How to make electrolytes more efficiently? Designing electrolytes by thermodynamics
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 18-May-2025 08:09 ET (18-May-2025 12:09 GMT/UTC)
Changing the performance of batteries has always been a difficult problem to be overcome. As the "blood" of the battery, the electrolyte plays a significant role and is a hot research topic. However, the new system of the electrolyte has relied on the trial-and-error method, wasting a great deal of time and cost. Recently, a team from the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed a thermodynamic competitive equilibrium theory, which for the first time revealed the thermodynamic laws of the solvation structure of electrolytes. This provides theoretical insight for the development of high-performance electrolytes.
This review focuses on the electrochemical engineering in aqueous metal-ion batteries. Under large loading mass or thick electrode conditions, the challenges and solutions faced by anode, electrolytes, interfaces and cathode are discussed in detail from the perspective of ion mass transfer and electrode reaction, providing new ideas for addressing the battery performance degradation during the electrode/battery scaleup.
Here we report an efficient catalyst with highly dispersed MoOx sites on metallic Ru for the selective hydrogenolysis of esters to alkanes under 150 ℃, which exhibits 5 times higher activity than that of the Ru/C catalyst. The highly dispersed MoOx sites on ruthenium maximize the interfacial sites and prevents the C─C bond cleavage side reaction, ensuring high conversion and selectivity to diesel-range alkanes.
In response to the growing demands of advanced 5G/6G communication technologies, millimeter-wave vortex beams have emerged as a promising solution to increase channel capacities. This paper introduces a novel and efficient method for vortex beam generation by leveraging the intrinsic singularities of dipole scatterers and enhancing their performance through non-local coupling. We demonstrate that the intrinsic singularities—amplitude-zero points in the scattering patterns of electric dipole (ED) and magnetic dipole (MD) resonances -- enable the conversion of spin angular momentum (SAM) into orbital angular momentum (OAM), generating a vortex electric field distribution. By arranging these dipolar units into a periodic array, we establish a dual-resonance non-local metasurface that improves directivity and efficiency via non-local collective interactions and the generalized Kerker effect. This configuration significantly enhances forward scattering, producing highly directional vortex beams. Our experimental results show that the non-local metasurface achieves a vortex conversion efficiency approximately 2.2 times higher than that of a reference structure around 40 GHz. This alignment-free, high-efficiency solution offers great potential for expanding millimeter-wave communication capacity and advancing photonic applications.
Deep-blue perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) based on reduced-dimensional perovskites (RDPs) still face a few challenges including severe trap-assisted nonradiative recombination, sluggish exciton transfer, and undesirable bathochromic shift of the electroluminescence spectra. An in situ chlorination (isCl) post-treatment strategy was employed to regulate phase reconstruction and renovate multiple defects of RDPs including halide vacancies and lead-chloride antisite defects. Consequently, deep-blue PeLEDs with a maximum external quantum efficiency of 6.17% at 454 nm were demonstrated.
The development of color routers (CRs) realizes modulation of photon momentum on the frequency and spatial domains. Scientists in China demonstrate an active manipulation of dichromatic photon momentum via electron-induced CRs, where the radiation patterns are manipulated at nanoscale precision within a single nanoantenna unit. Moreover, an encrypted display device based on programmable modulation of the CR array is designed and implemented. This technique will find applications in photonic devices and quantum information technologies.
A review in MedComm–Biomaterials and Applications highlights how nanoparticles are revolutionizing breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. These advanced nanomaterials enhance early detection, reduce side effects, and combat drug resistance, offering promising solutions for aggressive subtypes like triple-negative breast cancer.
An international research team studying fossilized oyster shells has revealed substantial annual temperature variation in sea water during the Early Cretaceous. The finding overturns the assumption that Earth's greenhouse periods are marked by universally warmer and uniformly stable temperatures.
Subwavelength optics delves into the study of light at spatial scales smaller than its wavelength, opening up new possibilities for understanding light–matter interactions. Over the past few decades, significant advancements have been made in the field, ranging from fundamental theories and technologies to practical engineering applications. A special issue in Engineering 2025 reported recent research on various topics such as nonlinear optics, chirality, optical singularities, and so forth.