Hydrogen ions are ideal charge carriers for rechargeable batteries due to their small ionic radius and wide availability. However, little attention has been paid to hydrogen‐ion storage devices ...because they generally deliver relatively low Coulombic efficiency as a result of the hydrogen evolution reaction that occurs in an aqueous electrolyte. Herein, we successfully demonstrate that hydrogen ions can be electrochemically stored in an inorganic molybdenum trioxide (MoO3) electrode with high Coulombic efficiency and stability. The as‐obtained electrode exhibits ultrafast hydrogen‐ion storage properties with a specific capacity of 88 mA hg−1 at an ultrahigh rate of 100 C. The redox reaction mechanism of the MoO3 electrode in the hydrogen‐ion cell was investigated in detail. The results reveal a conversion reaction of the MoO3 electrode into H0.88MoO3 during the first hydrogen‐ion insertion process and reversible intercalation/deintercalation of hydrogen ions between H0.88MoO3 and H0.12MoO3 during the following cycles. This study reveals new opportunities for the development of high‐power energy storage devices with lightweight elements.
Hydrogen‐ion storage: The mechanism of hydrogen‐ion intercalation/deintercalation into/from the inorganic MoO3 has been investigated. The conversion reaction for the first hydrogen‐ion intercalation process and the highly reversible redox reactions during the subsequent cycling have been identified.
The rechargeable lithium–sulfur battery is recognized as a promising candidate for electrochemical energy storage system because of their exceptional advance in energy density. However, the fast ...capacity decay of sulfur cathode caused by polysulfide dissolution and low specific capacity caused by poor electrical conductivity still impede the further development of lithium–sulfur battery. To address above issues, this study reports the synthesis of feather duster‐like TiO2 architecture by in situ growth of TiO2 nanowires on carbon cloth and further evaluates as sulfur host material. The strong chemical binding interaction between the polysulfides and TiO2 feather duster efficiently restrains the shuttle effect, leading to enhanced electrochemical kinetics. Besides, the in situ grown TiO2 NWs array also supply high surface for sulfur‐loading and fast path for electron transfer and ion diffusion. As results, the novel CC/TiO2/S composite cathode exhibits a high capacity of 608 mA h g−1 at 1.0 C after 700 cycles corresponding to capacity decay as low as 0.045% per cycle with excellent Coulombic efficiency higher than 99.5%.
A TiO2 feather duster is in situ prepared as sulfur host to enhance the electrochemical kinetics of Li–S batteries by strong interaction between polysulfides and TiO2 nanowires. CC/TiO2/S composite cathode exhibits a capacity of 608 mA h g−1 at 1.0 C after 700 cycles corresponding to capacity decay as low as 0.045% per cycle.
3D printing of graphene electrodes with high mechanical strength has been a growing interest in the development of advanced energy, environment, and electronic systems, yet is extremely challenging. ...Herein, a 3D printed bioinspired electrode of graphene reinforced with 1D carbon nanotubes (CNTs) (3DP GC) with both high flexural strength and hierarchical porous structure is reported via a 3D printing strategy. Mechanics modeling reveals the critical role of the 1D CNTs in the enhanced flexural strength by increasing the friction and adhesion between the 2D graphene nanosheets. The 3DP GC electrodes hold distinct advantages: i) an intrinsically high flexural strength that enables their large‐scale applications; and ii) a hierarchical porous structure that offers large surface area and interconnected channels, endowing fast mass and/or charge and ions transport rate, which is thus beneficial for acting as an ideal catalyst carrier. The 3DP GC electrode integrated with a NiFeP nanosheets array exhibits a voltage of 1.58 V at 30 mA cm−2 as bifunctional electrode for water splitting, which is much better than most of the reported Ni‐, Co‐, and Fe‐based bifunctional electrocatalysts. Importantly, this study paves the way for the practical applications of 3D printed graphene electrodes in many energy conversion/storage, environmental, and electronic systems where high flexural strength is preferred.
Bioinspired electrodes of 3D printed graphene reinforced by 1D carbon nanotubes (3DP GC), which demonstrate outstanding flexural strength and hierarchical porous structure, are produced via an extrusion‐based 3D printing strategy. The 3DP GC electrodes developed in this work have great potential for a variety of energy conversion and storage, environmental, and electronic applications where high flexural strength and hierarchical porous structure are in pressing demand.
With the continuous expansion of industrial enterprises, a large amount of high-salt wastewater with complex components is produced. Direct discharge will cause great harm to the ecosystem and waste ...a large amount of potential salt resources. This paper summarizes the source, water quality characteristics, and environmental impact of high-salinity wastewater, and introduces the desalination and treatment technologies of high-salinity wastewater. The desalination technology of high-salinity wastewater mainly includes two processes: concentration and crystallization, obtaining concentrated solution through membrane concentration or thermal concentration and then carrying out crystallization treatment on the concentrated solution, thereby realizing the recovery of salt. The advanced treatment technologies of high-salinity wastewater were analyzed, including physicochemical treatment, biological treatment, and coupling treatment. Catalytic ozonation is one of the most widely used physicochemical technologies for the advanced treatment of high-salinity wastewater. Biological treatment processes operating in the presence of halotolerant bacteria show excellent performance at high salinity. High salinity has a negative impact on the performance of various physicochemical processes and biological treatment technologies. However, high salinity has little effect on the performance of a coupled system designed to treat high-salinity wastewater. In this review, the effect of salinity on the scaling and corrosion of equipment is also illustrated. It is suggested that the research direction of high-salinity wastewater should be to develop new membrane materials and catalysts, develop salt-tolerant microorganisms, explore high-efficiency and energy-saving physico–chemical–biochemical combination processes, improve the treatment efficiency of high-salinity organic wastewater, and reduce treatment costs.
By utilizing a target biorecognition reaction to induce the self-assembly of G-quadruplexes and the aggregation of gold nanoparticles (Au NPs), this work develops a novel colorimetric biosensing ...method for kanamycin (Kana) antibiotic detection. The compact G-quadruplex structure was assembled from its two half-split sequences which were designed in two hairpin substrates of the Mg
2+
-dependent DNAzyme (MNAzyme). Besides hybridizing with the aptamer strand, the MNAzyme sequence was also split into two half fragments to be designed in the two substrates. Upon the aptamer-recognition reaction toward Kana, the MNAzyme strand could be quantitatively released to cause the exposure of the split G-quadruplex-sequences on two hairpin substrate-modified Au NPs and simultaneous release of two half fragments of the MNAzyme-sequence. Thus, the K
+
-assisted self-folding of G-quadruplexes causes the cross-linking of the two Au NPs to realize the Au NP aggregation–based colorimetric signal output (measured at the largest absorption peak near 520 nm). Meanwhile, the self-assembled formation of the second MNAzyme drastically amplified the signal response. Under the optimal conditions, a wide linear range from 0.1 pg mL
−1
to 10 ng mL
−1
and an ultrahigh sensitivity with the detection limit of 76 fg mL
−1
were obtained. The dose-recovery experiments in real samples showed satisfactory results with recoveries from 98.4 to 105.4% and relative errors compared with the ELISA method less than 4.1%. Due to the high selectivity, excellent repeatability and stability, and simple manipulation, this method indicates a promising potential for practical applications.
Graphical abstract
A novel homogeneous biosensing method was developed for the convenient detection of the kanamycin antibiotic. The target biorecognition-induced and dual DNAzyme-catalytic assembly of G-quadruplexes enabled the amplified aggregation of gold nanoparticles for the simple, cheap, stable, and ultrasensitive colorimetric signal transduction of the method.
The low frequency section of frequency domain spectroscopy (FDS) of oil-paper insu- lation system can effectively reflect the ageing state and moisture of the oil-immersed paper. Meanwhile, ...steady-state insulation resistance is the one of indexes for the condition of transformer. In actual measurement, these two both are time-consuming and poor accessibility, thereby restraining their field applications. Aim at this problem, this paper analyses the polarization process of the oil-paper insulation in transformer, and adopts a low frequency equivalent circuit model for the oil-paper insulation to characterize the polarization process at low frequency. The simulated annealing particle swarm optimization (SAPSO) algorithm is proposed to identify the parameters in equivalent circuit, which are affected by change of insulation state. Compared with the experimental results, the errors of the steady-state insulation resistance and the tan <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\delta </tex-math></inline-formula> below 10 −3 Hz, which are calculated by the identified parameters, are less than 2.5%. This method can avoid the influence from external environment and reduce the measurement time. The time and frequency domain parameters calculated can provide reference for the ageing assessment of oil-immersed paper.
The adsorption properties of phosphate-functionalized biopolymer/graphene oxide gels on U(VI) in aqueous solution were studied. The characterization of prepared gels were measured by scanning ...electron microscopy (SEM), Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), Fourier transformed infrared spectra (FT–IR), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The adsorption of U(VI) was evaluated as a function of the pH of solution, initial uranium concentration and the contact time, and the optimum conditions for U(VI) adsorption was obtained. The Langmuir isotherm model fits the experimental data very well, and the maximum uptake of U(VI) were 568.18 mg/g for P-TA-GO and 546.45 mg/g for P-AL-GO, respectively. The experimental data for the kinetics of adsorption correlated well with the second-order Langergren rate equation, and Langergren rate constants have been determined. Compared to other coexisting ions present in real-world uranium-containing wastewater, the phosphate-functionalized biopolymer/graphene oxide gels have demonstrated remarkably better selective adsorption to U(VI).
•Nitrogen and sulfur co-doping strategy increases the N2 fixation yield of Ti3C2Tx by five times.•Synergistic effect of co-doping regulates the electron configuration and accelerates the reaction ...kinetics.•NS-Ti3C2Tx achieves excellent recyclability and long-term stability in acidic electrolyte.•This work opens a new research approach for high-performance catalysts in energy storage applications.
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High-polluting industrial ammonia synthesis runs counter to the intentions of a low-carbon society. In contrast, the electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (NRR) is expected to provide fascinating and broad prospects for green ammonia synthesis, which urgently requires efficient and low-cost catalysts. Although it has been proven that two-dimensional (2D) transition metal carbides and carbonitrides (MXenes) have great potential for NRR, there is still need to further improve their activity. In this work, a co-doping strategy was employed to design the electronic configuration and structural mechanic of Ti3C2Tx catalysts for efficient NRR. As expected, the synergistic effect of N and S dopants in Ti3C2Tx (NS-Ti3C2Tx) significantly improves the electron/ion transport capacity and increases the catalytic active sites. Specifically, the as-prepared NS-Ti3C2Tx nanosheets demonstrated an excellent electrocatalytic stability with NH3 yield of 34.23 μgh−1mg−1cat at −0.55 V vs. RHE, and a Faraday efficiency of 6.6% in 0.05 M H2SO4. Therefore, this work opens up a new research approach for preparing high-performance catalysts for energy storage applications through efficient nitrogen fixation technology.
Virus entry into cells is typically initiated by binding of virally encoded envelope proteins to specific cell surface receptors. Studying infectivity of lentivirus pseudotypes lacking envelope ...binding, we still observed high infectivity for some cell types. On further investigation, we discovered that this infectivity is conferred by the soluble bovine protein S in fetal calf serum, or Gas6, its human homolog. Gas6 enhances native infectivity of pseudotypes of multiple viral envelope proteins. Gas6 mediates binding of the virus to target cells by bridging virion envelope phosphatidylserine to Axl, a TAM receptor tyrosine kinase on target cells. Phagocytic clearance of apoptotic cells is known to involve bridging by Gas6. Replication of vaccinia virus, which was previously reported to use apoptotic mimicry to enter cells, is also enhanced by Gas6. These results reveal an alternative molecular mechanism of viral entry that can broaden host range and enhance infectivity of enveloped viruses.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the most universal chronic degenerative neurological dyskinesia and an important threat to elderly health. At present, the researches of PD are mainly based on ...single-modal data analysis, while the fusion research of multi-modal data may provide more meaningful information in the aspect of comprehending the pathogenesis of PD. In this paper, 104 samples having resting functional magnetic resonance imaging (rfMRI) and gene data are from Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) and Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database to predict pathological brain areas and risk genes related to PD. In the experiment, Pearson correlation analysis is adopted to conduct fusion analysis from the data of genes and brain areas as multi-modal sample characteristics, and the clustering evolution random forest (CERF) method is applied to detect the discriminative genes and brain areas. The experimental results indicate that compared with several existing advanced methods, the CERF method can further improve the diagnosis of PD and healthy control, and can achieve a significant effect. More importantly, we find that there are some interesting associations between brain areas and genes in PD patients. Based on these associations, we notice that PD-related brain areas include angular gyrus, thalamus, posterior cingulate gyrus and paracentral lobule, and risk genes mainly include C6orf10, HLA-DPB1 and HLA-DOA. These discoveries have a significant contribution to the early prevention and clinical treatments of PD.
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