Evidence of Quasi-Na Metallic Clusters in Sodium Ion Batteries through In Situ X-Ray Diffraction.

Carbonaceous materials have been considered the most promising anode in sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) due to their low cost, good electrical conductivity, and structural stability. The main challenge of carbonaceous anodes prior to their commercialization is low initial coulomb efficiencies, derived from a lack of an efficient technique to reveal a fundamental comprehension of sodium storage mechanisms. Here, the direct observation of quasi-Na metallic clusters in carbonaceous anodes during cycling through in situ XRD is reported.

Engineering Ultrathin Carbon Layer on Porous Hard Carbon Boosts Sodium Storage with High Initial Coulombic Efficiency.

Hard carbon (HC) has been widely adopted as the anode material for sodium ion batteries (NIBs). However, it is troubled by a low initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE) due to its porous structure. Herein, a graphitized and ultrathin carbon layer coating on HC is proposed to solve this challenge.

Chiral Luminescent Aza[7]helicenes Functionalized with a Triarylborane Acceptor and Near-Infrared-Emissive Doublet-State Radicals.

This paper presents new chiral luminescent molecules ( and ) using configurationally stable aza[7]helicene () as a universal heteroatom-doped chiral scaffold. The respective reactions of electron-donating with a triarylborane acceptor via palladium-catalyzed Buchwald-Hartwig C-N coupling and with the open-shell doublet-state TTM radical via nucleophilic aromatic substitution (S2Ar) resulted not only in tunable emissions from blue to the NIR domain but also in significantly enhanced emission quantum efficiency up to Φ = 50%.

High-Energy Ball Milling Promoted Sulfur Immobilization for Constructing High-Performance Na-Storage Carbon Anodes.

Sulfur (S) doping is an effective method for constructing high-performance carbon anodes for sodium-ion batteries. However, traditional designs of S-doped carbon often exhibit low initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE), poor rate capability, and impoverished cycle performance, limiting their practical applications. This study proposes an innovative design strategy to fabricate S-doped carbon using sulfonated sugar molecules as precursors via high-energy ball milling.

Edge Graphitized Oxygen-Rich Carbon Based on Stainless Steel-Assisted High-energy Ball Milling for High-Capacity and Ultrafast Sodium Storage.

Oxygen doping is an effective strategy for constructing high-performance carbon anodes in Na ion batteries; however, current oxygen-doped carbons always exhibit low doping levels and high-defect surfaces, resulting in limited capacity improvement and low initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE). Herein, a stainless steel-assisted high-energy ball milling is exploited to achieve high-level oxygen doping (19.33%) in the carbon framework.

Surface-driven fast sodium storage enabled by Se-doped honeycomb-like macroporous carbon.

Selenium (Se) is an ideal doping agent to modulate the structure of carbon materials to improve their sodium storage performance but has been rarely investigated. In the present study, a novel Se-doped honeycomb-like macroporous carbon (Se-HMC) is prepared by a surface crosslinking method using diphenyl diselenide as the carbon source and SiO nanospheres as the template. Se-HMC has a high Se weight percentage above 10%, with a large surface area of 557 m g.

Enhanced Electromechanical Response in PVDF-BNBT Composite Nanofibers for Flexible Sensor Applications.

Wearable energy harvesters and sensors have recently attracted significant attention with the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT). Compared to high-output bulk materials, these wearable devices are mainly fabricated by thin-film-based materials that limit their application. Therefore, the enhancement of output voltage and power for these devices has recently become an urgent topic.

Ferroelectric-Modulated MoS Field-Effect Transistors as Multilevel Nonvolatile Memory.

Ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs) with semiconductors as the channel material and ferroelectrics as the gate insulator are attractive and/or promising devices for application in nonvolatile memory. In FeFETs, the conductivity states of the semiconductor are utilized to explore the polarization directions of the ferroelectric material. Herein, we report FeFETs based on a few layers of MoS on a 0.

Extended photo-response of ZnO/CdS core/shell nanorods fabricated by hydrothermal reaction and pulsed laser deposition.

Heterogenous nanostructures shaped with CdS covered ZnO (ZnO/CdS) core/shell nanorods (NRs) are fabricated on indium-tin-oxide by pulsed laser deposition of CdS on hydrothermally grown ZnO NRs and characterized through morphology examination, structure characterization, photoluminescence and optical absorption measurements. Both the ZnO cores and the CdS shells are hexagonal wurtzite in structure. Compared with bare ZnO NRs, the fabricated ZnO/CdS core/shell NRs present an extended photo-response and have optical properties corresponding to the two excitonic band-gaps of ZnO and CdS as well as the effective band-gap formed between the conduction band minimum of ZnO and the valence band maximum of CdS.

Extended photoresponse and multi-band luminescence of ZnO/ZnSe core/shell nanorods.

Aligned ZnO/ZnSe core/shell nanorods (NRs) with type-II energy band alignment were fabricated by pulsed laser deposition of ZnSe on the surfaces of hydrothermally grown ZnO NRs. The obtained ZnO/ZnSe core/shell NRs are composed of wurtzite ZnO cores and zinc blende ZnSe shells. The bare ZnO NRs are capable of emitting strong ultraviolet (UV) near band edge (NBE) emission at 325-nm light excitation, while the ZnSe shells greatly suppress the emission from the ZnO cores.