The incorporation of defects, such as vacancies, into functional materials could substantially tailor their intrinsic properties. Progress in vacancy chemistry has enabled advances in many ...technological applications, but creating new type of vacancies in existing material system remains a big challenge. We show here that ionized nitrogen plasma can break bonds of iron-carbon-nitrogen-nickel units in nickel-iron Prussian blue analogues, forming unconventional carbon-nitrogen vacancies. We study oxygen evolution reaction on the carbon-nitrogen vacancy-mediated Prussian blue analogues, which exhibit a low overpotential of 283 millivolts at 10 milliamperes per square centimeter in alkali, far exceeding that of original Prussian blue analogues and previously reported oxygen evolution catalysts with vacancies. We ascribe this enhancement to the in-situ generated nickel-iron oxy(hydroxide) active layer during oxygen evolution reaction, where the Fe leaching was significantly suppressed by the unconventional carbon-nitrogen vacancies. This work opens up opportunities for producing vacancy defects in nanomaterials for broad applications.
Normally, achieving asymptotic convergence in the presence of unknown arbitrarily bounded external disturbance requires noncontinuous control signals. In this article, an adaptive backstepping ...controller for a class of incommensurate fractional-order nonlinear systems with parametric uncertainties and external time-varying disturbance is proposed to realize asymptotic perfect output tracking. Appropriate adaptive laws are designed to deal with the uncertainties and unknown bounded disturbance. In the designed adaptive backstepping control scheme, an auxiliary function is adopted to obtain a smooth control signal. It is theoretically shown that asymptotic output tracking to a given reference signal is achieved while ensuring global system stability in the sense that all the closed-loop signals are bounded. Simulation and experimental studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed backstepping control scheme.
This paper proposes a resilient controller for DC microgrid to achieve current sharing and voltage restoration under discrete-time false data injection (FDI) and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. ...Switching and impulsive signals are used to model the dynamic system of DC microgrid under DoS and FDI. To deal with the cyber attacks, a combined error of current and voltage is proposed and a switching secondary controller is designed. Based on the stability analysis method on hybrid systems, we establish a sufficient condition for selecting control parameters in relation to the average dwell time of FDI attack and the normal communication rate under DoS attack. Furthermore, an adaptive gain based control scheme is proposed to relax the requirement on knowledge of the cyber attacks in control parameter design. The utility of the results is illustrated through case studies on a tested DC microgrid.
This paper investigates the output formation-containment problem of interacted heterogeneous linear systems, where each heterogeneous system, whether the leader or the follower, has different ...dimensions and dynamics. Different from existing literature, discrete-time communication manner is deployed to reduce the communication consumption. By the impulsive control method, a distributed hybrid active controller is designed using the discrete-time information of neighbors. It achieves the output formation-containment of heterogeneous systems if two related conditions are satisfied, namely, local linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) and a bounded constraint on the average interacted interval. Moreover, the controller parameter design is further simplified by replacing the LMI condition with a Hurwitz condition, which can be easily guaranteed by solving a Riccati equation. Finally, a numerical example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the theoretical result.
The development of productive catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) remains a major challenge requiring significant progress in both mechanism and material design. Conventionally, the ...thermodynamic barrier of lattice oxidation mechanism (LOM) is lower than that of absorbate evolution mechanism (AEM) because the former can overcome certain limitations. However, controlling the OER pathway from the AEM to the LOM by exploiting the intrinsic properties of the catalyst remains challenging. Herein, we incorporated F anions into the oxygen vacancies of spinel ZnCo2O4 and established a link between the electronic structure and the OER catalytic mechanism. Theoretical density calculations revealed that F upshifts the O 2p center and activates the redox capability of lattice O, successfully triggering the LOM pathway. Moreover, the high electronegativity of F anions is favourable for balancing the residual protonation, which can stabilize the structure of the catalyst.
In this work, we successfully filled the lattice oxygen vacancies of ZnCo2O4 with F atom, achieving the activation of lattice oxygen by regulating metal‐oxygen hybridization, and the dominant oxygen evolution reaction mechanism on ZnCo2O4 can transform from adsorbate evolution mechanism to lattice oxygen oxidation mechanism.
This article investigates the current sharing and voltage regulation problem of a DC microgrid by a distributed supervisory control method. In the existing secondary control methods, current sharing ...feedback control loop and voltage regulation feedback control loop are linearly integrated to shift the droop equation. However, the linear combination of two loops may easily offset the control effect of each other, as the control dimension is less than the objective dimension. This fact motivates us to design a distributed supervisory secondary control (DSSC) scheme to achieve a more flexible configuring of each converter. The DSSC consists of two candidate controllers and a supervisor. The two controllers refer to current sharing configuring and DC bus voltage regulation respectively, and the supervisor is to orchestrate the switching between candidate controllers based on the system environment of DC microgrid. Under the proposed DSSC, each converter selects to configure the current sharing or regulates the DC bus voltage according to its need. Theoretical stability analysis is rigorously conducted. Finally, both simulation and experiment results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of DSSC.
Distributed control technology has significantly improved the regulation of dc microgrid systems. However, it also introduces potential cyber-security threats during the communication process. In ...particular, the system is vulnerable to two types of attacks: denial-of-service (DoS) and false data injection (FDI) attacks. If both attacks occur simultaneously, they can destabilize the dc microgrid and jeopardize its safe operation. To ensure system stability under mixed DoS and unbounded FDI attacks, a consensus-based secondary control strategy is proposed. This strategy includes an adaptive feedback term to counteract FDI signals in the presence of DoS attacks. The stability of the system is rigorously analyzed using the Lyapunov method. Finally, numerical and experimental tests confirm the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.
Herein, we demonstrate the use of heterostructures comprised of Co/β‐Mo2C@N‐CNT hybrids for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in an alkaline electrolyte. The ...Co can not only create a well‐defined heterointerface with β‐Mo2C but also overcomes the poor OER activity of β‐Mo2C, thus leading to enhanced electrocatalytic activity for HER and OER. DFT calculations further proved that cooperation between the N‐CNTs, Co, and β‐Mo2C results in lower energy barriers of intermediates and thus greatly enhances the HER and OER performance. This study not only provides a simple strategy for the construction of heterostructures with nonprecious metals, but also provides in‐depth insight into the HER and OER mechanism in alkaline solution.
That's evolution: Heterostructures composed of Co/β‐Mo2C@N‐CNTs showed high performance for HER and OER in an alkaline electrolyte. The Co nanoparticles not only create a well‐defined heterointerface with β‐Mo2C, but also overcome the poor OER activity of β‐Mo2C, thus leading to enhanced electrocatalytic activity for HER and OER. DFT calculations showed that cooperation by the N‐CNTs, Co, and β‐Mo2C lowers the energy barriers of intermediates.
Inhibition of glutamine metabolism in tumor cells can cause metabolic compensation‐mediated glycolysis enhancement and PD‐L1 upregulation‐induced immune evasion, significantly limiting the ...therapeutic efficacy of glutamine inhibitors. Here, inspired by the specific binding of receptor and ligand, a PD‐L1‐targeting metabolism and immune regulator (PMIR) are constructed by decorating the glutaminase inhibitor (BPTES)‐loading zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) with PD‐L1‐targeting peptides for regulating the metabolism within the tumor microenvironment (TME) to improve immunotherapy. At tumor sites, PMIR inhibits glutamine metabolism of tumor cells for elevating glutamine levels within the TME to improve the function of immune cells. Ingeniously, the accompanying PD‐L1 upregulation on tumor cells causes self‐amplifying accumulation of PMIR through PD‐L1 targeting, while also blocking PD‐L1, which has the effects of converting enemies into friends. Meanwhile, PMIR exactly offsets the compensatory glycolysis, while disrupting the redox homeostasis in tumor cells via the cooperation of components of the ZIF and BPTES. These together cause immunogenic cell death of tumor cells and relieve PD‐L1‐mediated immune evasion, further reshaping the immunosuppressive TME and evoking robust immune responses to effectively suppress bilateral tumor progression and metastasis. This work proposes a rational strategy to surmount the obstacles in glutamine inhibition for boosting existing clinical treatments.
A PD‐L1‐targeting metabolism and immune regulator (PMIR) is constructed for metabolic reprogramming. PMIR inhibits glutamine metabolism of tumor cells, while solves compensatory glycolysis and utilizes upregulated PD‐L1 for self‐amplifying accumulation. Cooperating with the immunogenic cell death through the disruption of the redox homeostasis, PMIR can evoke robust immune responses to suppress bilateral tumor progression and metastasis.