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The high capacity of Co3O4 nanoflowers (NFs) on Ni foam as anodes in Li ion batteries is reported in this paper. The NFs grown firmly on Ni foam is convenient for the construction of lithium ion batteries without any extra electrode preparation process. The NFs presents an initial discharge capacity of 811mAh g1 at a current of 1 C. Our facile solvothermal film growth technique offers an exciting opportunity for growth of metal oxide nanostructures on substrates with practical application in lithium ion batteries.

The morphologicalstability of a planar interface with the inclusion of the anisotropic surface tension is studied. The dispersion relation is obtained by means of the multi-variable expansion method. The result shows that the morphological stability of the solidification system in the extremely short wave region depends on the undercooling. As the anisotropic surface tension parameter increases the perturbation growth rate of the interface increases and the solidification system in the extremely short-wave region tends to destabilize.

Transparent conducting ZnO:Zr thin films were deposited on glass substrates by DC reactive magnetron sputtering in Ar+O2ambience with different Ar/O2 ratios. The structural, electrical and optical properties of ZnO:Zr films were analyzed by X-ray diffraction, four-point probe measurements and UV–vis spectrophotometers. When Ar/O2ratio increases from 20:1 to 25:1, the resistivity significantly decreases because of the improvement of the crystallinity. However, with further increase in Ar/O2ratio, the crystallinity begins to deteriorate resulting in an increase in the resistivity. The films deposited at the optimum Ar/O2ratio of 25:1 have the minimum resistivity of 1.4×10-3Ω•cm and a high transmittance of above 92%.