Thermoelectric Properties of a Light Compound FeS: the Role of Electron Correlation Strengthened Spin-Orbital Coupling.

Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) induced nontrivial bandgap and complex Fermi surface has been considered to be profitable for thermoelectrics, which, however, is generally appreciable only in heavy elements, thereby detrimental to practical application. In this study, the SOC-driven extraordinary thermoelectric performance in a light 2D material Fe₂S₂ is demonstrated via first-principles calculations. The abnormally strong SOC, induced by electron correlation through 3d orbitals polarization, significantly renormalizes the band structures, which opens the bandgap via Fe 3d orbitals inversion, exposes the second conduction valley with weak electron-phonon coupling, and aligns the energy of Fe 3d and S 3p orbitals with divergent momentum in valence band.

Buying Game Derivative Products Is Different from In-Game Purchases: A Mixed-Method Approach.

The consumption of games has received increasing attention due to their high profits and addiction issues. However, previous studies have focused mainly on players' in-game purchases, neglecting the purchase of game derivative products. This article provides the first exploration of the differences and similarities between in-game purchases and derivative product purchases with a mixed-method approach.

LiNbO and LiTaO Coating Effects on the Interface of the LiCoO Cathode: A DFT Study of Li-Ion Transport.

In solid-state batteries, the interface between cathodes and solid electrolytes is crucial and coating layers play a vital role. LiNbO has been known as a promising coating material, whereas recent studies showed its degradation via releasing oxygen and lithium during cycling. This computational study addresses the elucidation of essential characteristics of the coating materials by examining LiNbO and its counterpart LiTaO interfaces to a representative layered cathode, LiCoO.

First-Principles Study on the Interplay of Strain and State-of-Charge with Li-Ion Diffusion in the Battery Cathode Material LiCoO.

Cathode degradation of Li-ion batteries (Li) continues to be a crucial issue for higher energy density. A main cause of this degradation is strain due to stress induced by structural changes according to the state-of-charge (SOC). Moreover, in solid-state batteries, a mismatch between incompatible cathode/electrolyte interfaces also generates a strain effect.

Distribution, risk assessment of heavy metals in sediments, and their potential risk on water supply safety of a drinking water reservoir, middle China.

Heavy metals in reservoir sediments were analyzed to assess the pollution level and to understand the potential risk on water supply safety. Heavy metals in sediments will enter the biological chain through bio-enrichment and bio-amplification in water and eventually pose a threat to the safety of drinking water supply. Analysis of eight sampling sites in JG (Jian gang) drinking water reservoir of the sediments showed that from Feb 2018 to Aug 2019 heavy metals including Pb, Ni, Cu, Zn, Mo, and Cr increased by 1.

Revealing the anisotropic phonon behaviours of layered SnS by angle/temperature-dependent Raman spectroscopy.

Tin sulfide (SnS), a IV-VI group layered compound, has attracted much attention because of its excellent thermoelectric properties along the crystallographic -axis. However, there are few reports on the identification of its in-plane orientation. We observe a strong anisotropy of the in-plane Raman signal in bulk SnS.

Symmetry-Guaranteed High Carrier Mobility in Quasi-2D Thermoelectric Semiconductors.

Quasi-2D semiconductors have garnered immense research interest for next-generation electronics and thermoelectrics due to their unique structural, mechanical, and transport properties. However, most quasi-2D semiconductors experimentally synthesized so far have relatively low carrier mobility, preventing the achievement of exceptional power output. To break through this obstacle, a route is proposed based on the crystal symmetry arguments to facilitate the charge transport of quasi-2D semiconductors, in which the horizontal mirror symmetry is found to vanish the electron-phonon coupling strength mediated by phonons with purely out-of-plane vibrational vectors.

Prognostic Significance of Cuproptosis-Related Gene Signatures in Breast Cancer Based on Transcriptomic Data Analysis.

Breast cancer (BRCA) remains a serious threat to women's health, with the rapidly increasing morbidity and mortality being possibly due to a lack of a sophisticated classification system. To date, no reliable biomarker is available to predict prognosis. Cuproptosis has been recently identified as a new form of programmed cell death, characterized by the accumulation of copper in cells.

Large Magneto-Transverse and Longitudinal Thermoelectric Effects in the Magnetic Weyl Semimetal TbPtBi.

Magnetic topological semimetals provide new opportunities for power generation and solid-state cooling based on thermoelectric (TE) effect. The interplay between magnetism and nontrivial band topology prompts the magnetic topological semimetals to yield strong transverse TE effect, while the longitudinal TE performance is usually poor. Herein, it is demonstrated that the magnetic Weyl semimetal TbPtBi has high value for both transverse and longitudinal thermopower with large power factor (PF).

Tuning the Electronic, Ion Transport, and Stability Properties of Li-rich Manganese-based Oxide Materials with Oxide Perovskite Coatings: A First-Principles Computational Study.

Lithium-rich manganese-based oxides (LRMO) are regarded as promising cathode materials for powering electric applications due to their high capacity (250 mAh g) and energy density (∼900 Wh kg). However, poor cycle stability and capacity fading have impeded the commercialization of this family of materials as battery components. Surface modification based on coating has proven successful in mitigating some of these problems, but a microscopic understanding of how such improvements are attained is still lacking, thus impeding systematic and rational design of LRMO-based cathodes.

Evaluation of the tumoricidal efficacy of adoptive cell transfer using hepatocellular carcinoma-derived organoids.

Background: Tumor-derived organoid, namely tumoroid, can realistically retain the clinicopathologic features of original tumors even after long-term expansion. Here we develop this production methodology derived from hepatocellular carcinoma primary samples and generate a platform to evaluate the tumoricidal efficacy of autologous adoptive cell transfer including tumor infiltrating lymphocytes and peripheral blood lymphocytes.

Methods: Haematoxylin and eosin together with immunohistochemistry staining were employed to ascertain the morphologic and histological features of tumoroids and original tumors.

Hydrazine Hydrate Intercalated 1T-Dominant MoS with Superior Ambient Stability for Highly Efficient Electrocatalytic Applications.

Metallic 1T-phase MoS exhibits superior hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance than natural 2H-phase MoS owing to its higher electrical conductivity and abundance of active sites. However, the reported 1T-MoS catalysts usually suffer from extreme instability, which results in quick phase transformation at ambient conditions. Herein, we present a facile approach to engineer the phase of MoS by introducing intercalated hydrazine.

Anomalous Thermoelectric Performance in Asymmetric Dirac Semimetal BaAgBi.

Multiple-band degeneracy has been widely recognized to be beneficial for high thermoelectric performance. Here, we discover that the p-type Dirac bands with lower degeneracy synergistically produce a higher Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity in topological semimetal BaAgBi. The anomalous transport phenomenon intrinsically originated from the asymmetric electronic structures: (i) complete p-type Dirac bands near the Fermi level facilitate high and strong energy-dependent hole relaxation time; (ii) the presence of additional parabolic conduction valleys allows for a large density of states to accept scattered electrons, leading to an enlarged hole-electron relaxation time ratio and, thus, weakened bipolar effect.

Unconventional Doping Effect Leads to Ultrahigh Average Thermoelectric Power Factor in Cu SbSe -Based Composites.

Thermoelectric materials are typically highly degenerate semiconductors, which require high carrier concentration. However, the efficiency of conventional doping by replacing host atoms with alien ones is restricted by solubility limit, and, more unfavorably, such a doping method is likely to cause strong charge-carrier scattering at ambient temperature, leading to deteriorated electrical performance. Here, an unconventional doping strategy is proposed, where a small trace of alien atoms is used to stabilize cation vacancies in Cu SbSe  by compositing with CuAlSe , in which the cation vacancies rather than the alien atoms provide a high density of holes.

In-situ micro-Raman study of SnSe single crystals under atmosphere: Effect of laser power and temperature.

Single crystal of tin selenide (SnSe) was studied by micro-Raman spectroscopy under atmosphere conditions. The effect of varying the incident laser power on the sample up to 2 mW was analyzed. The Raman spectra showed that the number of all vibrational modes have not decreased or increased, but all peaks red-shifted and softened obviously as the laser power increased to the threshold value.

Autophagy promotes invadopodia formation in human ovarian cancer cells via the p62-extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 pathway.

Invasiveness and metastatic potential are among the most essential characteristics of malignant tumors. Furthermore, it has been reported that autophagy and invasion are enhanced when tumor cells are grown in adverse conditions, such as nutritional deficiency and starvation. However, the association between autophagy and invasion remains largely unclear.

Ab initio description of oxygen vacancies in epitaxially strained [Formula: see text] at finite temperatures.

Epitaxially grown [Formula: see text] (STO) thin films are material enablers for a number of critical energy-conversion and information-storage technologies like electrochemical electrode coatings, solid oxide fuel cells and random access memories. Oxygen vacancies ([Formula: see text]), on the other hand, are key defects to understand and tailor many of the unique functionalities realized in oxide perovskite thin films. Here, we present a comprehensive and technically sound ab initio description of [Formula: see text] in epitaxially strained (001) STO thin films.

Significant improvement in thermoelectric performance of SnSe/SnS nano-heterostructures.

In this work, we study theoretically the electronic and phonon transport properties of heterojunction SnSe/SnS, bilayer SnSe and SnS. The energy filtering effect caused by the nano heterostructure in SnSe/SnS induces an increase in the Seebeck coefficient, causing a large power factor. We calculate the phonon relaxation time and lattice thermal conductivity κL for the three structures; the heterogeneous nanostructure could effectively reduce κL due to the enhanced phonon boundary scattering at interfaces.

p53 Promoted Ferroptosis in Ovarian Cancer Cells Treated with Human Serum Incubated-Superparamagnetic Iron Oxides.

Methods: In this study, we used MTT assays to demonstrate that a combination of SPIO-Serum and wild-type p53 overexpression can reduce ovarian cancer cell viability . Prussian blue staining and iron assays were used to determine changes in intracellular iron concentration following SPIO-Serum treatment. TEM was used to evaluate any mitochondrial damage induced by SPIO-Serum treatment, and Western blot was used to evaluate the expression of the iron transporter and lipid peroxidation regulator proteins.

Screening potential topological insulators in half-Heusler compounds via compressed-sensing.

Ternary half-Heusler compounds with widely tunable electronic structures, present a new platform to discover topological insulators (TIs). Due to time-consuming computations and synthesis procedures, the identification of new TIs is however a rough task. Here, we adopt a compressed-sensing approach to rapidly screen potential TIs in half-Heusler family, which is realized via a two-dimensional descriptor that only depends on the fundamental properties of the constituent atoms.

Reservoir water stratification and mixing affects microbial community structure and functional community composition in a stratified drinking reservoir.

To investigate how the aquatic bacterial community of a stratified reservoir drives the evolution of water parameters, the microbial community structure and network characteristics of bacteria in a stratified reservoir were investigated using Illumina MiSeq sequencing technology. A total of 42 phyla and 689 distinct genera were identified, which showed significant seasonal variation. Additionally, stratified variations in the bacterial community strongly reflected the vertical gradient and seasonal changes in water temperature, dissolved oxygen, and nutrition concentration.

Controllable antibacterial and bacterially anti-adhesive surface fabricated by a bio-inspired beetle-like macromolecule.

Drug resistance to bacteria becomes an emerging intractable problem, therefore, developing novel antibacterial agents has become urgently needed. Herein, a bio-inspired design strategy was adopted to synthesize a series of beetle-like macromolecule of multiple quaternary ammonium salts (QASs), which was designed with different cationic charge densities and numbers of hexadecane chains by adjusting their different quaternization degree (QD). It was found that the fabricated fabric surface with them exhibited controllable and outstanding antibacterial and bacterially anti-adhesive properties.

Pollutant removal performance and microbial enhancement mechanism by water-lifting and aeration technology in a drinking water reservoir ecosystem.

Here, the performance and mechanism of pollutant removal in the Zhoucun reservoir by water-lifting and aeration systems (WLAs) were explored. The hypolimnion anoxic layer disappeared and the reservoir was mixed after the WLAs were operated for approximately 35 days, providing a suitable environment for pollutant removal. Operation of the system enhanced the metabolic activity of the water microbes and their capacity for purification, which contributed to the removal of nitrogen, organic carbon, Fe, Mn, P, and S.

Realizing high thermoelectric performance with comparable p- and n-type figure-of-merits in a graphene/h-BN superlattice monolayer.

Carbon-based structures are a superior alternative for unleashing the thermoelectric potential of earth-abundant and environmentally friendly materials. Here we design a hybrid graphene/h-BN superlattice monolayer and investigate its thermoelectric properties based on density functional theory and accurate solution of Boltzmann transport equations. Compared with that of pristine graphene, the lattice thermal conductivity of the superlattice structure is more than two orders of magnitude lower ascribed to the significantly increased phonon scattering originating from the mixed-bond characteristics.