Carbon neutrality requires massive, rapid scaling up of clean energy technologies, with economic factors playing a central role in market uptake. We investigate how economic drivers and investment behaviors affect technology growth using a novel, multi-model analytical framework. By combining macro-level cost-driven technology diffusion with micro-level business profitability modeling, this framework captures realistic, investment-centric decision-making. Cost-competitiveness-dependent, varying technology adoption rates realistically reflect market growth and saturation, indicating a declining adoption rate as market share increases. Growth is initially influenced by technical and technoeconomic factors, but shifts toward complex systemic, social, and socioeconomic factors around the inflection point (halfway to saturation). This transition triggers, for instance, when solar PV share reaches around 20% of global electricity. At higher market shares, cost-competitiveness encompasses both basic technology costs and system-level limitations, better captured by the value-adjusted levelized cost of electricity than pure cost. Furthermore, micro-level profitability analysis underlines that sustained scaling up requires adequate business margins and profits. Growth can be accelerated through higher sales margins, reinvesting more profits into investments, reducing the time cash is tied up in sales, etc. Public support speeds up market entry but risks creating unhealthy competition and oversupply if sustained too long. Future technologies benefit from policies supporting a shorter development phase followed by rapid adoption. Finally, insights for future scaling up emphasize low costs, profitability, granularity, modularity, system flexibility, learning and scale effects, and technology-push versus market-pull trade-off. This multitude of factors stresses an integrated, multidisciplinary systems view to accelerate scaling up of clean energy.
This study systematically investigates copper gettering in silicon by heavily doped n+ and p+ diffused layers fabricated on high-resistivity float-zone silicon wafers of both polarities, following intentional copper contamination of the wafer bulk. Experimental carrier lifetime analysis and photoluminescence imaging before and after dopant diffusion, corroborated by numerical gettering simulations based on the reported copper solubilities and diffusivities, demonstrate the gettering effect of n+ and p+ diffused layers for copper. The gettering effectiveness increases with increasing doping, as expected. Lightly doped regions exhibit limited gettering effects, for instance, an n+ region with a sheet resistance of 150 Ω/□ can only getter 10% of the bulk Cu. This implies that such lightly doped surface regions may be insufficient barriers against copper in-diffusion from metallized layers to the silicon wafer bulk. Furthermore, the impact of gettered Cu on the surface passivation quality of SiNx-coated n+ and Al2O3-coated p+ regions was evaluated. For heavily doped samples, Auger recombination remains the dominant effect that masks potential Cu-induced degradation. For lightly doped samples, surface recombination was mostly limited by the applied spin-on-dopant rather than the gettered Cu.
Ammonia and hydrogen are widely regarded as promising zero-carbon alternatives to conventional fossil fuels. However, ammonia combustion presents several critical challenges, including poor ignitability, low flame propagation rates, and significant NOx emissions. Plasma-assisted combustion (PAC) has emerged as a potential strategy to address these limitations, attracting growing research interest in recent years. This study presents a numerical investigation of nanosecond pulsed plasma discharges applied to ammonia and ammonia–hydrogen combustion in air. Simulations are performed using the open-source plasma solver ChemPlasKin, both as a standalone tool and in coupled frameworks with Cantera and OpenFOAM, across a range of operating conditions. A systematic analysis is conducted on the impacts of non‑thermal plasma on ignition delay time (IDT), laminar burning velocity (LBV), and NOx emissions. In addition, the study separates plasma‑driven thermal and kinetic effects and introduces two‑dimensional simulations for plasma‑assisted ammonia–hydrogen flames. The results reveal concurrent reductions in IDT, NOx emissions, and flame thickness, alongside increases in LBV and heat release rate. Plasma enhancement is highly sensitive to both the operating regime and H2 blend fraction. Across equivalence ratios, the strongest plasma impact occurs near stoichiometric (slightly lean to slightly rich), whereas increasing pressure substantially diminishes its effectiveness. Under atmospheric pressure and lean conditions, reductions of over 99 % in IDT and 36 % in NO emissions, along with a 39 % increase in LBV, are noticed. Both plasma-driven thermal and kinetic pathways are critical for shortening IDT; in contrast, gains in LBV are dominated by thermal effects. Two-dimensional simulations indicate that plasma provides a modest stabilizing effect on flame wrinkling, yet both conventional and plasma-assisted laminar premixed NH3-H2 flames remain intrinsically unstable.
Customer education in sales (CEd) is an emerging research area, yet the literature remains fragmented across multiple fields with inconsistent terminology and conceptualizations. This fragmentation has hindered the development of cumulative knowledge and left fundamental questions about CEd’s effectiveness, mechanisms, and theoretical foundations unanswered. We conduct a systematic literature review of 42 journal articles, examining CEd research across four dimensions: (1) industry contexts and business settings, (2) delivery modes and their outcomes, (3) mechanisms and boundary conditions, and (4) the application of pedagogical theories. Our analysis reveals that across seven distinct delivery modes, CEd generally produces positive, sales-supporting outcomes, such as customer loyalty. Frontline interactions are the most studied mode, while formal programs show the strongest return on investment. However, significant gaps remain: B2C research predominates, direct financial outcomes are understudied, and few studies engage with pedagogical theory. We offer several avenues for future research.
Trust is frequently invoked to explain cooperation or conflict in interstate relations over shared water resources. Drawing on qualitative research in the Sava River Basin in Southeastern Europe and the Syrdarya River Basin in Central Asia, this article suggests three key dimensions through which trust can be better understood – its sources, levels, and intensities. We combine these three dimensions, or angles, into a Trust Angles Framework that builds on existing conceptualisations and provides an empirically grounded analytical lens for examining trust as a multidimensional and dynamic process. Our findings indicate how different sources of trust (risk-minimising, value-shaping, and psychosocial), governance levels (interpersonal, interorganisational, interstate), and varying intensities (from mistrust to high trust) interact unevenly over time. The Sava case illustrates how cooperation can emerge through strong interorganisational and interpersonal trust despite persistent interstate mistrust, while the Syrdarya case reveals how high-level rapprochement may not translate into stronger interorganisational or interpersonal trust when institutional reliability remains weak. By foregrounding trust as a relational, historically embedded, and spatially differentiated practice, the article contributes to scholarship on transboundary water governance and debates in international relations.
