EES Blog

Scientists in the UK developing wearable electronics have knitted a flexible fabric that delivers twice the power output of current energy harvesting textiles.

There is considerable interest and research into wearable piezoelectric energy harvesters that use waste energy from human movement or the ambient environment to power low-energy consuming wearable devices, such as wireless sensors and consumer electronics. Typically these materials are ceramic-based with limited flexibility, so aren’t that comfortable to wear, and include toxic elements like lead. They also involve charge-collecting metallic electrodes with poor fatigue resistance that fail after repeated use. New, less rigid materials with sufficient mechanical strength and an all-in-one design are therefore highly sought after.

The polymeric piezoelectric fibres created by Navneet Soin at the University of Bolton and colleagues in the laboratory of Elias Siores fulfill all of the above: they are flexible, strong and breathable.

Interested to know more? Read the full news article by Polly Wilson on Chemistry World here…

Read the article by N Soin et al. in EES:

Novel “3-D spacer” all fibre piezoelectric textiles for energy harvesting applications
Navneet Soin, Tahir Shah, Subhash Anand, Junfeng Geng, Wiwat Pornwannachai, Pranab Mandal, David Reid, Surbhi Sharma, Ravi Hadimani, Derman Vatansever Bayramol and Elias Siores
Energy Environ. Sci., 2014, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/C3EE43987A, Paper

The latest issue of EES is now online. You can read the full issue here.

The outside front cover features the paper Exciton diffusion in organic photovoltaic cells by S. Matthew Menke and Russell J. Holmes.

Lead candidates for high-performance organic photovoltaics from high-throughput quantum chemistry – the Harvard Clean Energy Project is the paper highlighted on the inside front cover by Johannes Hachmann, Roberto Olivares-Amaya, Adrian Jinich, Anthony L. Appleton, Martin A. Blood-Forsythe, László R. Seress, Carolina Román-Salgado, Kai Trepte, Sule Atahan-Evrenk, Süleyman Er, Supriya Shrestha, Rajib Mondal, Anatoliy Sokolov, Zhenan Bao and Alán Aspuru-Guzik.

Issue 2 contains a number of excellent Analysis, Review and Perspective articles:

Energy demand and emissions of the non-energy sector
Vassilis Daioglou, Andre P. C. Faaij, Deger Saygin, Martin K. Patel, Birka Wicke and Detlef P. van Vuuren

Lithium metal anodes for rechargeable batteries
Wu Xu, Jiulin Wang, Fei Ding, Xilin Chen, Eduard Nasybulin, Yaohui Zhang and Ji-Guang Zhang

Recent progress on flexible lithium rechargeable batteries
Hyeokjo Gwon, Jihyun Hong, Haegyeom Kim, Dong-Hwa Seo, Seokwoo Jeon and Kisuk Kang

Enhancing SOFC cathode performance by surface modification through infiltration
Dong Ding, Xiaxi Li, Samson Yuxiu Lai, Kirk Gerdes and Meilin Liu

Heterogeneous nanocarbon materials for oxygen reduction reaction
Da-Wei Wang and Dangsheng Su

Directing the film structure of organic semiconductors via post-deposition processing for transistor and solar cell applications
Anna M. Hiszpanski and Yueh-Lin Loo

Silver is a scarce raw material but the first real scale study of recycling polymer solar cells reveals that its use can be sustainable.

Putting up huge nubers of solar panels every day could help address the world’s energy crisis. ‘If you want to solve big problems, then the scale of whatever you are doing is also likely to be big, and so is any waste you generate,’ explains Frederik Krebs who led the study at the Technical University of Denmark. ‘This should therefore be part of your thinking when you are developing something.’

Silver is needed for solar cell electrodes but it is also a precious metal, cutting into both the cost of production and energy payback time of mass-produced solar cells. Now, Krebs’ team has demonstrated that 95% of the silver electrodes in polymer solar cell modules can be reclaimed as silver chloride after simply shredding the modules and soaking them in nitric acid. This yield would diminish the overall energy payback time of the solar cells from 139 days to 128 days, a decrease of 8%.

Interested to know more? Read the full news article by Jennifer Newton on Chemistry World here…

Read the article by R R Søndergaard et al. in EES:

Efficient decommissioning and recycling of polymer solar cells: justification for use of silver
Roar R. Søndergaard, Nieves Espinosa, Mikkel Jørgensen and Frederik C. Krebs
Energy Environ. Sci., 2014, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C3EE43746A, Communication