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Three-dimensional printing is changing the way we manufacture objects. Here, Kim et al. develop inks of inorganic thermoelectric materials to 3D print the legs of conformable thermoelectric generators, allowing waste heat recovery from hot water pipes.
The stability of perovskite solar cells depends on each layer and interface in the device. Here, Christians et al. systematically design the entire device stack focusing on stability, creating cells that retain 88% of their initial efficiency on average, after 1,000 h of unencapsulated operation.
Biological photovoltaic devices (BPVs) use photosynthetic microorganisms to generate electricity, but their efficiency is low. Here the authors report power densities of over 0.5 W per m2 for a flow-based BPV system, by decoupling the charging and the power delivery units.
Electric power grids exhibit frequency fluctuations brought on by changes in demand, trading and intermittency of renewable sources. Schäfer et al. analyse fluctuations in real power grids from North America, Japan and Europe and find deviations from Gaussianity and substantial contributions due to trading.
Future demographic changes will impact on energy use and hence carbon emissions through time-use and consumption pattern shifts. Using representative national time-use data, Yu et al. model scenarios for demographic transitions in China to explore shifts in energy demand as households change in size and age.
Perovskite solar cells suffer from poor operational stability. Stability measurement conditions used in various studies differ widely. Here, Domanski et al. systematically study environmentally induced degradation in an effort to drive the community towards a consensus on how to age perovskite solar cells.
Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are attractive electrodes for supercapacitors but generally suffer from low electric conductivity and chemical stability. Here the authors report stable conductive MOFs based on hexaminobenzene linker with volumetric and areal capacitances in excess of 700 F per cm3 and 15 F per cm2, respectively.