Industrial symbiosis refers to a collaborative strategy of exchanging physical resources and sharing services among industrial actors, which enhances the resource efficiency and reduces the environmental impacts of industrial operations within the network. Although it can contribute to sustainable development in emerging economies, few studies have examined the dynamics of industrial symbiosis in such regions. We initiated a capacity-building pilot program for industrial symbiosis in Colombia and formulated 20 industrial symbiosis projects with 36 companies. Based on our experience over the first year, we conducted an exploratory case study of the mechanisms that facilitate the development of industrial symbiosis. Specifically, we analyzed the nature of this facilitation and how its activities influence the key determining factors of industrial symbiosis in technical, economic, organizational, social, and institutional categories. Our facilitation approach focused on identifying opportunities and building capacity for industrial symbiosis innovation by influencing mainly the organizational and social factors. The facilitation approach requires further adjustments and experimentation to expand industrial symbiosis and to ensure the eventual implementation of these projects. This study contributes to the understanding of management perspectives of industrial symbiosis development in the context of an emerging economy.

The Hawaiian Islands form a holarchic system with at least five nested layers (holons) at increasing spatial scales: from a single enterprise to cities, to individual islands, to the archipelago (the group of islands), and to the global resource base that connects them all. Each holonic layer operates individually but is also linked to holons at lower and higher levels by material input and output flows. An integrated study of the holarchic system allows us to explore the value of applying this concept to industrial ecology. We present examples from a multi-level material flow analysis combining a large quantity of material and energy flow data for Hawaii from the five holarchic levels. Our analysis demonstrates how a holarchic approach to the study of selected interacting systems can reveal features and linkages of their metabolism not otherwise apparent and can provide a novel basis for discovering material, energy, and societal connections.

Al₂O₃/SiN_x stack passivation layers are among the most popular layers used for commercial silicon solar cells. In particular, aluminum oxide has a high negative charge, while the SiN_x film is known to supply hydrogen as well as impart antireflective properties. Although there are many experimental results that show that the passivation characteristics are lowered by using the stack passivation layer, the cause of the passivation is not yet understood. In this study, we investigated the passivation characteristics of Al₂O₃/SiN_x stack layers. To identify the hydrogenation effect, we analyzed the hydrogen migration with atom probe tomography by comparing the pre-annealing and post-annealing treatments. For chemical passivation, capacitance-voltage measurements were used to confirm the negative fixed charge density due to heat treatment. Moreover, the field-effect passivation was understood by confirming changes in the Al₂O₃ structure using electron energy-loss spectroscopy.