Jun Yin obtained his PhD from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) in 2016, after which he worked in the University of Manchester as a research associate for 3 years. Then, he joined NUAA in 2019 as a professor. His research focuses on surface/interface interaction of nanomaterials and their applications. Jianxin Zhou is an associate professor of mechanics at NUAA. He obtained

Ulrich Gallersdörfer is a research associate in the Department of Informatics at the Technical University of Munich. His research focuses on identity management in blockchains. His interest extends to further aspects of the technology, ranging from environmental implications to data analytics applications. Lena Klaaßen is a graduate student at TUM School of Management at the Technical University of

Kristian S. Nielsen is a research associate in the Department of Zoology at University of Cambridge. He received a PhD from Copenhagen Business School in 2019 with a dissertation focused on the role of self-regulation in environmental behavior change. His current research focuses on bridging research in behavioral science and biodiversity conservation as part of an interdisciplinary project called

Despite the relevance of thermophotovoltaic (TPV) conversion to many emerging energy technologies, identifying which aspects of current TPV designs are favorable and where opportunities for improvement remain is challenging because of the experimental variability in TPV literature, including emitter and cell temperatures, cavity geometry, and system scale. This review examines several decades of experimental

Desalination technologies, which remove solutes from water, are essential to the purification of water for agricultural and industrial purposes and for potable use. While a variety of desalination technologies exist, their performance and durability need improvements to meet future clean water demands. This challenge is particularly complex as a variety of feed water sources exists, which contain various

Kenneth Gillingham is an Associate Professor of Economics at Yale University, with a primary appointment in the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. In 2015 to 2016, he served as the Senior Economist for Energy and the Environment at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. His research interests cover energy and environmental economics, industrial organization, technological change, and

Dr. Jian Chang received his BEng at Jilin University (2010) and PhD at Sungkyunkwan University (2015). He worked as postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Zheng's group between 2016 and 2019. He is currently research assistant professor at Southern University of Science and Technology. Dr. Qivao Huang received her BA (2014) and PhD (2019) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is currently postdoctoral

Jyotirmoy Mandal completed his PhD in Applied Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York and is currently a Schmidt Science Fellow and a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include low-cost optical designs for radiative cooling and solar heating, with a focus on applications in developing countries. Yuan Yang is an associate professor

Unlike conventional land-based resources for lithium (Li), which are concentrated in a few geographic locations (e.g., closed-basin brines, pegmatites, lithium clays, and zeolites), seawater provides a massive and evenly distributed global Li reserve (230 billion tons), albeit at low (<1 parts per million) concentrations. As global Li consumption continues to rise over the next few decades, the development

The search for enhanced energy density is fueling global research in battery science and engineering, where applications spanning consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and grid-scale energy storage are stimulating enormous industrial growth. While higher-energy-density batteries will combat range anxiety hampering EV adoption, it is not the only metric of importance; across a breadth of applications

Capturing carbon dioxide from flue gases can enable the use of inexpensive and energy-dense fossil fuels with lessened or no environmental harm. However, the materials and systems used in post-combustion carbon capture add significant energy and monetary costs, impeding their adoption. Recently in Cell Reports Physical Science, Sadiq et al. (2020) reported the design of a low energy cost nanocomposite

During the past decades, it has remained an open question on whether an artificial particulate photocatalyst can achieve a comparable external quantum efficiency (EQE) of overall water splitting (OWS) as that of natural photosynthesis. Now the answer to this question becomes affirmative. In the Volume 581 of Nature, Domen and co-workers reported an OWS system with an EQE of over 95% at the irradiation

While the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) to valuable products has been studied for over three decades, the dream of scaling up the process remains. Recently in ACS Energy Letters, Neyerlin and co-workers take a large step forward in establishing a platform to synthesize formate from CO2 at scale.

Replacing implantable medical devices (IMDs) is essential for their continuous operation, for which surgery is inevitable. Nanogenerators (NGs) have gained attention as potential power solutions owing to their compactness and safety compared with electromagnetic field-based energy transfer technologies. Their working principle, which involves the generation of electrical potential from body movement

Jean-Marie Tarascon (1953) is a professor at Collège de France, “Solid-State Chemistry and Energy” chair. His early career was spent in the United States, where he developed the plastic Li-ion technology. Back in France in 1995, he created the European network of excellence ALISTORE-ERI (2001) and the French network on electrochemical energy storage (RS2E) (2012). His present research is devoted to

Restrictions enacted to reduce the spreading of COVID-19 have resulted in notably clearer skies around the world. In this study, we confirm that reduced levels of air pollution correlate with unusually high levels of clear sky insolation in Delhi, India. Restrictions here were announced on March 19th, with the Nation going into lockdown on March 24th. Comparing insolation data before and after these

The Great Depression galvanized the New Deal in the United States to recover the economy, relieve the poor and unemployed, and reform the financial backbone of the country. Today, the impending adverse effects of climate change have governments proposing analogous Green New Deals. Recently in Energy Research & Social Science, Galvin and Healy critically examine the economic viability and wide-spanning

In this issue of Joule, Dahn and coworkers present the development of a hybrid lithium-ion/lithium-metal cell that allows for an extra boost of capacity when needed. This battery has the potential to help eliminate range anxiety with electric vehicles.

Molecular hydrogen, H2, is an energy carrier that is increasing in popularity as an alternative fuel. Presently, the major part of commercially available H2 is produced from fossil resources. To make H2 a true contender to fossil fuels, a sustainable production via water splitting by renewable electricity in combination with earth-abundant catalysts or by photosynthetic microorganisms is required.

Dr. Xu Zhang is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He obtained his BS in physics from University of Science and Technology of China and his PhD in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was an Enrico Fermi Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory from 2018 to 2019. His research interests include

Achieving high faradaic efficiency for multi-carbon products in a CO2 flow electrolyzer is difficult when neutral electrolyte is employed. Oh et al. obtained an enhanced faradaic efficiency for multi-carbon products (75% at 300 mA cm−2 in neutral electrolyte) by moderately decreasing the local CO2 concentration. This work showed that a high CO2 concentration might be unfavorable for making multi-carbon

Capturing waste heat as electricity using solid-state microelectronics has potential benefits for a wide variety of applications. Davids et al. recently reported a 3-terminal CMOS dual tunnel diode device demonstrating power generation up to 61 μW/cm2 at 350°C. Compared to prior rectenna designs, this design experimentally demonstrates 6,800 times higher power densities, for efficiencies around 7×10−3%

Finding new solar cell materials among the vast elemental combinatorial space is an onerous task—one that should not be left to serendipity. Two recent papers, one published in npj Computational Materials and another in Journal of Physical Chemistry C, report advanced machine learning approaches to predict the band gap of new ABX3 perovskite materials. These methods represent continued progress toward

Ammonia is increasingly recognized as an important, sustainable fuel for global use in the future. Applications of ammonia in heavy transport, power generation, and distributed energy storage are being actively developed. Produced at scale, ammonia could replace a substantial fraction of current-day liquid fuel consumption. This ammonia-based economy will emerge through multiple generations of technology

Akanksha Mishra is currently a PhD student at the University of Tübingen in Germany. She is working in the field of gas fermentation under the supervision of Prof. Angenent. For her thesis, she is developing the power-to-protein system by operating a two-stage bioprocessing system. She is originally from India and moved to Germany after the completion of her undergraduate studies in biotechnology.