Recycling of Aluminosilicate-Based Solid Wastes through Alkali-Activation: Preparation, Characterization, and Challenges

Recycling aluminosilicate-based solid wastes is imperative to realize the sustainable development of constructions. By using alkali activation technology, aluminosilicate-based solid wastes, such as furnace slag, fly ash, red mud, and most of the bio-ashes, can be turned into alternative binder materials to Portland cement to reduce the carbon...

Adopting BIM to Facilitate Dispute Management in the Construction Industry: A Conceptual Framework Development

Previous studies revealed that Building Information Modeling (BIM) has the potential to reduce project uncertainties, design errors, change orders, and delays, which might facilitate achieving effective dispute management in the construction industry. However, research into the adoption of BIM to holistically enhance effective dispute...

Water Adsorption in MOFs: Structures and Applications

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are superior sorbents for water adsorption-based applications. The unique step-like water isotherm at a MOF-specific relative pressure allows easy loading and regeneration over a small range of temperature and pressure conditions. With good hydrothermal stability and cyclic durability, it stands out over...

Incentive initiatives on energy-efficient renovation of existing buildings towards carbon–neutral blueprints in China: Advancements, challenges and prospects

Under China's national strategy of carbon neutrality by 2060, it is urgently necessary and challenging for the governments to proactively explore policy tools to facilitate energy-efficient renovation of existing buildings. Currently, a considerable number of studies have been conducted on building energy-efficient renovation and its...

Policies, applications, barriers and future trends of building information modeling technology for building sustainability and informatization in China

The application of building information modeling (BIM) technology has effectively supported the high-quality development of building sustainability and informatization in China. However, few studies comprehensively analyzed the enacted policies, prevalent applications, and existing barriers of the latest application and development of BIM...

A systematic literature review on smart and personalized ventilation using CO₂ concentration monitoring and control

Smart and personalized ventilation systems have been demonstrated with high performance in creating a healthy and energy-efficient indoor environment, but they have been rarely comprehensively summarized and explored in previous studies. With the progressive development of various terminal devices and control technologies, personalized...

Artificial intelligence powered large-scale renewable integrations in multi-energy systems for carbon neutrality transition: Challenges and future perspectives

The vigorous expansion of renewable energy as a substitute for fossil energy is the predominant route of action to achieve worldwide carbon neutrality. However, clean energy supplies in multi-energy building districts are still at the preliminary stages for energy paradigm transitions. In particular, technologies and methodologies for large...

Controllable Shrinking Fabrication of Solid-State Nanopores

Nanopores have attracted widespread attention in DNA sequencing and protein or biomarker detection, owning to the single-molecule-scale detection accuracy. Despite the most use of naturally biological nanopores before, solid-state nanopores are widely developed with strong robustness, controllable sizes and geometries, a wide range of...

Smart protective coatings with self‐sensing and active corrosion protection dual functionality from pH-sensitive calcium carbonate microcontainers

Herein, we report the development of a self-sensing and active corrosion protection coating which incorporates pH-sensitive multilayer chitosan/alginate-covered CaCO₃ microcontainers containing 1,10-phenanthrolin-5-amine (APhen). The microcontainers can respond to pH variation to release APhen which serves not only as a corrosion...

New innovations in pavement materials and engineering: A review on pavement engineering research 2021

Sustainable and resilient pavement infrastructure is critical for current economic and environmental challenges. In the past 10 years, the pavement infrastructure strongly supports the rapid development of the global social economy. New theories, new methods, new technologies and new materials related to pavement engineering are emerging....

Review of the recent progress on GaN-based vertical power Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs)

Gallium nitride (GaN)-based vertical power Schottky barrier diode (SBD) has demonstrated outstanding features in high-frequency and high-power applications. This paper reviews recent progress on GaN-based vertical power SBDs, including the following sections. First, the benchmark for GaN vertical SBDs with different substrates (Si, sapphire, and...

Next steps of quantum transport in Majorana nanowire devices

Majorana zero modes are localized quasiparticles that obey non-Abelian exchange statistics. Braiding Majorana zero modes forms the basis of topologically protected quantum operations which could, in principle, significantly reduce qubit decoherence and gate control errors at the device level. Therefore, searching for Majorana zero modes in...