It is common to find conventional solar panels in the city supplying energy to homes, parks or schools; unfortunately, these systems disturb the image of the environment generating visual pollution and affecting people's mental health. In recent works, structures have been developed that maintain a balance between energy efficiency and design, focused on using conventional solar cell...
MXenes materials have shown good electrochemical properties for energy storage such as metallic behavior, high electrical conductivity and low energy barriers for ions diffusion. Recent studies have shown that bi-metallic MXenes, such as Ti$_2$Ta$_2$C$_3$, exhibit superior electrochemical behavior compared to monometallic counterparts, offering potential for extended lifespan in energy storage...
Photocatalysis has always been a promising alternative in the remotion of pollutants from air and water, and even for clean energy production, such as hydrogen-based fuels. Nonetheless, there is not an ultimate photocatalyst with low recombination times, high quantum efficiency, chemical stability, non-toxicity and low cost. In order to face said drawbacks, bismuth-based materials,...
The finding for new low-toxicity materials to be used in photovoltaic devices is of great importance to meet the energy demand without harming the environment. In recent years, CdTe/CdS solar cells have attracted much attention due to the remarkable increase in efficiency from 16% to 22% [1,2]. Recent studies show that the CdS film has a parasitic absorption, which does not contribute to the...
Nowadays safe water access is decreasing due to many factors as demographic explosion and water pollution. Among the principal water pollutants, there is the pharmaceutical compounds, e.i. ciprofloxacin, which after human consume, it is integrates to water as contaminant agent. This research is a contribution toward materials development for chemical compounds remotion. In this work, BiVO4...
The main objective of the research is to design a closed space
and project the necessary modifications to decrease its temperature and reach a suitable temperature for human comfort through wind, reflection of sunlight, and an air conditioning unit solely for cooling, powered by electricity from solar panels. To achieve this objective, an air conditioning unit is selected that can decrease...
The main goal of this talk is to describe how the systemic concept of chemistry nano-architectures has been employed as the main strategy for designing chemically modified electrodes that have been utilized for attending to alternative energy, environmental, and public health problems. In this way, it will share with the audience some relevant results obtained in my laboratory for preparing...
In this work a detailed study of a helical Savonius rotor (HSR) was investigated to obtain the optimal characteristics for the generation of renewable energy. The designed and assembly of the HSR was developed in a CAD software. Simulations of the interaction between the flow of air and the HSR blades were developed through finite element analysis. Results of these simulations shows the...
Energy harvesting from renewable sources through advanced materials offers a sustainable option to reduce dependency on fossil fuels while meeting increasing energy demands. This study proposes an advanced piezoelectric polymer composite consisting of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and barium titanate (BaTiO3). The composite aims to combine piezoelectric and elastic properties for efficient...
Abstract
Copper selenide thin films (Cu2-xSe) were deposited onto soda lime glass via chemical bath deposition technique using our free ammonia process at different pH values ranging from 6.3 to 8.3. The thin films obtained were characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS and UV-Vis spectroscopy. It was found that the morphological and optical properties of the films were directly influenced by the pH...
The study of ferromagnetism (FM) in semiconductor oxides having non-cubic crystalline structures (e.g. TiO2) is attractive due to their applications in spintronics. FM can be activated in TiO2 nanomaterials by promoting oxygen vacancies (VO) in paramagnetic defected sites Ti3+VOTi4+. In this context, the VO can induce in Ti3+-doped TiO2 structures remarkable magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) of...
In this work the incorporation of a monolayer of WS2 in a FAPbI3 perovskite based heterostructure is presented. FAPbI3/WS2/TiO2/ITO and FAPbI3/TiO2/ITO heterostructures were analyzed by UV-Vis spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM). The configuration with WS2 interlayer presents higher absorption in the visible region with a...
Hemodialysis is an extracorporeal kidney replacement procedure to remove impurities or waste products from the blood. It is used to treat kidney failure and go out into wastewater. This research considered synthetic water from hemodialysis under acid and basic conditions. To better simulate the presence of organic compounds, 10 mg/L of amoxicillin (AMX), an antibiotic commonly present in...
Climate change poses significant challenges for building maintenance in regions like the South-Southeast of Mexico, characterized by high humidity and extreme heat. This study introduces a novel approach to address these challenges by developing and testing recycled polystyrene-based waterproofing agents fortified with fiberglass, titanium oxide, and polyurethane. Formulations (M1 to M5) were...
Given the growing usage and consumption of water resources, humankind needs to develop relevant and economic procedures to be able cleaning and purifying used water, in order to promote its reuse and possible reintegration into the environment, as well as to prevent its contribution to further contaminate soils. One could say that such is the wider purpose for the improvement of...
The auge of semiconductors in the second half of the 20th century brought a fast and without precedent technological advancement, characterized by high-speed communications and faster and more efficient processing devices. All this, was powered by already known semiconductors like silicon, germanium, and metal oxides, but also by novel and outstanding materials like the well-known families of...
The demand for eco-friendly and efficient energy sources in industrial, portable, and wearable applications has driven extensive research into electrochemical storage devices. The lithium-ion batteries emerge as highly promising due to their exceptional physicochemical and electrochemical properties. To further enhance lithium-ion battery performance beyond conventional graphite-based anodes,...
Water pollution is a primary environmental concern that poses significant human and animal health risks. Various contaminants in water sources can lead to severe health issues. Despite using different techniques to remove impurities, traditional wastewater methods only sometimes effectively eliminate emerging pollutants, leading to continued water contamination. Electro-oxidation is an...
Metal-organic networks (MOF) are crystalline materials characterized by the coordination of metal centers with organic ligands. This class of material stands out for its properties such as high specific surface area, porosity and easy functionalization. The field of application of MOFs has ranged from gas separation/storage, adsorption/desorption of toxic gases and vapors, catalysts, drug...
In this work, zinc oxide nanostructures were grown using the Vapor-Liquid-Solid (VLS) growth technique. To promote the growth of the nanostructures, a seed layer of aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) and gold as a catalyst was used. This study investigates the effect of thermal treatment on the seed layer and the catalyst before to VLS growth, aiming to ensure that the seed layer and the catalyst...
Currently, there is a significant dependence on fossil fuels, which are non-renewable. When these fuels are used in combustion processes, they generate greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Accordingly, it is crucial to develop more environmentally friendly energy sources enabling to underpin futures demands. In this context, hydrogen stands out as an attractive alternative due...
Solar cells are essential for the transition to renewable energy, enabling the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity through the photovoltaic effect. In this context, the efficiency of the cells is crucial, and metal contacts play an essential role in optimizing their performance. These contacts extract and conduct the generated electrons, significantly influencing the efficiency and...
In recent years Vanadium (V) has attracted great interest because it is an abundant element on the planet, which has different vanadium oxides as: VO, VO2, V2O3, V6O13, V3O7 or V2O5, each of which has different properties. In particular, Vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) presents greater interest due to its chemical stability and its photocatalytic properties. V2O5 has an energy bandgap of ~2.3 eV,...
The degradation by using catalysts, especially metal oxides as thin films has been recently a novel method for proper treatment of air and water contamination. Additionally, the thin films deposited on flexible substrates provide light weight, easy bending, and low-cost processing. The zinc oxide (ZnO) as a p-type semiconductor with a direct bandgap energy of 3.3 eV is a promising material for...
Zinc oxide thin films as semiconductor catalysts have been studied recently due to the promising treatment of contaminated water, mainly from industrial wastes. The present work studies the influence of SILAR deposition cycles of Ag-doped ZnO thin films on glass substrates for the degradation of methylene blue under UV-Vis light irradiation. This method involves immersing a substrate in...
Perovskite materials are one of the most promising photocatalysts for generating clean, energetic vectors and solar fuels. One of the main barriers to its massive production is the high cost and complicated deposition techniques. As an alternative, this work sought solutions to manufacture large-area printed films with high-throughput rates and minimal waste by ink-jet printing. This...
This work presents a study and analysis of laser scribing processes in thin-film semiconductor materials such as SnO2: F, CdTe and CIS, with possible applications in photovoltaic and electronic devices. The process carried out is with an Nd: YAG laser system that operates at a wavelength of 532 nm at a frequency of 50 Hz, the way in which laser scribing is done is with a pulse system mode,...
Sb$_2$Se$_3$ is a promising absorber material for photovoltaic applications due to its band-gap value (~ 1.2 eV), strong optical absorption, simple phase and composition, and earth-abundant and non-toxic constituents, reasons why Sb$_2$Se$_3$ has emerged as a potential candidate to be incorporated as high-efficiency and low-cost absorber material in thin film solar cell technology. The...
Microplastics (MP) are tiny plastic particles (<5mm in size), that come from various sources, including synthetic textiles, tires, cosmetics, fragmentation of larger plastics (bottles, food containers, pvc pipes, etc.) and industrial processes. These complex compounds have become a mayor environmental concern due to their widespread presence and potential risk to human health and organisms[1]....
We are experiencing essential changes in the environment that are a consequence of the increase in anthropogenic activities, such as the excessive use of natural resources and the consequent generation of polluting emissions that seek to satisfy the needs of human beings, but at the same time affect the different strata of the environment: water, soil, and air. Different research groups are...
One of the main factors influencing environmental problems is the constant increase in emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere, highlighting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as toluene. In the first stage of this project, a continuous system used in the toluene removal study was studied by boiling a synthetic solution of 100 ppm toluene in ethanol, which was initially passed through...
The raising of emergent contaminants is characterized by a detrimental effect on the quality of water, soil and air, affecting the wellbeing of many types of organisms and the difficulty of their degradation by conventional methods. Research about the harmful effects of these substances show that although they cannot be acutely toxic in the early term, there are potential risk against...
Solar Cell simulation serves to reduce the number of work hours and optimize the resources dedicated to carrying out experiments. Simulation of solar cells based on AZO as window layer, cadmium telluride (CdTe) like first absorber layer and FeSi2 like second absorber layer with the structure (Al/AZO/CdTe/FeSi2/Ni) using the Cell Capacitance Simulator solar-1D (SCAPS-1D) has been carried out....
To avoid ZnO photo-corrosion, In-doped ZnO nanorods were grown using the chemical bath deposition technique, varying the In concentration (0.5, 0.75, and 1 mol%). The increase in the indium load enhanced the photocatalytic activity in the hydrogen production, evolving ten times more hydrogen in the ZnO-NRD/1-In (1% In) sample. Unfortunately, after the recyclability cycles (three cycles), the...
Phenol is a toxicant from the petrochemical, resin, and pharmaceutic sectors and pollutes soil and water bodies. This work aimed to investigate the applicability of activated carbon (AC) as a material for a permeable reactive barrier to remove phenol from groundwater flow. Filtration tests were conducted through the AC layer using 1 mM phenol solution in vertical and horizontal reactors. The...
Water pollution is generated by the discharge of effluents from different sectors of industry, containing heavy metals, organic toxins, lubricants, solid dyes and chemicals. Research shows that, between 2007 and 2021 the presence of emerging organic pollutants (EOCs) and endocrine disruptors (ED) has significantly increased, becoming a serious health risk to humans and ecosystems [1]. In...
Non-fullerene acceptor (NFA)-based organic solar cells have garnered attention in the photovoltaic field owing to their low manufacturing costs, flexibility and power conversion efficiency enhancement. However, these devices have short lifetimes owing to the nature of organic semiconductors, which can be altered by external stresses, such as photon illumination, electronic and optoelectronic...
CdS is an n-type semiconductor typically used in CdS/CdTe solar cells as window material due to high optical transparency, wide band gap (2.28-2.50 eV), manipulable thickness less than 100 nm, low temperature deposition process (< 75 ºC) and compatibility with several kind of substrates. Usually, CdS is deposited by chemical bath deposition (CBD) technique, which is a simple and inexpensive...
Photovoltaic panels are one of the most popular means of producing renewable energy, mainly because of the innovations that have been made to improve properties such as mechanical flexibility, lightness, and semi-transparency. However, the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic cells is still low (below 30%) compared with conventional generators. Much of the solar energy received by PV modules...
One of the important physical properties to consider in a semiconductor window is the value of its band-gap Eg. In2S3 and CdS have typical Eg of the order of 2.42 and 2.62 eV, respectively; that is, their absorption window is in the visible light region. In this work, different configurations of these semiconductors were processed by means of the processing technique Magneto-Planar Cathode...
The study of ferromagnetism (FM) in non-cubic semiconductor oxides such as defective TiO2 is attractive due to their applications in photocatalysis. FM can be activated in TiO2 nanomaterials by promoting oxygen vacancies (VO) located in paramagnetic defected sites Ti3+VOTi4+. In this context, the VO can induce in Ti3+-doped TiO2 structures remarkable magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) of...
Climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages and hard-to-remove pollutants are now the vanguard of menacing risks not just for human kind but, other lifeforms, ecosystems and the planet itself. In response, the human race has devoted an uncountable number of efforts to diminish the effect of these harmful phenomena, including novel water purifying technologies, advanced oxidation processes...
One way to give new life to vegetal residues, which lead to pollution or take a long time to degrade, is using them as raw materials to obtain biomaterials and methane that can be used in several ways, reducing the degradation time. On the other hand, citrus is a highly consumed product worldwide with an estimated market of 28 billion US dollars, whereas orange stands out from it. In this...
Energy harvesting technologies have attracted considerable attention today. Various nano or microgenerators based on piezoelectric, triboelectric, and electromagnetic effects are becoming popular to design and realize many self-powered applications (1). Electromagnetic generators (EMG) offer numerous advantages, including possible architectures and nanostructured materials for device...
Energy is likely to be the major scientific challenge in decades to come. The solution to the climate and environmental problems rests on a concerted effort to broaden our energy resources. New and improved functional materials are important components in efforts to effectively harvest energy from alternative energy sources, and to use the available energy more economically and environmentally...
Borophene is a relatively new material nanosheet-like and is the lightest known 2D material. As boron is a neighbor of carbon it is expected to have similar properties to this material. Borophene synthesis remains an actual challenge due to the bulk bond configurations of boron. Theoretically, a triangular network could be more stable if it has periodic holes and it can grow on metallic...
Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) like Al-doped Zinc Oxide (AZO) are highly sought after for their unique electrical conductivity and optical transparency combination. AZO offers advantages over ITO and FTO, including processing costs, environmental and health considerations, stability, ease of processing, and versatile fabrication techniques. This work explores the viability of obtaining...
Advances in battery technology can lead to longer-lasting devices, cleaner energy storage, and more efficient transportation systems. LiMn2O4 is a suitable cathode material for high-capacity Li-ion batteries. Hence, it is crucial to comprehend the impact of sputtering deposition conditions on the quality and performance of LiMn2O4 to optimize battery efficiency. This research investigates the...
Next generation materials for electronic-electrochemical applications are expected to move on from purely inorganic towards organic and hybrid inorganic-organic materials, because inorganic materials have clear drawbacks such as scarcity of usable inorganic ions and limited tailoring of structural design. Metal-Organic Coordination Polymers (MOCPs) are self-assembled crystalline materials...
Graphene oxide (GO) is a useful and promising carbon nanomaterial for applications in electronics, optics, chemistry, energy storage, and biology. Due to the presence of hydroxyl, carboxyl, and epoxy functional groups in the basal and edge plane of GO, this material is easily dispersed in aqueous solvents, which makes it more convenient to process and use. GO is usually obtained by the...
In recent years, photocatalytic materials based on semiconductor metal oxides have been extensively studied due to their vast potential in applications such as environmental remediation and protection, including air purification, disinfection, and water purification, as well as the destruction of harmful compounds, etc. Among all photocatalytic oxides, TiO2 and ZnO stand out because they are...
