Guiding Uniform Li Plating/Stripping through Lithium–Aluminum Alloying Medium for Long‐Life Li Metal Batteries

The uncontrolled growth of Li dendrites upon cycling might result in low coulombic efficiency and severe safety hazards. Herein, a lithiophilic binary lithium–aluminum alloy layer, which was generated through an in situ electrochemical process, was utilized to guide the uniform metallic Li nucleation and growth, free from the formation of dendrites. Moreover, the formed LiAl alloy layer can function as a Li reservoir to compensate the irreversible Li loss, enabling long‐term stability. The protected Li electrode shows superior cycling over 1700 h in a Li|Li symmetric cell.     

Impact of neutral and acidic species on cycloalkenes nucleation

Non-covalent hydrogen bond interactions between the π cloud of cycloalkenes and three atmospheric common nucleation precursors (H₂S, H₂O, and MeOH) have been investigated using DFT and CCSD(T). The structures and the energies of the 1:1 and 1:2 adducts were computed with the B3LYP-D3 method. The analysis of the investigated electronic properties and geometric parameters shows that cyclohexene is a stronger hydrogen bond acceptor than cyclopentene, then followed by 1,4-cyclohexadiene and 1,3-cyclohexadiene. Comparable red shifts of the OH-/SH-stretching vibrational frequencies were noticed for the studied clusters. Increasing the ring size enhances the hydrogen bond interaction, and increasing the π delocalization decreases the hydrogen bond interactions. This is further confirmed by Bader’s quantum theory of atoms in molecules. The nonadditivity effects were observed in the trimolecular complexes. All the complexes were analyzed by energy decomposition analysis to divide the interaction energy into individual components. Furthermore, the dipole moments and atmospheric implications were also investigated.

     

Carbon nanotube@ZIF–derived Fe-N-doped carbon electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction and evolution reactions

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - Iron-nitrogen co-doped hierarchical porous carbon (Fe-N-HPC) was synthesized through the carbonization of carbon nanotube@ZIF composite. It was found that...     

Spin-dependent electronic states of the ferromagnetic semimetal EuB6

The spin polarization of EuB6 has been measured by using Andreev reflection spectroscopy. Analyses of the conductance spectra of the EuB6/Pb junctions yield a spin polarization of about 56%. The results demonstrate that the ferromagnetic EuB6 is not half-metallic. Combined with the Hall effect and magnetoresistivity data, the results indicate a semimetallic band structure with a fully spin-polarized hole band and an unpolarized electron band. The values and the spread of the measured spin polarization are quantitatively consistent with the experimentally determined Fermi surface and carrier densities.     

Effect of a negative Poisson ratio in the tension of ceramics

The effect of a negative Poisson ratio is experimentally revealed in the tension deformation of a natural layered ceramic. This effect can increase the volume strain energy per unit volume by 1100% and, simultaneously, decrease the deformation strain energy per unit volume by about 44%, so that it effectively enhances the deformation capacity by about 1 order of magnitude in the tension of the material. The present study also shows that the physical mechanisms producing the effect are attributed to the climbing on one another of the nanostructures in the natural material, which provides a guide to the design of synthetic toughening composites.     

Direct observation of whispering gallery mode polaritons and their dispersion in a ZnO tapered microcavity

We report direct observation of the strong exciton-photon coupling in a ZnO tapered whispering gallery (WG) microcavity at room temperature. By scanning excitations along the tapered arm of the ZnO tetrapod using a micro-photoluminescence spectrometer with different polarizations, we observed a transition from the pure WG optical modes in the weak interaction regime to the excitonic polariton in the strong coupling regime. The experimental observations are well described by using the plane wave model including the excitonic polariton dispersion relation. This provides a direct mapping of the polariton dispersion, and thus a comprehensive picture for coupling of different excitons with differently polarized WG modes.     

Design of 45-degree Linearly Polarized Substrate Integrated Waveguide-fed Slot Array Antennas

This paper presents a method of designing substrate integrated waveguide-fed (SIW-fed) slot array antennas. The design theory is based on the circuit model of slot and via as well as the reflection canceling. To prove the feasibility of this method, a 10-element K-band SIW-fed 45-degree linearly polarized slot array antenna with uniform power distribution is designed. By full-wave simulation, the antenna has a good impedance bandwidth of 7.5% and uniform power distribution. Besides, a maximum gain of 15.3dBi is obtained in the broadside and the cross polarization is suppressed below -23.5dB in the boresight. This type of SIW-fed slot array antennas can be a good candidate for microwave and millimeter-wave applications, especially for auto-motive collision-avoidance radar systems.     

Effects of disease characteristics and population distribution on dynamics of epidemic spreading among residential sites

We investigate the spreading processes of epidemic diseases among many residential sites for different disease characteristics and different population distributions by constructing and solving a set of integrodifferential equations for the evolutions of position-dependent infected and infective rates, taking into account the infection processes both within a single site and among different sites. In a spreading process the states of an individual include susceptible (S), incubative (I), active (A) and recovered (R) states. Although the transition from S to I mainly depends on the active rate, the susceptible rate and the connectivity among individuals, the transitions from I to A and from A to R are determined by intrinsic characteristics of disease development in individuals. We adopt incubation and infection periods to describe the intrinsic features of the disease. By numerically solving the equations we find that the asymptotic behavior of the spreading crucially depends on the infection period and the population under affection of an active individual. Other factors, such as the structure of network and the popular distribution, play less important roles. The study may provide useful information for analyzing the key parameters affecting the dynamics and the asymptotic behavior.     

Fast solvent-driven micropump fabricated by two-photon microfabrication

A solvent-driven micropump was developed using three-dimensional two-photon microfabrication. The actuation of micropump is utilizing the bending behavior of hydrogel film under asymmetric solvent-stimulus. The micropump could absorb and discharge fluid reversibly by simply alternating solvent composition. Contributing to the thin hydrogel film with the thickness of 2.5 μm, the response time was significantly improved to 0.17 s. The discharge capacity of fluid was estimated to be as low as 9.2×10⁻² pL. The pumping of such ultra-low-volume fluid will be useful for further miniaturization of micro-nanofluidic devices.