Themed collection Energy Advances: Highlight UK & Europe

This article highlights new and interesting research ideas that explored graphene's potential for thermoelectrics.

In this review we discuss the application of electrochemical hydrogenation for pyrolysis oil upgrading, thus facilitating a circular polymer economy and low-carbon fuel production.

Halide perovskites are compelling candidates for the next generation of photovoltaic technologies owing to an unprecedented increase in power conversion efficiency and their low cost, facile fabrication and outstanding semiconductor properties.

The complicated and unconventional defect chemistry of Sb₂Se₃ largely dictates photovoltaic device performance. This comprehensive review aims to increase understanding of defect engineering, which is essential for further efficiency improvements.

The hard carbon irreversible capacity loss in Na-ion cells can be reduced by decreasing the total surface area and the active surface area (defects).

Polystyrene spheres are used as sacrificial template in different contents to introduce additional pores into hard-carbon structures from glucose for the application as sodium-ion battery anodes.

Ethyl levulinate is a promising advanced biofuel and platform chemical that can be derived from lignocellulosic biomass by ethanolysis processes.

Poor mass transfer in aqueous electrochemical CO₂ reduction limits the achievable current density toward desired products. We introduce flowable suspension electrodes to spread the current over a larger volume and alleviate mass transfer limitations.

Most “solvent-in-salt” (SIS) electrolytes are based on heavily fluorinated anions. Here we create fluorine-free SIS electrolytes with many promising basic characteristics for future sodium battery application.

Decal of a nickel mesh prepared by photolithography-assisted electroplating on carbon counter-electrode of dye sensitized and perovskite solar cells improves the conductivity of the back contact and the performance of the devices.

Powering E. coli with sunlight: the optimization of a synthetic photocatalytic system allows E. coli to function as a robust and efficient platform for semi-artificial photosynthesis.

Assessment of the current and future cost of reliable green hydrogen production, accounting for the inter- and intra-annual variability of solar and wind renewables, using 20 years of hourly resolution from 1140 grid points worldwide.

Elaborated and uniform experimental protocols are a prerequisite for OER catalyst evaluation via RDE. Still, individual sample preparation and variations in microenvironment can lead to a significant spread of results between different laboratories.

Water distribution in the microporous layer (MPL) and the gas diffusion layer (GDL) substrate during PEFC operation at different conditions is quantitatively measured by X-ray tomographic microscopy (XTM) with time resolution down to a few seconds to probe the underlying water transport mechanism.

A detailed study on the optimisation of the synthesis of LiNiO₂ is reported, with further preliminary results showing improved performance on Mo doping.

A green biodegradable hydrogel electrolyte was developed from chitosan biopolymer and KOH. This allows one to increase the energy density of carbon-based supercapacitors and to prevent the electrode degradation and current collector corrosion.

A new combined chemical looping process makes use of any gas stream containing CO₂ and fuel to produce carbon monoxide without external energy input. Carbon monoxide can be used for producing a variety of carbon-based products.

This article sheds light on the combined impact of technological innovation and tightening raw material markets on future battery cost.