Materials

New PET-like plastic made directly from waste biomass

PhysOrg: It is becoming increasingly obvious that moving away from fossil fuels and avoiding the accumulation of plastics in the environment are key to addressing the challenge of climate change. In that vein, there are considerable efforts to develop degradable…

Flexible perosvkite solar cell sets efficiency record

C&EN: Aperovskite solar cell has set a new efficiency record for flexible thin-film photovoltaics, with an independently-verified power conversion efficiency of 24.4%, (Nat. Energy 2022, DOI: 10.1038/s41560-022-01045-2). The device is a tandem cell, and beats the previous flexible thin-film champ…

Holes help shed light on novel medical devices

Materials Today: Holes help to make sponges and English muffins useful (and in the case of the latter, delicious). Without holes, sponges wouldn’t be flexible enough to bend into small crevices, and muffins wouldn’t be able to sop up the perfect…

New member added to carbon material family, a two-dimensional monolayer polymeric fullerene

PhysOrg: Synthetic carbon allotropes are fascinating for their outstanding properties and potential applications. Scientists have devoted decades to synthesizing new types of carbon materials. However, a two-dimensional fullerene, which…