Singapore

Green and bio-waste represents more than 44% of urban municipal waste. Here, we explore the valorization of this waste by transforming it into composites using fungi. Indeed, fungi grow by degrading the lignocellulosic content of waste and by developing a highly interconnected network called mycelium. This mycelium is composed of chitin, cellulose, and protein, and bind the non-degraded components together. In this work, we investigate the incidence of food sources on the growth of the mycelium of two commonly used fungi, the Lingzi mushroom and the Grey Oyster mushroom. We find that foods are natural catalysts of the growth. Furthermore, we develop mixtures, or inks that can be used to 3D print such materials using an extrusion method. The composites formed from waste and mycelium are interesting for their insulation properties, mechanics, decorative, etc.

MATERIALS FOR HUMANITY (MH 21)

Growing mycelium-bound composite using agricultural waste

The OWSD General Assembly and international conference will be held entirely online for the first time in OWSD's 28-year history, allowing as many of OWSD's 7600+ members to participate as possible.

The conference theme is 'Women, science and development', exploring three areas of relevance: 1) the importance of basic sciences for development; 2) the impact of applied sciences on development and 3) including sex and gender as variables in scientific research.


**Keynote speakers include:** 
* Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General of CERN; 
* Bina Agarwal, an internationally celebrated economist specializing in the political economy of gender, poverty and inequality; and 
* Angela Saini, award-winning author of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story, Superior: The Return of Race Science, and other books. 

OWSD members will present their own research in the three themes during poster sessions throughout the conference. In addition, members will also present their own scientific and personal responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. All members will also have the opportunity to take part in a workshop on increasing their visibility and impact as a scientist, with a session on using podcasts for storytelling by Joy Owango and Adelle Onyango of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa), followed by a session on filmmaking for impact by Nicole Leghissa, OWSD video consultant.

The conference will include a handover of the previous OWSD Executive Board to the new members, elected in June-July 2021. On the last day of the conference (19 November), the OWSD Italy Country Network will be launched. **This will be an in-person event in Trieste.** Italian government representatives and donors are invited to attend. The Trieste event will be coordinated with similar in person events being held in OWSD countries throughout the developing world and streamed online. At least 2,000 OWSD members, women scientists from developing countries around the world, are expected to participate online in the General Assembly and conference.

 

**ABOUT THE PROGRAMME**

In order to approach the complex and wide-ranging challenges of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, societies around the world must access and harness all the talent and experience available to them. The concerns and perceptions of the greatest number of all possible actors and recipients must be considered in order that the most relevant issues and effective solutions are found. Women are considerably underrepresented as researchers in STEM subjects around the globe; according to UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) data, in 2019 the global average percentage of women researchers was still below 30%. Yet women typically have first hand specialist knowledge of the day-to-day challenges diverse individuals face within communities, and can be key informers in the design and development of their solutions. Moreover, since women are most often the providers of informal community support, if they are not fully informed—and if solutions are developed without their consultation—it may be the case that products, services and solutions are not relevant or appropriate. Technological advances may mean improved machines on large farms, for example, potentially increasing food production, but since the key points of food insecurity in the world are on small-scale farms managed by women throughout the Global South, such capital investments will have little impact in the areas where food production is most critical—and where women’s knowledgeable implementation of appropriate innovative technologies could make the most difference.

 
 


**Keynote Speakers:**
* Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General of CERN; 
* Bina Agarwal, an internationally celebrated economist specializing in the political economy of gender, poverty and inequality; and 
* Angela Saini, award-winning author of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story, Superior: The Return of Race Science, and other books. 

**Eminent Guests:**
* Elena Bonetti, Italian Minister for Family and Equal Opportunities
* Maria Cristina Messa,	Italian Minister of Universities and Research
* Shamila Nair-Bedouelle,	Assistant Director General for Natural Sciences, UNESCO
* Maria Chiara Carrozza,	President, National Research Council of Italy
* Kerstin Jonsson Cisse,	Head of Unit for Globally Sustainable Economic Development, Sida - Sweden
* Naser Faruqui,	Director of Education and Science at IDRC - Canada
* Ylann Schemm,	Director, Elsevier Foundation
* Alberto Quadrio Curzio,	President Emeritus of the Italian Academy of Sciences and Humanities 
* Mohamed Hassan,	President, TWAS the World Academy of Sciences

**Chairs, panelists, interviewers and other speakers:**
Jennifer Thomson, Tonya Blowers, Rana Dajani, Shobhana Narasimhan, Joy Owango, Elizabeth Pollitzer, Kausila Timsina, Elizabeth Bandason, Susana Arrechea, Reinabelle Reyes, Dorine Odongo, Elizabeth Pollitzer, Adelle Onyango, Nicole Leghissa, Jana Rodriguez Hertz, Maryse Nkoua Ngavouka, Kate Shaw, Chao Mbogo, Prativa Pandey, Edna Patricia Matta-Camacho, Amira Shaheen, Wezi Nyambili, Ana Lucía Martinez Abarca, Mashura Shammi, Therese Umuhoza, Dionica Gamboa, Marian Nkansah, Babalola Olubukola Oluranti, Esi Awuah, Fortunate Farirai, Atya Kapley, Hasin Anupama Azhari, Huda Basaleem, Nashwa Eassa, Shymaa Enany, Kleinsy Bonilla, Patricia Castillo-Briceno, Fang Xin

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OWSD 6th GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

The conference theme is 'Women, science and development', exploring three areas of relevance: the importance of basic sciences for development; the impact of applied sciences on development, and including sex and gender as variables in scientific research.

technical paper

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MH 21 is arranged around 6 themes that focus attention on pressing needs that should be addressed to enhance the well-being of communities and provide a forum for presenting breakthrough discoveries.

Reducing landfill waste by 30% and increasing solar energy deployment to 2 GWp (giga-watt peak) are two of the key targets in the Singapore Green Plan 2030. While seemingly mutually-exclusive, increasing solar energy deployment, if not planned and handled properly, will eventually lead to increasing landfill waste. In fact, due to the relatively long useful lifetime (>10 years) of solar cells, it was not until recently that wastes from solar cells starts to be of concerns. It was estimated that by 2030, waste from solar panels alone will reach millions of tons. On the contrary, the current recycling technologies for solar waste is still rudimentary - only precious metals such as silver and copper are economical to be recycled. This presents both environmental and economical problems because the bulk of solar cells which are made of silicon are not recycled. In this work, we recycled Silicon from solar cells into thermoelectrics. Leveraging on our expertise in thermoelectrics, we fine tuned and optimized the carrier concentration using phosphorus, and engineered low thermal conductivity via germanium doping. ZT as high as 0.4 is achieved at 800 K, which is one of the highest in silicon. Our work opens a pathway for recycling semiconductor waste into high performance functional materials for power generation and cooling applications.

Upcycling of Photovoltaics Silicon into Thermoelectrics by Turning Minority into Majority Carrier

Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) approaches for material design combined with 3D printing are capable of harnessing the bio-inspired design paradigm, creating de novo structures with extraordinary properties from basic building blocks. To valorize biomass such as food waste, biomass waste from industrial processes, or algae, we use bottom-up processes to convert biomass first into 3D printable materials, reducing need for plastic waste generation, then into advanced, functional materials including architected hierarchical composites, all using a conversion of materials into wave- and sound-based models.

Additive manufacturing of biomass-derived renewable composites with AI accelerated bottom-up design

All-solid-state sodium batteries employing fast ion-conducting sulfides, show great promise for safe, low-cost energy storage systems for large-scale applications. Among the candidate systems, Na3SbS4 (NAS) is particularly promising by being both highly ionic conductive and compatible with humid air while other common sulfide electrolytes suffer a lot from decomposing in ambient environment. The combination of fast Na+ ion migration and low-cost processability significantly benefits the large-scale application and industrialization.
Considering that partial substitution of sulfur by halide ions can induce more mobile sodium vacancies in NAS and potentially improve the interfacial stability towards sodium metal anode, here we explored a low-cost structural modification to NAS by aqueous synthesis to enhance both the rate capability and the cycle life of solid-state batteries based on this optimized solid electrolyte. To this end halide doped NAS electrolytes are synthesized from aqueous solution. Here we focus on the effect of Bromide doping of NAS on its ionic conductivity and kinetic electrochemical stability. It is observed that Br-doped NAS exhibits greatly reduced activation energy. Total ionic conductivity is more than doubled from 0.13 mS/cm to 0.31 mS/cm through this low-cost halide doping approach allowing for higher critical current densities. Stable cycling profiles of the doped NAS vs both sodium-metal anodes and sodium-tin ally anodes evidenced a major enhancement of the electrochemical stability and thus a path towards longer cycle life all-solid state sodium metal batteries.


Low cost aqueous synthesis and doping of a high performance sodium solid electrolyte

Rechargeable lithium−oxygen batteries (LOBs) have attracted increasing attention due to their high energy density but highly rely on the development of efficient oxygen catalysts for reversible Li2O2 deposition/decomposition. Herein, highly porous carbon nanocubes with a specific surface area up to 1600 m2 g−1 are synthesized and utilized to tightly anchor Ru nanoparticles for using as the oxygen-cathode catalyst in LOBs, achieving a low charge/discharge potential gap of only 0.75 V, a high total discharge capacity of 17,632 mA h g−1, and a superb cycling performance of 550 cycles at 1000 mA g−1. Comprehensive ex situ and operando characterizations unravel that the outstanding LOB performance is ascribed to the highly porous catalyst structure embedding rich active sites that synergistically function in reducing overpotentials, suppressing parasitic reactions, accommodating reaction products, and promoting mass and charge transportation.

Ru-embedded Highly Porous Carbon Nanocubes Derived from Metal Organic Frameworks for Catalyzing Reversible Li2O2 Formation

Co-doped molybdenum disulfide nanosheet (denoted Co-MoS2) was designed as a cathode catalyst in a lithium-sulfur battery, and was prepared by a hydrothermal method. It was demonstrated that cobalt doping induces the transformation of MoS2 from the 2H phase to the metallic 1T phase. The consequents increase the proportion of 1T phase MoS2 (1T-MoS2) with high catalytic activity while improving the stability of the catalytic site. The introduction of Co atoms also provides abundant electrons to the basal plane of the MoS2 matrix, thus improving the conductivity of semiconductor MoS2. Consequently, a sulfur cathode with Co-MoS2 contributes to a high rate performance (943 mAh g−1 at a high rate of 2 C relative to 1220 mAh g−1 at 0.3 C) as well as long cyclic stability (an ultralow capacity fading rate of 0.029% per cycle over 1000 cycles at the high current rate of 0.2 C).

Co-doped Molybdenum Disulfide Facilitating Polysulfides Transformation in Advanced Lithium-sulfur Batteries

Hybrid capacitive deionization (HCDI) is emerging as an energy-efficient alternative for brackish water desalination with low expenditure cost and favourable ion removal effectiveness by adopting battery-type electrodes in the traditional capacitive deionization (CDI) system. Herein, an unscalable electrospinning method is introduced to contrive cathode material for HCDI system. Co3O4 and nitrogen-doped carbon nanotube decoration are formed successfully and uniformly distributed with the hollow structure of free-standing carbon nanofibers (Co3O4@CNF@CNT). The conductive “bridges” provided by the CNF matrix significantly shorten the diffusion length of Na+ and promote the electrical conductivity of the Co3O4 nanoparticles. Moreover, benefiting from the incorporation of nitrogen-doped CNTs as the “medium”, the contact between electrolyte and electrode material is improved and the electrical conductivity is further enhanced. The as-prepared Co3O4@CNF@CNT cathode shows excellent pseudocapacitive performance of 395 F g-1 at a scan rate of 1 mV s-1 and superior rate performance of 279 F g-1 at 100 mV s-1. The HCDI system delivers an outstanding salt adsorption capacity (SAC) of 58.6 mg g-1 and a highest salt adsorption rate (SAR) of 12.27 mg g-1 min-1 with a potential difference of 1.4 V, indicating the great potential of applying Co3O4@CNF@CNT in the practical HCDI system.

Hierarchical tubular Co3O4/CNT structures for Efficient Hybrid Capacitive Deionization

Li-O2 battery is one of the most desired energy storages form due to its extraordinary high energy density and the readily available oxygen source from atmosphere. However, significant challenges still line up ahead from both the anode and cathode sides before the technology can be finally deployed to benefit human life. Herein, a two-birds-one-stone tactic is implemented to fabricate high-performance and flexible Li-O2 batteries utilizing only one structural backbone composed of graphene oxide (GO) aerogel embedding hollow NiCo2O4 (NCO) microspheres for both the anode and cathode. While the composite Li anode fabricated through lithium infusion exhibits an ultrahigh capacity of 3398.4 mAh g-1 and significantly inhibited dendrite growth and volume expansion, the freestanding oxygen cathode demonstrates great capability in promoting energy efficiency by catalyzing reversible Li2O2 formation. When coupled together, the resultant Li-O2 batteries manifest a superb long-term cycling stability with highly reversible discharge/charge for more than 400 cycles, apart from the remarkable mechanical deformability demonstrated by flexible pouch cells surpassing 400 hours of steady operation. By employing a full spectrum of ex-situ and operando spectroscopic and microscopic tools, mechanistics into the remarkable Li-O2 performance is unraveled.

High‐Performance Li–O2 Batteries Based on All‐Graphene Backbone

Silver bismuth iodide has been explored extensively for its potential as absorbers in perovskite inspired solar cells, due to its less toxic environment friendly nature. However, the conventional spin coating methods employed for synthesis of thin films make them dubious when it comes to commercial applications. These methods can be tedious and can facilitate fabrication of one to a few devices in a single run, making it unfitting for commercial applications, though they may be useful for lab scale device fabrication intended for research purposes. Here we propose a modified evaporation method which can be employed for large scale fabrication of silver bismuth iodide thin films. The method involves sequential evaporation of metallic layers of silver and bismuth followed by exposure to sublimated iodine vapours to obtain highly uniform pin hole free silver bismuth iodide thin films. Following this method, with multiple optimization steps, we were able to synthesise Ag3BiI7 thin films with a band gap of around 1.86eV. The photo voltaic devices fabricated, using the hence developed films as absorbers yielded an efficiency of 0.68% for devices with active area of around 36mm2. Thus, we believe that this work would help develop commercially feasible absorbers for perovskite inspired solar cells and provide a new dimension for the associated research for large area devices.

Silver Bismuth Iodide for Photovoltaic Applications Using Modified Evaporation Method

Surface passivation has been proven as an effective strategy to improve power conversion efficiency and stability of perovskite solar cells. However, the rationale of choosing appropriate passivator is still not clear yet, especially the binding interaction of different molecules with perovskite beneath. Here, we elucidated the binding interaction of two judiciously chosen molecules, fluorinated phosphonic acid and its corresponding phosphonate salt, and monitor the extent of interaction between these molecules and perovskite interface. Higher photoluminescence in perovskite film treated with phosphonate salt was observed which possesses stronger binding interaction with perovskite. The effect on photovoltaic performance and its stability were also examined. The corresponded device shows enhancement in conversion efficiency from 18.27% to 19.44%. Furthermore, water contact angle of treated perovskite film exceeding 110.9° was demonstrated which allows super hydrophobic nature, enabling excellent long term stability of devices by retaining over 90% of their initial efficiency after 90 days.

Toward Efficient and Stable Perovskite Photovoltaics with Fluorinated Phosphonate Salt Surface Passivation

Understanding the fundamental properties of buried interfaces in perovskite photovoltaics is of paramount importance to the enhancement of device efficiency and stability. Nevertheless, accessing buried interfaces poses a sizeable challenge because of their non-exposed feature. In this presentation, the buried mysteries in full device stacks will be unveiled by a series of dedicated techniques including the lift-off strategy, the in-situ mapping spectroscopy, and the cross-sectional high-resolution microscopy. By establishing the microstructure–property relations, the basic losses at the contact interfaces are systematically presented, which are induced by both the sub-microscale extended imperfections and lead-halide inhomogeneities. Furthermore, a brand new mechanism for the most popular ammonium-halide post-treatment is explored and called molecule-assisted microstructural reconstruction. The losses can be considerably mitigated by the use of the passivation-molecule-assisted microstructural reconstruction, which unlocks the full potential for improving device performance.

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Growing mycelium-bound composite using agricultural waste

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Upcycling of Photovoltaics Silicon into Thermoelectrics by Turning Minority into Majority Carrier

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