Category Archives: Energy
Chemicals and fuels from plant waste
Both the depletion of fossil fuels and the environmental concerns are a powerful drive for the development of sustainable routes to commodity chemicals. Lignocellulose, comprised of lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose, is the ideal candidate, but its inherent complexity hampers its […]
Accurate simulation of aqueous-based electrochemical setups
Following the need for new and renewable sources of energy worldwide, fuel cells using electrocatalysts can be thought of as viable options. Catalyst materials modify and increase the rate of chemical reactions without itself undergoing any permanent change. An electrocatalyst […]
Ab initio modeling the chemical storage of alternative energy
Author: Carles Martí is a Ph.D. student (ITN-EJD-TCCM) at University of Perugia
Nowadays, mostly everybody has heard about global warming, a problem that humanity faces and that can drastically change our climate in the upcoming years. This is caused by […]
Mimicking Nature’s light-harvesting efficiency: the case of sulphur-bridged terthiophene dimers
In nature, light harvesting organisms make extensive use of energy and electron transfer between adjacent molecules. Thus, in the photosynthetic cell of an algae, bacterium, or plant, there are light-sensitive molecules called chromophores, which contain a π-conjugated system (a system […]
Effects of defects and water on perovskite solar cells
The German mineralogist Gustav Rose (1798 – 1873) made important contributions in the fields of petrology and crystallography. He was the first to use a reflective goniometer in Germany and developed a particular interest in the relationship between the crystalline […]
Porphyrin complexes for high efficiency solar cells
As the search for renewable energy sources has intensified, the discovery of efficient and cheap technologies for exploiting the energy from the sunlight has emerged as a key challenge.
Higher efficiency plays an increasingly important role in making competitive […]
Recent advances in lithium-ion rechargeable batteries
Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in portable electronic devices and electric vehicles since their introduction by Sony in 1991. Safety is an important concern since about two billion cells are produced every year but with a one-in-200,000 failure rate. Excessive […]
Quantum Thermodynamics V: Photocells
Sunlight is the most important energy source of Earth. All earthlings live thanks to the ability of plants and bacteria to transform solar energy into chemical one. As sunlight is a free, and practically unlimited, energy source it is easy […]
Harvesting heat to create electricity: A new world record
Approximately 90% of world’s electricity is generated in turbines moved by hot steam, which, unfortunately, operate only at 30 to 40 percent efficiency. This means that around two thirds of the total energy input is lost into the environment […]
Materials for caging the Sun on Earth
The most widely used metaphors for nuclear fusion reactors are the recreation of the Sun on Earth and the controlled explosion of a hydrogen bomb. In both cases, the first thing that comes to mind is the need for high-performance […]