The accelerating electrification has sparked an explosion in lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) consumption. As the lifespan declines, the substantial LIBs will flow into the recycling market and promise ...to spawn a giant recycling system. Nonetheless, since the lack of unified guiding standard and nontraceability, the recycling of end‐of‐life LIBs has fallen into the dilemma of low recycling rate, poor recycling efficiency, and insignificant benefits. Herein, tapping into summarizing and analyzing the current status and challenges of recycling LIBs, this outlook provides insights for the future course of full lifecycle management of LIBs, proposing gradient utilization and recycling‐target predesign strategy. Further, we acknowledge some recommendations for recycling waste LIBs and anticipate a collaborative effort to advance sustainable and reliable recycling routes.
The inferior battery lifecycle management has long plagued the recycling of lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs). In response to this problem, this outlook elaborates on the recycling‐oriented intelligent predesign and the gradient utilization of waste LIBs, and gives suggestions for the current challenges, aiming to provide sights for recycling end‐of‐life LIBs in the future.
Photothermalcatalysis (PTC) prefers hole type cocatalyst for mineralization of gaseous organic pollutant. Moreover, it prefers less cocatalyst than that of photocatalysis (PC).
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...•Cocatalyst/TiO2 photocatalyst are restudied as photothermalcatalyst.•Phothermalcatalysis prefers less cocatalyst than that in photocatalysis.•Phothermalcatalysis prefers hole type cocatalyst.
Coupling heat into photocatalysis (PC) has been found more efficient than PC for removal of volatile organic compounds (VOC). Therein, photothermal synergy induced photothermalcatalysis (PTC) sometimes tells different stories from PC. In this work, we revisit ST-01 TiO2 photocatalyst as photothermalcatalyst under blue light at 333 K and further investigate the role of surface grafted cocatalyst (CrxO, CoxO, CuxO, Pt) in catalytic removal of gaseous acetaldehyde pollutant. By comparison on the amount of cocatalyst, for PC, more CrxO cocatalyst (3 wt%) is favored for higher removal efficiency of acetaldehyde. For PTC, less CrxO cocatalyst (0.3 wt%) is favored. By further comparison on the type of cocatalyst, for PC, hole cocatalyst (CrxO and CoxO) gives inferior performance to that of electron cocatalyst (CuxO and Pt). For PTC, hole cocatalyst gives superior performance to that of electron cocatalyst. The difference between PC and PTC lies in synergistic effect between defect-related blue-light absorption, cocatalyst induced interfacial charge transfer and matched surface red-ox reaction rate. This work may provide new insight into the design and development of photothermalcatalyst for VOC removal.
Burning-free Al2O3–C–Si bottom nozzle, a key refractory component connecting the intermediate ladle slide to the immersion spout, is always prone to failure under the extreme environment of repeated ...exposure to chemical attack and thermal shock of the steel. Here, an approach of adding Si powder and the change in Al2O3 aggregate aims to enhance the product's quality and performance of the burning-free Al2O3–C–Si bottom nozzle. And the different composition ratios effects on the chemical erosion behavior of the burning-free Al2O3–C–Si bottom nozzle were investigated based on the measured instantaneous thermal-expansion coefficient and young's modulus of the bottom nozzle materials in the high-temperature range of 300–1473 K. Moreover, the high-temperature folding resistance, thermal-shock resistance test and slag resistance experiments have also been probed. Obtained results reveal that the absence of 6 wt.% Si can promote the formation of SiC phases in the form of flakes and whiskers inside the bottom nozzles, which significantly improves the density, strength, thermal shock resistance and slag erosion resistance of refractory materials. Compared with the bauxite-Al sample, the slab corundum-Si-Al sample reduced the porosity by 7.8% and the erosion index decreased by 4.7% due to the formation of SiC and a thin protective layer of SiO2, as well as the mullite crystals structure. Here, an optimized bottom nozzle with a composite structure has also been proposed. This work can make significant contribution to improve the performance of burning-free refractory materials, bottom nozzles and reducing costs.
To date, the functional application of the flexible organic single-crystal devices in strain sensors has not been studied. In this letter, the excellent flexibility of the beltlike rubrene single ...crystals enables the rubrene single-crystal field-effect transistors to be bent inward and outward, and their electrical properties under compressive and tensile strain are demonstrated. The current and mobility of the device show the nearly linear changes under the tensile and compressive strain of <;0.4%. The dynamic response of the strain presents good repeatability. The calculated sensitivity under tensile strain is two orders of magnitude higher than the previously reported organic thin-film-based strain sensor. It is demonstrated that the rubrene single-crystal device can effectively detect the movement of a human finger. These results exhibit the promising potential of our transistors in artificial intelligence and healthcare systems.
Organic thin‐film transistors (OTFTs) are identified to be the most promising candidate for next‐generation wearable and implantable electronics because of their unique advantages including their ...flexibility, low cost, long‐term biocompatibility, and simple packaging. However, commercialization of organic transistors remains an enormous challenge due to their low mobility and lack of scalable strategy for high‐precise soft devices. Here, a novel photolithography fabrication strategy is proposed, which is completely compatible with various commercial organic semiconductor materials, for the first demonstration of the fully photolithographic top‐contact conformable OTFTs with the device density as high as 1523 transistors cm−2. Excellent electrical and mechanical properties with device yield as high as 100%, field‐effect mobility up to 1–2 cm2 V−1 s−1, and outstanding conformability are shown. This work provides a new strategy that can fully maximize the advantages of organic materials and photolithography technology, showing a great prospect in the development of high‐performance, high‐precise organic devices toward the commercialized and industrialized soft electronic products.
A novel photolithography strategy that is completely “compatible with” various commercial organic semiconductor materials is proposed for the first demonstration of the fully photolithographic top‐contact organic thin‐film transistors (OTFTs). This strategy offers a general and facile route to incorporate photolithography technology into organic electronics, and presents potential for developing skin‐like soft electronic devices with high device density and high performance.
PbS colloidal quantum dot solar cells (CQDSCs) are promising photovoltaic devices with a broad spectral response, solution processability and long-term air stability. Recently, major progresses have ...been achieved in the performance enhancement of CQDSCs through the chemical surface passivation of CQDs and the device engineering. However, the p-type PbS-EDT hole extraction layer presents high surface-trap density, which induces charge recombination risk and blocks the hole extraction at the PbS-EDT/Au interface. Herein, we demonstrated a method to passivate the surface traps of PbS-EDT film by post-depositing an aluminum oxide (Al2O3) layer using atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology. The ALD progress was carefully controlled to ensure that ALD Al2O3 could overcoat and infill the PbS-EDT film at the same time. This ALD Al2O3 treatment efficiently passivated the surface traps of PbS-EDT and successfully kept the proper band alignment at PbS-TBAI/PbS-EDT interface for the fast hole extraction of CQDSCs. Consequently, this method allowed the efficient carrier extraction at the PbS-EDT/Au interface through suppressing trap-induced reverse Schottky barrier. A power conversion efficiency of 7.07% was finally obtained in the PbS CQDSCs with ALD Al2O3.
•PbS-EDT/Au interface was modified by the ultrathin ALD-Al2O3 layer.•ALD-Al2O3 passivated the surface defects of PbS-EDT.•ALD-Al2O3 efficiently removed the hole extraction barrier at the PbS-EDT/Au interface.•Device with ALD-Al2O3 layer reached an efficiency of 7%, 34% improvement compared with that of the reference device.
The aim of the study was to investigate the regulatory effects of policosanol on hyperlipidemia, gut microbiota and metabolic status in a C57BL/6 mouse model. A total of 35 C57BL/6 mice were assigned ...to 3 groups, chow (n=12), high fat diet (HFD, n=12) and HFD+policosanol (n=11), then treated for 18 weeks. Policosanol supplementation significantly reduced serum triglycerides and total cholesterol, as well as the weight of brown adipose tissue (BAT) (p<0.05), without affecting body weight in HFD-fed mice (p>0.05). Combined 16S rRNA gene sequencing and untargeted metabolomic analysis demonstrated that policosanol had regulatory effects on gut microbiota and serum metabolism in mice. In obese mice, policosanol increased the proportion of
, decreased the proportion of
, and increased the ratio of
to
(p<0.05). Policosanol promoted lipolysis and thermogenesis process, including tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and pyruvate cycle, correlated with the increasing level of
,
, and decreasing level of
and
Moreover, policosanol decreased fatty acid synthase (FAS) in the iWAT of obese mice. Policosanol also increased peroxisome proliferators-activated receptor-γ (PPARγ), uncoupling Protein-1 (UCP-1), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator-1α (PGC-1α) and PR domain containing 16 (PRDM16) in brown adipose tissue (BAT) obese mice (p<0.05). This study presents the new insight that policosanol may inhibit the synthesis of fatty acids, and promote lipolysis, thermogenesis related gene expression and regulate gut microbiota constituents, which provides potential for policosanol as an antihyperlipidemia functional food additive and provide new evidence for whole grain food to replace refined food.
Flexible organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) have received extensive attention due to their outstanding advantages such as light weight, low cost, flexibility, large-area fabrication, and ...compatibility with solution-processed techniques. However, compared with a rigid substrate, it still remains a challenge to obtain good device performance by directly depositing solution-processed organic semiconductors onto an ultrathin plastic substrate. In this work, ultrathin flexible OTFTs are successfully fabricated based on spin-coated 2,7-dioctyl1benzothieno3,2-bbenzothiophene (C8-BTBT) films. The resulting device thickness is only ~320 nm, so the device has the ability to adhere well to a three-dimension curved surface. The ultrathin C8-BTBT OTFTs exhibit a mobility as high as 4.36 cm² V
s
and an on/off current ratio of over 10⁶. These results indicate the substantial promise of our ultrathin flexible C8-BTBT OTFTs for next-generation flexible and conformal electronic devices.
Flexible H 2 S sensors were fabricated based on ultrathin dinaphtho 3, 4-d:3', 4'-d' benzo 1, 2-b:4, 5b' dithiophene (Ph5T2) single-crystal organic field-effect transistors, and response performances ...at different deformation states were investigated. The flexible devices exhibited strikingly different sensing behaviors under different deformation states toward H 2 S at room temperature. In a tensile state with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{r} = \textsf {7} </tex-math></inline-formula> mm, the flexible sensor presented an unprecedented response as high as 400% at 1 ppm H 2 S, which is almost one order of magnitude higher than the response in a flat state and surpasses all reported flexible H 2 S sensors. Such a surprising improvement provides an effective way to enhance the response of gas sensors and shows the potential advantage of using flexible sensors in tensile states.
As the most extensively used gas‐sensing devices, inorganic semiconductor chemiresistors are facing great challenges in realizing mechanical flexibility and room‐temperature gas detection for ...developing next‐generation wearable sensing devices. Herein, for the first time, flexible all‐inorganic yttria‐stabilized zirconia (YSZ)/In2O3/graphitic carbon nitride (g‐C3N4) (ZIC) gas sensor is designed by employing YSZ nanofibers as substrate, and ultrathin In2O3/g‐C3N4 heterostructures as active sensing layer. The YSZ substrate possesses small nanofiber diameter (310 nm), ultrafine grain size (23.9 nm), and abundant dangling bonds, endowing it with striking mechanical flexibility and strong adhesion with In2O3/g‐C3N4 sensing layer. Meanwhile, the ultrathin thickness (≈7 nm) of In2O3/g‐C3N4 ensures that the inorganic sensing layer has tiny linear strain along with the deformation of flexible YSZ substrate, thereby enabling unusual bending capacity. To address the operating temperature issue, the gas sensor is operated by using a visible‐light‐powered strategy. Under visible‐light illumination, the flexible ZIC sensor exhibits a perfectly reversible response/recovery dynamic process and ultralow detection limit of 50 ppb to toxic nitrogen dioxide at room temperature. This work not only provides an insight into the mechanical flexibility of inorganic materials, but also offers a valuable reference for developing other flexible inorganic‐semiconductor‐based room‐temperature gas sensors.
A unique flexible all‐inorganic yttria‐stabilized zirconia (YSZ)/In2O3/graphitic carbon nitride (g‐C3N4) gas sensor is developed by employing YSZ nanofibers as substrate, and ultrathin In2O3/g‐C3N4 heterostructures as active sensing layer. Under visible‐light illumination, the flexible sensor exhibits perfectly reversible response/recovery dynamic process to toxic NO2 under extreme bending state at room temperature.
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