Investigation of the mechanisms involved in the biocontrol activities of natural products from a marine soil bacterium against rice blast.

Background: Rice blast, caused by Pyricularia oryzae, is a devastating fungal disease threatening global rice production. Overreliance on chemical fungicides has raised environmental concerns and led to resistant strains, necessitating the development of sustainable alternatives. This study integrated marine microbiology and natural antifungal compounds to create eco-friendly alternatives to chemical fungicides for disease management.

Innovative Approach to Achieving Polarization Dependent Highly Directional Nanolasers Through Propagating States in Diverse Plasmonic Lattices.

With their extremely small mode volumes, excellent field enhancement, and low radiative loss, metallic nanoparticle arrays supporting plasmonic lattice resonances have emerged as a potential design for on-chip plasmonic lasers. Due to the similarities between photonic crystals and plasmonic lattices in terms of structural features and energy band structure, the properties of plasmonic lattice-based nanolasers, including low threshold, lasing wavelength, coherence, directionality, and polarization, can be designed using band structure computations. Here 2D plasmonic lattices of Al nanocone arrays (NCAs) are presented, supporting narrow linewidth resonances that provide optical feedback for the stimulated emission process of optically pumped Rhodamine 6G (R6G).

Hierarchical Fe-based electrocatalyst for lattice oxygen mediated water oxidation with Industrial-Level activity.

Rational design transition metal-based electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at large current densities is vital for industrial applications of alkaline water electrolysis. Here, we present a three-dimensional catalyst comprises of FeO nanoparticles that are highly dispersed on FeMoO nanorods, supported on Ni foam, featuring a hierarchical heterostructure and array morphology. The resulting FeO/FeMoO/NF electrodes exhibit remarkable OER catalytic activity, achieving overpotentials of 315 mV and 352 mV at current densities of 1000 mA cm and 2000 mA cm, respectively, while maintaining outstanding long-term durability (>900 h) at a current density of 500 mA cm.

Structural diversity and electronic properties of neodymium borides under high pressure.

Rare earth (RE) borides have garnered significant attention due to their high mechanical strength, superconductivity, and novel electronic properties. In this study, we systematically investigate the structural, electronic, and mechanical properties of RE neodymium borides across a wide range of pressures. Various stoichiometries of Nd-B compounds are predicted using the unbiased CALYPSO structure search method and density functional theory calculations.

Capturing High-Energy Polymeric Nitrogen Structures Stabilized by Lutetium at Ambient Conditions.

Polynitrogen with high energy and environmental friendliness has exhibited potential application in military and civilian fields. In this study, first-principle calculations were employed to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the nitrogen-rich Lu-N compounds. The research yielded ten novel polynitrides: 2/-LuN, 1̅-LuN, 1̅-LuN, 2/-LuN, 1̅-LuN, 1̅-LuN, 1̅-LuN, -LuN, 4/-LuN, and -LuN.

Piezoelectric Biomaterial with Advanced Design for Tissue Infection Repair.

Bacterial infection has become the most dangerous factor in tissue repair, which strongly affects the tissue regeneration efficiency and wellness of patients. Piezoelectric materials exhibit the outstanding advantage of producing electrons without external power supply. The ability of electron enrichment and reactive oxygen species generation through noninvasive stimulations enables piezoelectric materials the potential applications of antibacterial.

Antagonistic Effects of Distance and Overlap toward Anomalous Pressure-Induced Blueshift of π-π Excimer Fluorescence in 9-(2,2-Diphenylvinyl)anthracene Crystals.

Piezochromic materials usually exhibit a gradual redshift of emission as pressure increases due to the formation of a low-energy "dark" state, e.g., excimer.

(ZnO) Cluster Decorated 2D Porous CN Materials as Efficient Solar Cells.

Developing high-performance solar cells is a practical way to improve clean energy conversion efficiency. However, the performance of solar cells faces challenges such as fast carrier combination, poor stability, and limited solar light harvesting. Herein, we propose a strategy by decorating periodic holes in two-dimensional (2D) porous carbon-nitrogen (CN) materials with a zero-dimensional (0D) semiconducting (ZnO) cluster.

Enhancing a Perovskite Solar Cell and Module by Suppressing Protonation through Chelating Agents.

Formamidinium-based perovskites (FA perovskites) often incorporate methylammonium chloride (MACl) to stabilize the α-FAPbI phase and prevent formation of the δ phase. However, MACl undergoes deprotonation and reacts with FA, leading to the generation of unstable byproducts that can cause component degradation and negatively impact the device performance. In this study, we introduce ethylenediaminetetramethylenephosphonic acid as a corrosion inhibitor, which effectively prevents the formation of these byproducts and stabilizes α-FAPbI.

CaLuScAlSiO:Ce Green Phosphors for High-Quality White LEDs.

Phosphors with broadband green emission are highly desirable for the construction of high-color-rendering warm-white light-emitting diode (LED) devices toward healthy solid-state lighting applications. However, most of the reported green phosphors are subject to an undesirable emission bandwidth and low quantum efficiency. Here, a highly efficient broadband green-emitting garnet phosphor, CaLuScAlSiO:Ce (CLSASO:Ce), is successfully synthesized and investigated in detail.

A Zn-doped SbTe flexible thin film with decoupled Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity band engineering.

SbTe-based flexible thin films can be utilized in the fabrication of self-powered wearable devices due to their huge potential in thermoelectric performance. Although doping can significantly enhance the power factor value, the process of identifying suitable dopants is typically accompanied by numerous repeating experiments. Herein, we introduce Zn doping into thermally diffused p-type SbTe flexible thin films with a candidate dopant validated using the first-principles calculations.

Dynamic regulation of ferroelectric polarization using external stimuli for efficient water splitting and beyond.

Establishing and regulating the ferroelectric polarization in ferroelectric nano-scale catalysts has been recognized as an emerging strategy to advance water splitting reactions, with the merits of improved surface charge density, high charge transfer rate, increased electronic conductivity, the creation of real active sites, and optimizing the chemisorption energy. As a result, engineering and tailoring the ferroelectric polarization induced internal electric field provides significant opportunities to improve the surface and electronic characteristics of catalysts, thereby enhancing the water splitting reaction kinetics. In this review, an interdisciplinary and comprehensive summary of recent advancements in the construction, characterization, engineering and regulation of the polarization in ferroelectric-based catalysts for water splitting is provided, by exploiting a variety of external stimuli.

Electromagnetism and thermostability of CrCsynthesised with high-temperature and high-pressure quenching method.

The interactions between the carbon skeleton and metal atoms in binary transition metal carbides are of particular interest for industrial applications involving advanced physics and chemistry, especially in magnetoelectric functional materials and cemented carbides. Cr and carbon BTMCs are a series of intermetallic compounds with specific chemical formulas that share certain unique characteristics. In this study, we used polycrystalline powders of chromium and carbon as precursors and synthesised single-phase bulk CrC(orthorhombic, space group:) with high density and good crystallinity using a high-temperature and high-pressure quenching method (HTHPQM).

Study on the Influence of External Electric Field Control and Vibrational Quantum Effect on the Charge Separation Mechanism in Fullerene-Based Systems.

Based on the DCV-C system of fullerene acceptor organic solar cell active materials, the charge transfer process of D-A type molecular materials under the action of an external electric field () was explored. Within the range of electric field application, the excited state characteristics exhibit certain regular changes. Based on reducing the excitation energy, the excitation mode shows a trend of developing toward low excited states.

Fabrication of Dual-Functional MXene@NiCoS Composites with Enhanced Nonlinear Optical and Electrochemical Properties.

The design and synthesis of multifunctional nanomaterials have attracted considerable attention for expanding the range of practical applications. Herein, a metal-organic framework (MOFs)-derived NiCoS attached to MXene is rationally designed and constructed for an optical limiter and supercapacitor. The MOF-derived NiCoS enhances the tendency of hydroxyl groups on the MXene surface to attract metal ions, resulting in the formation of sulfur vacancies.

Enhanced Sodium Storage and Thermal Safety of NaNiFeMnO Cathode via Incorporation of TiN and WO.

This study proposes an efficient, cost-effective, and industrially scalable electrode modulation strategy, which involves directly adding a small amount of high thermal and high conductance TiN and well interface compatible WO to NaNiFeMnO (NaNFMO-TW) cathode slurry, to effectively reduce electrode polarization and interface side reactions, reduce the Ohmic heat and polarization heat of the battery, and ultimately to significantly improve the sodium-ion storage and thermal safety performance of the battery. At room temperature (RT) and 1C rate, the modified NaNFMO-TW electrode exhibits a reversible capacity of ∼95 mAh g after 300 cycles, with a capacity retention rate of 82.6%, being higher than the 50.

Tunable optical nonreciprocity in double-cavity optomechanical system with nonreciprocal coupling.

We propose a double-cavity optomechanical system with nonreciprocal coupling to realize tunable optical nonreciprocity that has the prospect of making an optical device for the manipulation of information processing and communication. Here we investigate the steady-state dynamic processes of the double-cavity system and the transmission of optical waves from opposite cavity directions. The transmission spectrum of the probe field is presented in detail and the physical mechanism of the induced transparency window is analyzed.

Ultrahigh-Power Carbon-Based Supercapacitors through Order-Disorder Balance.

Although carbon-based supercapacitors (SCs) hold the advantages of high-power and large-current characteristics, they are difficult to realize ultrahigh-power density (> 200 kW kg) and maintain almost constant energy density at ultrahigh power. This limitation is mainly due to the difficulty in balancing the structural order related to the electrical conductivity of carbon materials and the structural disorder related to the pore structure. Herein, we design a novel super-structured tubular carbon (SSTC) with a crosslinked porous conductive network to solve the structure order-disorder tradeoff effect in carbon materials.

Bifunctional poly(1,3-dioxolane)-graphitic CN composite interlayers enable stable and compatible anode interfaces in solid lithium batteries.

Polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based composite solid electrolytes (CSEs) hold great promise in the practical deployment of solid lithium batteries (SLBs) owing to their high voltage stability but suffer from poor stability against Li-metal. Herein, a poly(1,3-dioxolane) (PDOL)-graphitic CN (g-CN, i.e.

Ultralow Coordination Copper Sites Compartmentalized within Ordered Pores for Highly Efficient Electrosynthesis of -Propanol from CO.

Coordinatively unsaturated copper (Cu) has been demonstrated to be effective for electrifying CO reduction into C products by adjusting the coupling of C-C intermediates. Nevertheless, the intuitive impacts of ultralow coordination Cu sites on C products are scarcely elucidated due to the lack of synthetic recipes for Cu with low coordination numbers and its vulnerability to aggregation under reductive potentials. Herein, computational predictions revealed that Cu sites with higher levels of coordinative unsaturation favored the adsorption of C and C intermediates.

Electron Push-Pull Effect of Benzotrithiophene-Based Covalent Organic Frameworks on the Photocatalytic Degradation of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products.

A covalent organic framework (COF) has emerged as a promising photocatalyst for the removal of pharmaceutical and personal care product (PPCP) contaminants; however, high-performance COF photocatalysts are still scarce. In this study, three COF photocatalysts were successfully synthesized by the condensation of benzo[1,2-b:3,4-b':5,6-b'']trithiophene-2,5,8-tricarbaldehyde (BTT) with 4,4',4''-(1,3,5-triazine-2,4,6-triyl)trianiline (TAPT), 1,3,5-Tris(4-aminophenyl)benzene (TAPB), and 4,4',4''-nitrilotris(benzenamine) (TAPA), namely, BTT-TAPA, BTT-TAPB, and BTT-TAPT, respectively. The surface areas of BTT-TAPA, BTT-TAPB, and BTT-TAPT were found to be 800.

Preparation of a Silicon/MXene Composite Electrode by a High-Pressure Forming Method and Its Application in Li-Ion Storage.

The main component of high-capacity silicon-based electrodes is silicon powder, which necessitates intricate processing to minimize volume growth and powder separation while guaranteeing the ideal Si content. This work uses the an situ high-pressure forming approach to create an MXene/-Si/MXene composite electrode, where MXene refers to TiCT, and -Si denotes two-phase mixed nano-Si particles. The sandwich shape promotes silicon's volume growth and stops active particles from spreading.

Few-Layered Black Phosphorene as Hole Transport Layer for Novel All-Inorganic Perovskite Solar Cells.

The CsPbBr perovskite exhibits strong environmental stability under light, humidity, temperature, and oxygen conditions. However, in all-inorganic perovskite solar cells (PSCs), interface defects between the carbon electrode and CsPbBr limit the carrier separation and transfer rates. We used black phosphorus (BP) nanosheets as the hole transport layer (HTL) to construct an all-inorganic carbon-based CsPbBr perovskite (FTO/c-TiO/m-TiO/CsPbBr/BP/C) solar cell.

All-Fiber Micro-Ring Resonator Based p-Si/n-ITO Heterojunction Electro-Optic Modulator.

With the rapid advancement of information technology, the data demands in transmission rates, processing speed, and storage capacity have been increasing significantly. However, silicon electro-optic modulators, characterized by their weak electro-optic effect, struggle to balance modulation efficiency and bandwidth. To overcome this limitation, we propose an electro-optic modulator based on an all-fiber micro-ring resonator and a p-Si/n-ITO heterojunction, achieving high modulation efficiency and large bandwidth.

Simulation and Experimental Study of the Single-Pulse Femtosecond Laser Ablation Morphology of GaN Films.

Gallium nitride (GaN) exhibits distinctive physical and chemical properties that render it indispensable in a multitude of electronic and optoelectronic devices. Given that GaN is a typical hard and brittle material that is difficult to machine, femtosecond laser technology provides an effective and convenient tool for processing such materials. However, GaN undergoes complex physical and chemical changes during high-power ablation, which poses a challenge to high-precision processing with controllable geometry.