Organic Cations Texture Zinc Metal Anodes for Deep Cycling Aqueous Zinc Batteries.

Manipulating the crystallographic orientation of zinc (Zn) metal to expose more (002) planes is promising to stabilize Zn anodes in aqueous electrolytes. However, there remain challenges involving the non-epitaxial electrodeposition of highly (002) textured Zn metal and the maintenance of (002) texture under deep cycling conditions. Herein, a novel organic imidazolium cations-assisted non-epitaxial electrodeposition strategy to texture electrodeposited Zn metals is developed.

High-Voltage and Stable Manganese Hexacyanoferrate/Zinc Batteries Using Gel Electrolytes.

Because of the high safety and environmental friendliness, aqueous zinc-ion batteries have gained a lot of attention in recent years. Prussian blue and its analogues are regarded as a promising cathode material of zinc-ion batteries. Manganese hexacyanoferrate is appropriate among them due to its high operating voltage, large capacity, and cheap price.

Bifunctional Alloy/Solid-Electrolyte Interphase Layer for Enhanced Potassium Metal Batteries Via Prepassivation.

Potassium (K) metal batteries have attracted great attention owing to their low price, widespread distribution, and comparable energy density. However, the arbitrary dendrite growth and side reactions of K metal are attributed to high environmental sensitivity, which is the Achilles' heel of its commercial development. Interface engineering between the current collector and K metal can tailor the surface properties for K-ion flux accommodation, dendrite growth inhibition, parasitic reaction suppression, etc.

Interface Engineering of Aqueous Zinc/Manganese Dioxide Batteries with High Areal Capacity and Energy Density.

Commercialization of aqueous batteries is mainly hampered by their low energy density, owing to the low mass loading of active cathode materials. In this work, a MnO cathode structure (MnO /CTF) is designed to modify the MnO /collector interface for enhanced ion transportation properties. Such a cathode can achieve ultrahigh mass loading of MnO , large areal capacity, and high energy density, with excellent cycling stability and rate performance.

Self-Healing of Prussian Blue Analogues with Electrochemically Driven Morphological Rejuvenation.

Maintaining the morphology of electrode materials with high invertibility contributes to the prolonged cyclic stability of battery systems. However, the majority of electrode materials tend to degrade during the charge-discharge process owing to the inevitable increase in entropy. Herein, a self-healing strategy is designed to promote morphology rejuvenation in Prussian blue analogue (PBA) cathodes by cobalt doping.

Calculation model and experimental study of the collapse strength of titanium alloy tubing and casing.

Titanium alloy has become a promising candidate material for oil country tubular goods (OCTGs) in harsh service environments owing to its high specific strength, low density, low elastic modulus, excellent toughness, excellent anti-fatigue and corrosion resistance. However, because the high-quality natural gas resources in China are mainly concentrated deep underground, titanium alloy tubing and casing will bear great external pressure loads underground, so the collapse strength of titanium alloy tubing and casing is very important for the safety of the string in the well. In this paper, a new collapse strength calculation model, the strength collapse criterion model (SCM), was proposed for titanium alloy tubing and casing.

CoNiO /Co N Heterostructure Nanowires Assisted Polysulfide Reaction Kinetics for Improved Lithium-Sulfur Batteries.

The "shuttle effect" of soluble polysulfides and slow reaction kinetics hinder the practical application of Li-S batteries. Transition metal oxides are promising mediators to alleviate these problems, but the poor electrical conductivity limits their further development. Herein, the homogeneous CoNiO /Co N nanowires have been fabricated and employed as additive of graphene based sulfur cathode.

Binding Thermodynamics and Interaction Patterns of Inhibitor-Major Urinary Protein-I Binding from Extensive Free-Energy Calculations: Benchmarking AMBER Force Fields.

Mouse major urinary protein (MUP) plays a key role in the pheromone communication system. The one-end-closed β-barrel of MUP-I forms a small, deep, and hydrophobic central cavity, which could accommodate structurally diverse ligands. Previous computational studies employed old protein force fields and short simulation times to determine the binding thermodynamics or investigated only a small number of structurally similar ligands, which resulted in sampled regions far from the experimental structure, nonconverged sampling outcomes, and limited understanding of the possible interaction patterns that the cavity could produce.

Exhaustive denitrification via chlorine oxide radical reactions for urea based on a novel photoelectrochemical cell.

Urea is a major source of nitrogen pollution in domestic sewage and its denitrification is difficult since it is very likely to be converted into ammonia or nitrate instead of expected N. Herein, we propose an exhaustive denitrification method for urea via the oxidation of amine/ammonia-N with chlorine oxide radical, which induced from a bi-functional RuO//WO anode, and the highly selective reduction of nitrate-N on cathode in photoelectrochemical cell (PEC). Under illumination, the WO photoanode side promotes the quantities hydroxyl and reactive chlorine radical, and these radicals are immediately combined to stronger chlorine oxide radical by RuO side, which obviously enhances the efficiency and speed of the urea oxidation.

Efficient purification and chemical energy recovery from urine by using a denitrifying fuel cell.

Urine is a major biomass resource, and its excessive discharge would lead to severe aquatic nitrogen pollution and even eutrophication. In this study, we designed an innovative denitrifying fuel cell (DFC) under illumination to purify urine and convert its chemical energy into electricity. The central ideas include the following: 1) on the anode, chlorine radicals (Cl) and hydroxyl (HO) radicals were induced to react with amine or ammonia in urine into N, and to mineralize organics into CO, respectively; 2) on the cathode, NO or NO generated in the cell was selectively reduced to N and tiny NH by Pd/Au/NF; 3) NH was further oxidized to N by Cl according to process 1), then the total nitrogen (TN) was ultimately removed by a continuous redox loop between anode and cathode; 4) the separation and migration of charges were strengthened by a self-bias poly-Si/WO photoanode.

Exhaustive Conversion of Inorganic Nitrogen to Nitrogen Gas Based on a Photoelectro-Chlorine Cycle Reaction and a Highly Selective Nitrogen Gas Generation Cathode.

A novel method for the exhaustive conversion of inorganic nitrogen to nitrogen gas is proposed in this paper. The key properties of the system design included an exhaustive photoelectrochemical cycle reaction in the presence of Cl, in which Cl· generated from oxidation of Cl by photoholes selectively converted NH to nitrogen gas and some NO or NO. The NO or NO was finally reduced to nitrogen gas on a highly selective Pd-Cu-modified Ni foam (Pd-Cu/NF) cathode to achieve exhaustive conversion of inorganic nitrogen to nitrogen gas.