is crucial to develop efficient solar-to-fuel conversion materials using abundant, cheap elements. Here, the authors prepare few-layer black phosphorous with amorphous cobalt phosphide and produce hydrogen gas with light at high efficiencies.

    • Bin Tian
    • , Bining Tian
    •  & Yue Tian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Some microorganisms are able to generate electrons that can be externally harvested. Here the authors show an increase by two orders of magnitude in the photocurrent when two cyanobacterial strains are grown on nanopourous transparent conducting substrates, compared to traditional solid substrates.

    • Tobias Wenzel
    • , Daniel Härtter
    •  & Ullrich Steiner

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Authenticating a nuclear warhead without revealing its design is a challenge. Here the authors discuss a nuclear disarmament verification method based on neutron resonance analysis which is sensitive to the isotopic composition of the materials used in warheads.

    • Jake J. Hecla
    •  & Areg Danagoulian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Harvesting water from the atmosphere is an important solution to water scarcity, but doing so in arid climates is highly challenging. Here, the authors develop a metal-organic framework-based water harvesting device that can deliver over 0.25 L of water per kg of adsorbent over a single cycle at relative humidities of 10–40% and at subzero dew points.

    • Hyunho Kim
    • , Sameer R. Rao
    •  & Evelyn N. Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding how catalysts corrode during use is crucial in developing new, durable devices. Here, the authors studied the real-time corrosion of core-shell palladium-platinum nanocubes by electron microscopy and found two competitive etching mechanisms to dominate catalyst degradation behavior.

    • Hao Shan
    • , Wenpei Gao
    •  & Jianbo Wu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Porous membranes show great promise for CO2 separation and capture, but are currently limited by a trade-off between permeance and selectivity. Here, the authors fabricate a bio-inspired, ultra-thin enzymatic liquid membrane that displays exceptional CO2 permeability and selectivity under ambient conditions.

    • Yaqin Fu
    • , Ying-Bing Jiang
    •  & C. Jeffrey Brinker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A reversible oxygen redox process contributes extra capacity and understanding this behavior is of high importance. Here, aided by resonant inelastic X-ray scattering, the authors reveal the distinctive anionic oxygen activity of battery electrodes with different transition metals.

    • Jing Xu
    • , Meiling Sun
    •  & Wei Tong

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Copper sulfide allows for high-performance sodium ion storage, yet its sodiation mechanism is poorly understood. Here, the authors examine the atomic structures of sodiated phases via in situ transmission electron microscopy, showing a non-equilibrium reaction pathway.

    • Jae Yeol Park
    • , Sung Joo Kim
    •  & Jong Min Yuk

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sodium doping is necessary to achieve high performance in polycrystalline chalcopyrite solar cells, but retards gallium interdiffusion, and thus efficiency optimisation. Here, Colombara et al. show that in contrast to the polycrystalline case, sodium accelerates atomic interdiffusion in monocrystalline samples.

    • Diego Colombara
    • , Florian Werner
    •  & Susanne Siebentritt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    One way to improve the performance of supercapacitors is to use hybrid carbon nanomaterials. Here the authors show a bioinspired electrode design with graphene petals and carbon nanotube arrays serving as leaves and branchlets, respectively. The structure affords excellent electrochemical characteristics.

    • Guoping Xiong
    • , Pingge He
    •  & Timothy S. Fisher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Amine-containing solids are promising adsorbents for CO2 capture, but their low oxidative stability has hindered their application. Here, Choi and colleagues develop a strategy to poison the metal impurities present in poly(ethyleneimine)/silica adsorbents, significantly improving their stability towards oxidation.

    • Kyungmin Min
    • , Woosung Choi
    •  & Minkee Choi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sunlight harvesting and redirection is a promising concept for sustainable energy conversion, however losses have hindered progress. Here the authors construct a simple biomimetic device which minimises losses by using reservoirs of randomly-oriented dyes to funnel energy onto individual emitting parallel acceptors.

    • Alexander Pieper
    • , Manuel Hohgardt
    •  & Peter Jomo Walla

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ambient environmental thermal fluctuations offer an abundant yet difficult to harvest renewable energy source, when compared to static thermal gradients. Here, by tuning the thermal effusivity of composite phase change materials, the authors are able to harvest energy from diurnal ambient temperature changes.

    • Anton L. Cottrill
    • , Albert Tianxiang Liu
    •  & Michael S. Strano

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While lithium-oxygen batteries offer a green method to power vehicles, the sluggish decomposition of lithium peroxide limits device performance. Here, the authors direct lithium peroxide formation into amorphous nanostructures to enable its facile decomposition and improve charging efficiency.

    • Arghya Dutta
    • , Raymond A. Wong
    •  & Hye Ryung Byon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The use of drones to deliver commercial packages is poised to become a new industry. Here the authors show that replacing truck delivery by drones can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy use when the drone size and additional warehousing requirements are limited.

    • Joshuah K. Stolaroff
    • , Constantine Samaras
    •  & Daniel Ceperley

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Energy science and technology across other nature.com journals