Sepiolite as a novel polysulfide trapper for energy applications: an electrochemical, X-ray spectroscopic and DFT study.

Capacity retention is a critical property to enhance in electrochemical storage systems applied to renewable energy. In lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries, the capacity fade resulting from the shuttle effect of polysulfides is a major obstacle to their practical application. Sepiolite, an eco-friendly earth-abundant clay with suitable surface chemistry for anchoring and retaining various molecules and structures, was studied as a cathode additive to mitigate the shuttle effect using experimental and theoretical approaches.

Unveiling the stability of Sn/Si/graphite composites for Li-ion storage by physical, electrochemical and computational tools.

Complex materials composed of two and three elements with high Li-ion storage capacity are investigated and tested as lithium-ion battery (LiB) negative electrodes. Namely, anodes containing tin, silicon, and graphite show very good performance because of the large gravimetric and volumetric capacity of silicon and structural support provided by tin and graphite. The performance of the composites during the first cycles was studied using ex situ magic angle spinning (MAS) Li Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), density functional theory (DFT) calculations, and electrochemical techniques.

Mesoscale Effects in the Extraction of the Solid-State Lithium Diffusion Coefficient Values of Battery Active Materials: Physical Insights from 3D Modeling.

During the screening of active materials (AMs) for lithium-ion batteries, the solid-state lithium diffusion coefficient () is one of the most relevant descriptors used to evaluate the relevance of an AM candidate. However, for a given compound, the values reported in literature span over several orders of magnitude. Therefore, through the case study of LiNiMnCoO cathode AM, new physical insights are provided to explain the dispersion of values obtained through galvanostatic intermittent titration technique (GITT) .

Label-Free Graphene Oxide-Based Surface Plasmon Resonance Immunosensor for the Quantification of Galectin-3, a Novel Cardiac Biomarker.

We report the first optical biosensor for the novel and important cardiac biomarker, galectin-3 (Gal3), using the anti-Gal3 antibody as a biorecognition element and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) for transducing the bioaffinity event. The immunosensing platform was built at a thiolated Au surface modified by self-assembling four bilayers of poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride) and graphene oxide (GO), followed by the covalent attachment of 3-aminephenylboronic acid (3ABA). The importance of GO, both as the anchoring point of the antibody and as a field enhancer for improving the biosensor sensitivity, was critically discussed.

Bioelectrochemical sensing of promethazine with bamboo-type multiwalled carbon nanotubes dispersed in calf-thymus double stranded DNA.

We report the quantification of promethazine (PMZ) using glassy carbon electrodes (GCE) modified with bamboo-like multi-walled carbon nanotubes (bCNT) dispersed in double stranded calf-thymus DNA (dsDNA) (GCE/bCNT-dsDNA). Cyclic voltammetry measurements demonstrated that PMZ presents a thin film-confined redox behavior at GCE/bCNT-dsDNA, opposite to the irreversibly-adsorbed behavior obtained at GCE modified with bCNT dispersed in ethanol (GCE/bCNT). Differential pulse voltammetry-adsorptive stripping with medium exchange experiments performed with GCE/bCNT-dsDNA and GCE modified with bCNTs dispersed in single-stranded calf-thymus DNA (ssDNA) confirmed that the interaction between PMZ and bCNT-dsDNA is mainly hydrophobic.