EES Blog

Scientists in China have developed an electrode for lithium-sulfur batteries using pig bones as a cheap and renewable carbon source.

Lithium-sulfur batteries are promising rechargeable batteries because of their high energy storage capacity and low cost, but their use has been hindered by their short life cycle and loss of active sulfur through electrochemical reactions in the battery. Porous carbon materials can help as the sulfur is trapped in the pores, preventing it reacting further, but their preparation involves many synthetic steps.

Now, Yaqin Huang and his team from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology have discovered a porous carbon source in pig bone.

“The development of rechargeable batteries that can be coupled to renewable sources is becoming more important for clean and efficient energy storage,” explains Huang.

Leela Mohana Reddy, an expert in lithium ion batteries and supercapacitors at Rice University, Texas, US, comments that, “pig bone based porous carbon has great potential in the development of novel cathode materials for building the next generation of energy storage devices.”

Read more of the Chemistry World article…

Read the Energy & Environmental Science article today:

Pig bone derived hierarchical porous carbon and its enhanced cycling performance of lithium–sulfur batteries
Shaochen Wei, Hao Zhang, Yaqin Huang, Weikun Wang, Yuzhen Xia and Zhongbao Yu
Energy Environ. Sci., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/c0ee00505c

‘HOT’ Communication article – photovoltaics with >17% efficiency potential

Cu-catalyzed vapor–liquid–solid growth and surface passivation techniques produce crystalline Si microwires of sufficient material quality for high-performance photovoltaics with high efficiency potential.

High-performance Si microwire photovoltaics
Michael D. Kelzenberg, Daniel B. Turner-Evans, Morgan C. Putnam, Shannon W. Boettcher, Ryan M. Briggs, Jae Yeon Baek, Nathan S. Lewis and Harry A. Atwater
Energy Environ. Sci., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/C0EE00549E

Throughout the growth of the photovoltaics (PV) industry, crystalline silicon wafer-based solar cells have remained the predominant worldwide technology due in part to high module efficiencies and the tremendous scale at which they are manufactured. However, producing silicon wafers is costly and energy-intensive, which has enabled lower-cost, less-efficient thin-film PV technologies such as CdTe to gain significant market share in recent years.

Technologies that combine the high efficiency, abundance, and non-toxicity of crystalline Si with the low cost and light weight of thin-film PV have the potential to significantly accelerate the adoption of PV energy.
Now, scientists from the US have investigated crystalline silicon microwires as an alternative to wafers. They made the wires by the vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) process, a thin-film vapour deposition technique and found that they possess remarkably high material quality, potentially enabling silicon microwire-array solar cells to reach efficiencies that rival those of many wafer-based crystalline technologies.