Powering up energy investments in fragile states

On 24 February, 2021, IGC’s Council on State Fragility and the g7+ Group of 20 fragile and conflict-affected countries launched the Call to Action: Powering up energy investments in fragile states. On this occasion, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (former President of Liberia), Namita Vikas (Founder and managing Partnrs, auctusESG) , David Cameron (Former Prime Minister, United Kingdom), Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed (Prime Minister of Yemen), and Francis Mustapha Kai-Kai (Minister of Planning and Economic Development, Sierra Leone) to discuss how energy access in fragile states is vital to COVID-19 recovery and how governments, development practitioners, and the private sector can work together to achieve universal energy access in fragile states

COVID-19 and informality in sub-Saharan Africa: containing an economic crisis

Containment measures prevent informal workers from sustaining an income. Policies that support the informal sector are required to prevent an economic crisis

The case for scaling up renewable energy investments in fragile and conflict-affected situations

The impressive drop in the cost of clean technologies and the local practical potential of solar PV are making renewable energy an increasingly viable option from an economic perspective in fragile settings. Clean energy investment also has direct implications for tackling climate change, improving the socioeconomic inclusion of marginalised groups, and state-building – through greater legitimacy, resilience, and commitment to peace. These elements highlight the great potential that investments in renewable, reliable, and affordable energy hold to help countries escape state fragility

Memristive-Biosensors: A New Detection Method by Using Nanofabricated Memristors

This paper proposes a new detection methodology based on memristive-effect registered on silicon nanowire. The nano-wires are fabricated by a lithographic technique that allows precise and selective etching at the nanoscale. The wires are obtained in three main steps. Initially, a photoresist line defines the wire position. In a second step, silicon deep reactive ion etching is performed to obtain a scalloped trench. In the final step, the trench is reduced to a suspended nanowire after wet oxidation. The obtained wires present Schottky barrier contacts and are used for bio-molecular detection on dried samples. The memristive silicon nanowire devices are functionalized with rabbit antibodies in order to sense antigens. The sensitivity and detection limit of this new kind of nano-bio-sensors are estimated equal to 37 ± 1 mV/fM and 3.4 ± 1.8 fM, respectively

Memristive Biosensors Under Varying Humidity Conditions

We attempt to examine the potential of silicon nanowire memristors in the field of nanobiosensing. The mem- ristive devices are crystalline Silicon (Si) Nanowires (NWs) with Nickel Silicide (NiSi) terminals. The nanowires are fabricated on a Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) wafer by an Ebeam Lithography Technique (EBL) process that allows high resolution at the nanoscale. A Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) technique is used to define free-standing nanowires. The close alignment between Silicon (Si) and Nickel-Silicide (NiSi) terminals forms a Schottky- barrier at their junction. The memristive effect of the fabricated devices matches well with the memristor theory. An equivalent circuit reproducing the memristive effect in current-voltage (I- V) characteristics of our silicon nanowires is presented too. The memristive silicon nanowire devices are then functionalized with anti-human VEGF (Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor) antibody and I-V characteristics are examined for the nanowires prior to and after protein functionalization. The uptake of bio- molecules linked to the surface of the memristive NWs is con- firmed by the increased voltage gap in the hysteresis curve. The effects of varying humidity conditions on the conductivity of bio- modified memristive silicon nanowires are deeply investigate