| While sustainable energy is well on its way to global impact (as solar, photovoltaic, thermal, and wind electrical power generation add to the nearly completely used energy-storing hydroelectric possibilities), the sustainability of our use of materials runs up against the mantra of ever-lasting quantitative growth and the rule of consumerism. This makes the re-introduction of repairable devices a challenge, starting with up-front design to facilitate normal repair. The pecking order is from repair and healing to self-repair to self-healing, where the last ones are mostly relevant for materials that form components of the device. This challenge is not unlike that of renewable energy generation and storage that has gone from a fantasy/science fiction to real-world achievement over the past half century. Apart from the above-noted issues, there is the fear that if things last too long creativity will suffer, a concern that is outside the realm of (today’s) exact science.
Given the enormous rate of increase of numbers and types of electronic (and electrical) devices, they deserve attention and here the spotlight will be on a few cases where electronic materials show the ability to fix their damage, autonomously. This holds specifically for two types of optoelectronic materials for photovoltaics and the race is on to find more criteria that can impart such abilities to inorganic and organic materials for electronics.
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* Thanks to WIS’ Sustainable And Energy Research Initiative, SAERI, and the Minerva Centre on Integrating Self-Repair into systems for Energy & Sustainability.
** Part of this work is the result from collaborations with Jean Francois Guillemoles (CNRS), Igor Lubomirski & Leeor Kronik, Davide Ceratti, Gary Hodes, Yevgeny Rakita (now, or then @WIS)
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