Researchers at the University of Oldenburg have been examining spider webs webs for the smallest plastic particles – on inner-city streets with varying levels of traffic. They found mainly the plastic PET, presumably from textiles, as well as particles from the abrasion of car tyres and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The amounts of plastic particles found depended on the location. Spider webs, the team concludes, are a simple and inexpensive means of monitoring air pollution by microplastics in the city and identifying particularly polluted areas. The samples, collected in a mid-sized German city, were processed with Fentons reagent and measured using pyrolysis-gas chromatography–mass spectrometry for specific, polymer related indicator compounds. All samples contained microplastics (MP) including tyre wear particles (TWP) contamination in air samples. All the spider webs were contaminated with microplastics. In some cases, the plastic content even accoun...
A perovskite solar cell (PSC) is a type of solar cell which includes a perovskite-structured compound, most commonly a hybrid organic-inorganic lead or tin halide-based material, as the light-harvesting active layer. Perovskite materials, such as methylammonium lead halides and all-inorganic cesium lead halide, are cheap to produce and simple to manufacture. Perovskite solar cells have therefore been the fastest-advancing solar technology as of 2016. In a joint effort between Pavia University (Italy) and the Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden at Technische Universität Dresden (Germany), researchers developed a novel method to fabricate lead halide perovskite solar cells with record efficiency. Metal halide perovskites have been under intense investigation over the last decade, due to the remarkable rise in their performance in optoelectronic devices such as solar cells or light-emitting diodes. Researchers have developed a nov...
Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a new photocatalyst made from an aerogel that could enable more efficient hydrogen production. One use for aerogels based on nanoparticles is as photocatalysts. These are employed whenever a chemical reaction needs to be enabled or accelerated with the aid of sunlight – one example being the production of hydrogen. The material of choice for photocatalysts is titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ), a semiconductor. But TiO 2 has a major disadvantage: it can absorb only the UV portion of sunlight – just about 5 percent of the spectrum. If photocatalysis is to be efficient and industrially useful, the catalyst must be able to utilise a broader range of wavelengths. Junggou Kwon has been looking for a new way to optimise an aerogel made of TiO 2 nanoparticles. And she had a brilliant idea: if the TiO 2 nanoparticle aerogel is “doped” (to use the technical term) with nitrogen, such that individual oxygen atoms in the material are repla...
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