Themed collection Solar energy showcase

This perspective highlights the challenges and opportunities in interfacial evaporation, heat and water management, materials synthesis, and device development for solar steam generation.

Analysis of properties and data – both known and missing – related to materials selection, life cycle assessment, and end-of-life reuse and recycling options for device components to achieve a sustainable design of dye-sensitized solar cells.

This review provides fundamental knowledge and development directions towards the commercialising of advantageous all-perovskite tandem solar cells.

Thin films mediated photocatalytic hydrogen production is the recent intriguing challenge to overcome the global energy demand. By development of fine nanomaterials and preparation of thin films hydrogen production can be increased to large scale.

This review offers a detailed look at materials in encapsulation and backsheets for crystalline silicon photovoltaic (c-Si PV) modules, along with recent research advancements for performance enhancement.

Utilization of CPMs across diverse functional layers within Perovskite Solar Cells (PSCs) are systematically classified and analyzed. We scrutinize the correlation between the incorporation of CPMs and the resulting performance of PSC devices.

This review article includes dimensional diversity and exploring the potential of mixed-dimensional integrations to improve the stability and performance of PV devices.

In the context of energy storage, multichromophoric systems may offer additional functionality over monosubstituted analogues due to their potential to access multiple states as well as having more attractive physical properties.

This review offers a comprehensive depiction of g-C₃N₄-based materials for PEC water splitting. The fundamentals of PEC water splitting, along with the applications of g-C₃N₄-based materials as photoanodic and photocathodic materials are discussed.

Solar cells have provided a solution to the prevailing energy crisis and environmental contamination in the ongoing energy-driven era because of their potential to utilize solar energy.

This review summarizes the side-chain engineering of nonfullerene small-molecule acceptors (SMAs) in the field of organic solar cells, discusses the key structure–property relationships in depth and the future directions of side-chain engineering.

This review summarizes the superiorities and utilizations of 2D materials for photoelectrochemical water splitting including transition metal dichalcogenides, graphene, graphdiyne, black phosphorus, layered double hydroxides, g-C₃N₄, and MXenes.

Sunlight-driven photocatalytic conversion of furfural and its derivatives enables activation and transformation of the target chemical bonds under very mild conditions using photoexcited charge carriers or photogenerated reactive species.

g-C₃N₄: a sustainable game-changer in photocatalysis. This work explores synthesis, properties, mechanisms, and applications, addresses challenges, and charts future trends.

Inverted planar perovskite solar cells with PCBM ETL have poor film formation and charge transfer. Adding MgO improves photoluminescence, carrier lifetime, and efficiency to 15.12%, and enhances X-ray detector performance.

Specific functionalities at the nanoscale can emerge from the broken inversion symmetry in two-dimensional (2D) Janus monolayers.

By investigating the effects of electron donor topology and the hetero[6]radialene structure on the 3D COF photocatalytic activity, a twisted BF structure was found to improve organic pollutant degradation and water hydrogen production.

Key advances on triple-junction perovskite–perovskite–Si solar cells with an unprecedented efficiency of 24.4% and enhanced long-term thermal stability are reported via the development of high-performance middle perovskite solar cell.

Plasmonic metal nanoparticle integrated mesoporous TiO₂ nanocomposites (Ag/TiO₂, Cu/TiO₂ and Ag–Cu/TiO₂), prepared by a simple chemical reduction method, have been demonstrated to show superior activity in thin-film form for solar H₂ generation.

In this work, a novel 2D/3D hierarchical architecture graphdiyne/CoAl₂O₄ (GCA) S-scheme heterojunction was successfully constructed by coupling graphdiyne (GDY) nanosheets onto porous CoAl₂O₄ nanoflowers.

In this work, we present a conceptual strategy based on multi-acceptor components to realize balanced crystallization kinetics in organic solar cells (OSC) that deliver a 19.35% power conversion efficiency with superior photostability.

A novel benzotrifuranyl COF with excellent photovoltaic properties and low exciton binding energy was successfully constructed and used for efficient photolysis of water.

Phenylguanidine, a strong ligand in the precursor solution, retards crystallization to enlarge grain sizes and reduce defect density of a perovskite film, demonstrating excellent universality across various compositions.

A trifluoromethoxy isomerization strategy to modulate intermolecular interactions is proposed to balance the intermolecular interactions of hole transport materials and their interface interactions with perovskites.

Cuttlefish inks offer nano-solar-absorbers for obtaining freshwater through interfacial evaporation.

We demonstrate the fragility of perovskite solar cells is typically in the small molecule electron transport layer and show strategies for designing more mechanically and operationally robust devices by improving the layers and interfaces.

To address the underutilization of infrared light in photocatalysis, a synergistic CO₂ photoreduction and seawater desalination system was developed, which exhibited a good bifunctional performance.

Low-temperature of the chlorobenzene antisolvent and trimethylpropylammonium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide ionic liquid at the TiO₂/perovskite interface improves the device efficiency and stability.

Isomeric non-fullerene acceptor guest with large π-conjugation skeleton is used to construct stable organic solar cells with efficiencies over 19%.

The novel quantitative read-across structure–property relationship approach was used to model the power conversion efficiency of four classes of organic dyes.

Molecular microstructure and carrier management were optimized and correlated, and double-channel recombination suppression enabled a record certified efficiency of 19.3% for asymmetric acceptor-based organic photovoltaics.

This study reports the solar light-driven activation of a bicyclic aminoxyl mediator to achieve C–C bond cleavage of a lignin model compound at room temperature using a donor–π-conjugated bridge–acceptor organic dye-based photoelectrochemical system.

Efficient 3D NFAs through central unit connection blaze a new trail in further molecular structural optimization of state-of-the-art NFAs.

By designing new terpolymers, we tuned the molecular orientation to obtain an ordered morphology with suppressed energetic disorder. Thus, we boost the PCE of all-PSCs to over 18%.

A stable ε-FAPbI₃ hydrate was formed and precipitated only at the grain boundary area by controlling moisture partial pressure. Such a kinetic negotiation strategy enables stable and efficient perovskite solar cells.

Solar-driven methane dry reforming via a ceria-based thermochemical redox cycle in a concentrating solar tower to produce solar syngas with a solar-to-fuel energy efficiency of 27%.

2D–2D S-scheme SnS₂/CdS heterostructures have been constructed, with close face-to-face contact and strongly coupled interactions to improve the charge transfer kinetics, which exhibit excellent photocatalytic hydrogen evolution activity.

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are studied in low-intensity low-temperature (LILT) conditions before and after low energy proton irradiation to characterize device performance at deep space mission-relevant light intensities and temperatures.

This work introduces FeMnO_x as a novel effective cocatalyst for PEC water oxidation and provides simple tools for comprehending how interfacial effects influence the PEC performance of all-sputtered BiVO₄/FeNiO_x and BiVO₄/FeMnO_x p–n heterojunctions.

The defect-copper chalcopyrite CuGa₃Se₅ is a promising photocathode material for solar hydrogen generation. Here we assess its performance with photoelectrochemical measurements and vibrating Kelvin probe surface photovoltage spectroscopy.