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Rooftop solar and battery storage can reduce energy costs and provide affordable back-up power for over 60% of US households, but benefits often bypass the high outage risk and disadvantaged communities most in need.

Low-dimensional perovskites afford high efficiencies in solar cells but at the expense of stability. Rao et al. develop a template growth approach to form low-dimensional perovskites from low-reactivity and hence more stable organic cations.

The effective surface area of a solid oxide cell has a direct impact on its performance but maximizing it within a limited volume or mass remains a major challenge. Now, research reports a three-dimensional-structured ‘gyroidal’ solid oxide cell design that exhibits a significantly higher surface area and promising performance metrics per unit volume and mass.

Solid oxide cells for interconversion of hydrogen and electricity typically have planar designs with low performance per unit mass and volume. Zhou et al. fabricate solid oxide cells with 3D architectures, improving space utilization and mass-normalized performance.

Cobalt–iron–lead oxide electrocatalysts show promise for the low-pH oxygen evolution reaction—an essential reaction in proton-exchange water electrolysis—but can suffer from corrosion. This study uncovers that the mechanism of cobalt site corrosion is decoupled from the oxygen evolution reaction, paving the way for more stable catalyst designs.

The formation of 2D perovskites in inorganic perovskite solar cells is hindered by the strong binding affinity of caesium ions. Liu et al. engineer the functional groups of a large organic cation to facilitate its exchange with caesium ions and form a stable 2D perovskite.

A method inspired by actor–critic reinforcement learning — Alpha-Fuel-Cell — has been developed to control and maximize the mean output electrical power of direct methanol fuel cells. This model monitors fuel cell states in real time and autonomously selects optimal actions to increase the efficiency and catalyst longevity.

Direct methanol fuel cells offer high energy densities but face challenges including catalyst degradation and surface fouling, which reduce performance over time. Here the authors introduce a control system inspired by reinforcement learning to optimize the power output and mitigate degradation of direct methanol fuel cells by dynamically adjusting the voltage.

Industrial hydrogen production often uses carbon-based sources, necessitating complex purification processes to separate hydrogen from impurities. Here the authors present a reversible catalytic cycle that converts crude hydrogen into pure hydrogen, bypassing the need for pressure swing adsorption or membrane systems.

Bringing advanced battery research into real-world applications remains one of the most difficult challenges, requiring a three-stage, overlapping development process, argues Kieran O’Regan.

Self-adaptive electrolytes have been developed that harness salt concentration-induced phase separation during charging to spatially enrich reduction- and oxidation-resistant solvents at opposite electrodes. This dynamic segregation expands the electrochemical stability window, enabling stable operation of zinc-metal and lithium-metal batteries beyond the limits of conventional aqueous and non-aqueous electrolytes.

Fast charging of high-energy batteries is limited by electrolyte instability under rising overpotential. A self-adaptive electrolyte overcomes this by dynamically expanding its stability window during charging, enabling efficient zinc- and lithium-metal battery operation.

Protonic-ceramic-based fuel cells and electrolysers are promising technologies for reversible energy storage and green hydrogen production from steam. However, they have poor longevity because they are chemically unstable in high-steam environments. Using a solution-deposited conformal coating to protect the electrode, researchers now reduce cell degradation rates by 100–1,000 fold.

Protonic ceramic electrochemical cells (PCECs) interconvert hydrogen and electricity and therefore have potential as long-duration energy storage systems, but the durability of these devices under industrially relevant conditions is limited. Here the authors report a PCEC that maintains low degradation rates throughout exceptionally long-term durability tests.

The performance of perovskite-based tandem solar cells is hindered by the desorption of the molecules that passivate detrimental defects. Now, researchers design passivators with multiple functional groups and a strong dipole to strengthen the binding to the perovskite, enhancing the efficiency and photothermal stability of perovskite/copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) tandem cells.

Pei et al. overcome desorption of passivating molecules under photothermal stress in wide-bandgap perovskites and achieve perovskite/Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ tandem solar cells with a certified efficiency of 27.35%.