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Tuned tin chalcogenides rooted in hierarchical porous carbon (HPC) with N-carbon coating layers are prepared by thermal shock under various temperatures (denoted as HPC-SnS2-PAN-Various T). With the increase of annealing temperature, the morphology and phase structure of SnS2, as well as the cyclization degree of polyacrylonitrile (PAN), are significantly changed, which leads to the formation of rod-like SnS and ordered structure of conductive N-carbon layer. By combining HPC, N-carbon coating derived from the cyclization of PAN, with 1D SnS nanorods generated from structural phase transformation of SnS2, the optimized composite (HPC-SnS2-PAN-500) as anode for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) provides buffer space for volume changes during alloying/dealloying process, builds a highly conductive network as well as decreases irreversible capacity from solid electrolyte interphase and enhances the ion/electron transport. Attributed to the above merits from composition regulation and architecture modification by sulfur depletion and PAN cyclization, this target anode exhibits an extraordinary cycling stability with a high specific capacity of 652.5 mA h/g at 0.5 A/g after 900 cycles. It suggests that rod-like SnS embedded in HPC with cyclized PAN layers by thermal treatment approach renders a potential structural design of anode materials for LIBs.

Lithium sulfur batteries provide one of the most attractive opportunities for next generation energy storage devices benefiting from their particularly high energy density. However, the obstacle ma...

The graphene/mesocarbon microbead (MCMB) composite is assessed as an anode material with a high capacity for lithium-ion batteries. The composite electrode exhibits improved cycling stability and rate capability, delivering a high initial charge/discharge capacity of 421.4 mA·h/g/494.8 mA·h/g as well as an excellent capacity retention over 500 cycles at a current density of 40 mA/g. At a higher current density of 800 mA/g, the electrode still retains 35% of its initial capacity which exceeds the capacity retention of pure graphene or MCMB reference electrodes. Cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy reveal that the composite electrode favors electrochemical kinetics as compared with graphene and MCMB separately. Superior electrochemical properties suggest a strong synergetic effect between highly conductive graphene and MCMB.

Nanocubic lithium titanate (Li4Ti5O12, N-LTO) has been synthesized by a modified solid-state reaction using H-titanate nanotubes as titanium source and lithium carbonate as lithium source. The as-prepared N-LTO was highly crystalline with size ranging from 50 nm to 200 nm. The electrochemical performance of the N-LTO was investigated and compared with commercial nanoscale lithium titanate (C-LTO). The N-LTO electrode showed an initial discharge capacity of 181.0 mAh g−1 at 0.5 C with capacity retention of 86.7% after 200 cycles. At a high rate of 10 C, the N-LTO electrode retained a high reversible capacity of 149.2 mAh g−1, considerably higher compared with the value of 117.1 mAh g−1 for C-LTO. The N-LTO electrode exhibited excellent long-term cycling stability with capacity retention of 82.6% at 5 C after 1000 cycles. A full cell of LiFePO4/N-LTO was tested, showing capacity retention of 78.7% at 1 C after 100 cycles.

Selenium–sulfur solid solutions show unique advantages beyond sulfur and selenium as cathode materials for lithium batteries. Herein, we propose a dual-confined SexSy-based cathode with a three-dimensional (3D) network structure where Se0.4S0.6 is first encapsulated in double-layered hollow carbon spheres (DLHCs) and embedded by 3D graphene-like material (3DG) shells. The dissolution of polysulfides/ polyselenides in the cathode is effectively inhibited through dual confinement from DLHCs and 3DG as well as chemical binding between sulfur and selenium. Benefiting from the indispensable advantages of Se0.4S0.6 and the uniquely designed host architecture, the 3DG-DLHC-Se0.4S0.6 cathode delivers a high reversible capacity of 627 mAh g−1 at 0.2 A g−1 after 200 cycles, good rate capability of 533 mAh g−1 at 2 A g−1, and outstanding long cycling stability over 500 cycles with Coulombic efficiency almost reaching 100%.

Schedulers can compress the schedule of construction projects by overlapping design and construction activities. However, overlapping may induce increased total cost with the decrease of duration. To solve the concurrency-based time-cost tradeoff problem effectively, this paper demonstrates an overlapping optimization algorithm that identifies an optimal overlapping strategy with exact overlap rates and generates the required duration at the minimum cost. The method makes use of overlapping strategy matrix (OSM) to illustrate the dependency relationships between activities. This method then optimizes the genetic algorithm (GA) to compute an overlapping strategy with exact overlap rates by means of overlapping and crashing. This paper then proposes an integrated framework of genetic algorithm and building information modeling (BIM) to prove the practice feasibility of theoretical research. The study is valuable to practitioners because the method allows establishing a compressed schedule which meets the limited budget within the contract duration. This article is also significant to researchers because it can compute the optimal scheduling strategy with exact overlap rates, crashing degree, and resources expeditiously. The usability and validity of the optimized method are verified by a test case in this paper.

In lithium-ion battery industry, the nanoscale electrode materials usually have difficulty to be dispersed well in the electrode slurry. The inferior processability thus results in deterior...

In this work, the V2O3 nanoparticles (NPs) with ultrathin carbon shells were synthesized by a facile solvothermal process. The V2O3 NPs were about 30 nm and contained a carbon shell of about 2 nm thick. The V2O3 NPs were homogeneously dispersed and loosely packed. When used as anode material, the V2O3 core-shell NPs showed a reversible capacity up to 525 mA h g−1 at 200 mA g−1 over 200 cycles with good cycle stability and rate capability. The excellent electrochemical performance promotes its practical application in lithium-ion batteries.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which uses the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) satellites as transmitters (GNSS-based SAR), consists of the GNSS transmitter in orbit and reception equipme...

CN(CH2)2Si(CH3)(OCH2CH2OCH3)2 (BNS) is used as electrolyte solvent to improve the safety for LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 (NCM)/graphite battery. BNS increases the thermal stability of the carbonate-based electrolyte with (de) lithiated cathode/anode and the electrochemical stability of coin cells. By using an optimal BNS-based electrolyte formula, 13 Ah NCM/graphite prismatic cell achieves 95.8% retain of capacity at 2 C/3 C (charge/discharge) rate after 600 cycles. Meanwhile, 13 Ah prismatic cell exhibits improved safety performance in the nail penetration test.

Selenium disulfide (SeS2) exhibits attractive advantages beyond naked selenium and sulfur as an electroactive material for lithium storage. Herein, a three-dimensional (3D) interconnected, sulfur-doped mesoporous carbon (ISMC) with a sulfur content of 9.3 wt% has been prepared by a simple in-situ constructing strategy to confine SeS2 for lithium batteries. The sulfur doping enhances the conductivity of the carbon matrix and inhibits the diffusion of polysulfides and polyselenides, while the 3D mesoporous network facilitates fast electron and ion transport. Benefiting from the synergy between sulfur doping and 3D network architecture, the SeS2@ISMC composite displays a high reversible capacity of 486 mAh g−1 after 200 cycles at 0.5 A g−1 and outstanding rate capability of 465 mAh g−1 at 4 A g−1.

Berberine (BBR) is currently explored in the oral treatment of many disorders, especially in those involving inflammatory processes. Nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems are emerging as an effective approach for improving the poor oral absorption/bioavailability of BBR. To optimize the BBR immunoregulatory effects on a specific part of the gastrointestinal tract, here we describe a micro- and nanoencapsulated hybrid delivery system (MNEHDS) for colon-targeted oral delivery of BBR and test its therapeutic efficacy in a murine colitis model. The MNEHDS is formed by encapsulation of BBR-loaded poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles into a pH-sensitive, BBR-pre-entrapped Eudragit FS30D matrix to form a hybrid microparticle composed of the BBR and BBR nanoparticles. Once in the colonic environment, the microencapsulated BBR is almost completely released for immediate action, while BBR nanoparticles can provide sustained release of BBR subsequent to their intestinal absorption. One dose of oral MNEHDS/BBR treatment results in significant attenuation of acute colitis induced by dextran sulfate sodium. The MNEHDS/BBR also proves to be effective during chronically induced colitis with two doses given 1 week apart. The improved efficacy is accompanied by decreased production of colon inflammation. Comparatively, oral treatment with one or two 7-day courses of free BBR has less effect on ameliorating either acute or chronic colitis. Thus, MNEHDS represents a novel delivery system for BBR, and potentially other therapeutic agents, to treat inflammatory bowel disease.

Dense medium separation (DMS) is of great significance for coal cleaning. The DMS control system always involves dense medium density adjustment and ash content control that are operating on fast and slow time scales, respectively. The inherent time-varying and strongly nonlinear characteristics of the DMS process give rise to challenges for the design of this multitime scale control system. To address this issue, this article proposes a dual-rate adaptive optimal tracking control approach for the DMS system. For the basic loop process, a nonlinear adaptive PI controller containing a neural network (NN)-based unmodeled dynamics compensator is proposed. Then, a lifting technique is used to unify the time scales of the two loops accompanied by formulating a generalized controlled object, whose dynamics is completely unknown. On this basis, a data-driven operation optimization control method that combines adaptive dynamic programming algorithm and reference control is developed, which is implemented using NNs. Finally, the stability of the proposed method is analyzed. The simulation results indicate its effectiveness.

We propose an image synthesis approach that provides stratified navigation in the latent code space. With a tiny amount of partial or very low-resolution image, our approach can consistently out-perform state-of-the-art counterparts in terms of generating the closest sampled image to the ground truth. We achieve this through scale-independent editing while expanding scale-specific diversity. Scale-independence is achieved with a nested scale disentanglement loss. Scale-specific diversity is created by incorporating a progressive diversification constraint. We introduce semantic persistency across the scales by sharing common latent codes. Together they provide better control of the image synthesis process. We evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed approach through various tasks, including image outpainting, image superresolution, and cross-domain image translation.

Polyvinyl alcohol grafted poly (acrylic acid) (PVA-g-PAA) is synthesized through graft polymerization of acrylic acid (AA) onto PVA backbone via a free radical reaction. PVA-g-PAA is used as a water-soluble binder for silicon (Si) anodes in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). The enhanced adhesion strength, excellent flexibility and high electrolyte uptake after grafting reaction render PVA-g-PAA a robust binder for Si anodes. Compared to linear PVA, PAA and CMC, optimal Si-PVA-g-10PAA electrode exhibits better cycle stability, higher Coulombic efficiency and more excellent rate capability, possessing a high electrical conductivity, low SEI/charge transfer resistance and fast lithium-ion diffusion coefficient. PVA-g-PAA binder not only maintains the electrode's mechanical and electrical integrity, facilitates a favorable electrochemical kinetics, but also assists in forming a stable SEI layer on Si surface upon long-term cycling. Such a strategy sheds light on the design of novel polymer binders for practical applications of high-capacity active materials with great volume change.

Compared with monostatic Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems, bistatic SAR systems own obvious advantages, and have attracted more and more attentions from academe. A number of experiments with various configurations and platforms have verified the application potential of bistatic SAR. However, the bistatic SAR system is far more complicated than monostatic one, which means more non-ideal factors may be encountered during bistatic SAR experiments, such as motion deviation of receiver and transmitter platforms. To keep the motion state of the receiver and transmitter stable and simplify the process of implementing bistatic SAR experiments, we employ a translational invariant bistatic SAR system whose transmitter and receiver are suspended on the arm of a tower crane. In this case the transmitter and the receiver can only move along the arm of the tower crane, which makes it more convenient to control the motion state of receiver and transmitter. With the translational invariant bistatic SAR system based on a tower crane, we conducted real-scene experiments in Lianyungang, Jiangsu Province, China and some meaningful imaging results are obtained.

Image composition is an important operation to create visual content. Among image composition tasks, image blending aims to seamlessly blend an object from a source image onto a target image with lightly mask adjustment. A popular approach is Poisson image blending [23], which enforces the gradient domain smoothness in the composite image. However, this approach only considers the boundary pixels of target image, and thus can not adapt to texture of target background image. In addition, the colors of the target image often seep through the original source object too much causing a significant loss of content of the source object. We propose a Poisson blending loss that achieves the same purpose of Poisson image blending. In addition, we jointly optimize the proposed Poisson blending loss as well as the style and content loss computed from a deep network, and reconstruct the blending region by iteratively updating the pixels using the L-BFGS solver. In the blending image, we not only smooth out gradient domain of the blending boundary but also add consistent texture into the blending region. User studies show that our method outperforms strong baselines as well as state-of-the-art approaches when placing objects onto both paintings and real-world images. Code is available at: https://github.com/owenzlz/DeepImageBlending

N-cyanoethyl polyethylenimine (CN-PEI) is synthesized by modifying polyethylenimine (PEI) with acrylonitrile through a Michael addition reaction. Depending on cyanoethylation level, CN-PEI can be obtained as a form of solution, micro-emulsion or emulsion in water. CN-PEI micro-emulsion is investigated as water-soluble binder for the application of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode in lithium-ion batteries. CN-PEI binder not only maintains the outstanding dispersion capability of PEI but also exhibits an excellent adhesion strength and higher ionic conductivity because of the introduction of polar cyano groups. As a result, CN-PEI binder can effectively maintain the mechanical integrity and decrease the polarization of LFP electrode during the operation of the battery. LFP electrode with CN-PEI binder exhibits good cycle stability and enhanced rate performance delivering a capacity of 99.6% at a rate of 0.5 C after 100 cycles and a high discharge capacity of 102.4 mAh g−1 at 5 C.

Poly (3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene): tosylate (PEDOT: Tos) is synthesized by chemical oxidative polymerization with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as stabilizer in organic solvent. The effects of different molecular weight and additive amount of PVP stabilizer, various volume ratios of propylene carbonate (PC) to ethanol in organic system, different oxidative agents and various polymerization temperature/time on as-prepared PEDOT dispersion are taken into consideration and investigated systematically. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), film-forming property and electrical conductivity are studied and compared among different reaction conditions. The optimal polymerization scenario is to prepare PEDOT particles with 2 wt.% PVP (M.w. = 58,000) stabilizer and Fe2(SO4)3 oxidant at 80 °C for 24 h in organic system of PC and ethanol (volume ratio = 1: 3). Optimal PEDOT with PVP possesses more homogeneous particle size, better particle-particle connectivity in film and higher electrical conductivity (1.67*10−2 s cm−1) than that of PEDOT without PVP (5.2*10−4 s cm−1) and commercial organic PEDOT (4.7*10−4 s cm−1). The morphology and elemental composition of PEDOT particles with PVP are also investigated and compared with that of commercial organic PEDOT and aqueous PEDOT/PSS dispersion.

A novel molybdenum disulfide/carbon (MoS2/C) nanocomposite is synthesized by a simple hydrothermal method using glucose as a carbon source and Pluronic F127 as promoting agent in presence of MoS2 nanoparticles and followed by carbonization. Pluronic F127 is used as an essential agent which inhibits the spontaneous formation of carbon microspheres during the hydrothermal reaction. The composite electrode exhibits excellent cycling stability and rate capability, delivering a reversible capacity of 882.6 mA h g−1 at a current density of 50 mA g−1 and a capacity retention of 82.8% after 100 cycles at a current density of 100 mA g−1. At a higher current density of 300/500 mA g−1, it still retains a capacity of 603.6/461.6 mA h g−1 respectively, as compared to 295.6/228.4 mA h g−1 for the pristine MoS2 electrode. The composite shows favorable electrochemical kinetics compared with pristine MoS2 due to the incorporation of homogenous conductive carbon layer and its nanostructured morphology.

Nitrogen and sulfur co-doped hierarchical porous carbon (N,S-HPC) is synthesized by using polyaniline and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) as doping sources and polytetrafluoroethylene as the silica template removal agent for lithium-sulfur batteries. N,S-HPC shows the interconnected hierarchical porous network, which enables sulfur to be uniformly dispersed in the carbon matrix thus accelerating the transport of electrons and lithium ions. The S@N,S-HPC composite cathode exhibits a high capacity utilization of 1106 mA h/g at 0.2 C, together with excellent rate capacity of 600 mA h/g at 2 C, and also superior cycle life over 500 cycles with a capacity decay of 0.08 % per cycle at 1 C. The outstanding electrochemical performances for S@N,S-HPC cathode are mainly ascribed to the hierarchical porous structure of carbon and N/S co-doping, which offers sufficient interface for the deposition of solid discharge products and impedes the diffusion of polysulfides due to both physical confinement and chemical interaction by porous carbon matrix and N/S atoms.

Structural hierarchy of porous carbon has been a key role in the sulfur hosts for lithium sulfur (Li-S) batteries. Herein, coral-like hierarchical porous carbon (HPC) is developed by a dual alkaline activation process. The production of HPC is inexpensive and scalable, which gives a great promise as sulfur host for the future application of Li-S batteries. Moreover, the as-prepared material achieves an admirable interconnected conductive network, hierarchical pore size distribution and notably high pore volume. This architecture contributes to ultrafast ion diffusion, rapid mass transport, robust electrode configuration as well as effective physical adsorption for soluble polysulfide, thus enabling a favorable scaffold for Li-S battery cathodes with high sulfur utilization and exceptionally electrochemical stability. As a consequence, the HPC based sulfur cathode manifests high areal capacity of 7.5mAh/cm2 with a high sulfur loading and superb cycling stability over 500 cycles with lower sulfur loading. The classification of alkali significantly affects on the hierarchical porosity of the resultant carbon. And the correlation between the pore size distribution and electrochemical performance is revealed. This work offers a hierarchical material engineering of a sulfur host material for restricting the mobile polysulfide moieties, thus achieving a high efficiency and stable Li-S battery.

Silicon oxycarbonitride (SiOCN) composites with different carbon contents were synthesized by pyrolysis of precursors generated from aldimine condensation of 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) with different aldehydes and simultaneous hydrolysis of APTES. Both SiOCN-1 and SiOCN-5 composites, derived from formaldehyde and glutaraldehyde respectively, display similar bulky structure composed by aggregated nanospheres with a diameter of 70–100 nm. SiOCN-5 has a higher carbon content of 30.4% than 15.9% for SiOCN-1, while a lower specific surface area of 38.2 m2 g−1 than 76.0 m2 g−1 for SiOCN-1. SiOCN/S cathodes with sulfur loading of 1.2–1.5 mg cm−2 were fabricated using SiOCN as sulfur host on different current collector of aluminum foil (AL) or carbon paper (CP). When using aluminum foil as current collector, SiOCN-5/S-AL cathode exhibits better electrochemical performance than SiOCN-1/S-AL, primarily due to the higher electrical conductivity of SiOCN-5 comparing with SiOCN-1. When using porous carbon paper as current collector, SiOCN-5/S-CP cathode shows the best cycling performance with a discharge capacity of 648.9 mA h g−1 at 0.2C after 100 cycles. Even at a high rate of 1C, SiOCN-5/S-CP also exhibits an excellent cycling stability, delivering a reversible discharge capacity of 374.5 mA h g−1 after 500 cycles with a capacity retention of 73.0%.

High voltage LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 cathode material was prepared by two steps solid-state method with additive PEG dispersant. XRD, SEM, XPS and electrochemical tests have been carried out, and the results show that the PEG can promote the pyrolysis of MnO2 and limit the impurities formation. The secondary particle can also be effectively restrained in the pre-calcination of MnO2 and NiO, and the effect can be last to the final product. The capacity from Mn3+/Mn4+ couple was reduced and the whole capacity can reach 140.7 mAh g−1 with the retention rate of 81.33% after 100 cycles at 0.2C. Meanwhile, the product has better rate performance and surface stability than those prepared by traditional two-step solid-state method.

Xanthan Gum (XG) is systematically investigated and employed as water soluble binder for LiFePO4 (LFP) cathode in Li-ion batteries. XG binder exhibits good thermal stability and processes abundant functional groups such as carboxyl and hydroxyl, displaying a better adhesion strength of 0.085 N cm−1 than sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC, 0.050 N cm−1), but inferior to polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF, 0.170 N cm−1). The Rheology test reveals that the viscosity of LFP slurry prepared with XG binder is higher than that of PVDF, resulting in a better dispersion of LFP and carbon black particles. The electrochemical performances of LFP-XG electrode are investigated and compared with those of aqueous CMC and conventional PVDF binder. LFP-XG displays better cycle stability and rate performance than PVDF, comparable to CMC, which retains 55.3% capacity of C/5 at 5 C as compared to PVDF (34.8%) and CMC (57.8%). Cyclic voltammetry (CV) shows that LFP-XG has smaller redox polarization and faster lithium diffusion rate than PVDF while electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurement at specified intervals reveals its more favorable electrochemical kinetics than that with PVDF, similar to CMC, thus better rate capability. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) displays that LFP-XG has a more homogenous distribution of LFP and conductive carbon black particles with XG before cycling and better maintains its structure integrity after 100 cycles than that of PVDF. Furthermore, LFP-XG is observed to process a high ionic conductivity supported by dQ/dV profiles.

Nickel hydroxides with hierarchical micro-nano structures are prepared by a facile homogeneous precipitation method with different nickel salts (Ni(NO3)2·6H2O, NiCl2·6H2O, and NiSO4·6H2O) as raw materials. The effect of nickel sources on the microstructure and lithium storage performance of the nickel hydroxides is studied. It is found that all the three prepared samples are α-nickel hydroxide. The nickel hydroxides synthesized with Ni(NO3)2·6H2 or NiCl2·6H2O show a similar particle size of 20–30 μm and are composed of very thin nano-sheets, while the nickel hydroxide synthesized with Ni(SO4)2·6H2O shows a larger particle size (30–50 μm) and consists of very thin nano-walls. When applied as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the nickel hydroxide synthesized with NiSO4·6H2O exhibits the highest discharge capacity, but its cyclic stability is very poor. The nickel hydroxides synthesized with NiCl2·6H2O exhibit higher discharge capacity than the nickel hydroxides synthesized with Ni(NO3)2·6H2O, and both of them show much improved cyclic stability and rate capability as compared to the nickel hydroxide synthesized with Ni(SO4)2·6H2O. Moreover, pseudocapacitive behavior makes a great contribution to the electrochemical energy storage of the three samples. The discrepancies of lithium storage performance of the three samples are analyzed by ex-situ XRD, FT-IR, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and cyclic voltammetry (CV) tests.

A novel core–shell structured Si/S-doped-carbon composite with buffering voids (Si/v-SC), was prepared by a facile hydrothermal method using glucose as carbon source and simultaneously chemical polymerization of 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) in the presence of Si@SiO2 nanoparticles, and followed by carbonization and removal of the SiO2 layer. The results showed that the Si nanoparticles were embedded in the S-doped-carbon buffer space to form a core–shell structure. Compared to the Si/carbon composite (Si/v-C) without S-doping in carbon layer, the Si/v-SC composite electrode showed improved cycling and rate performance, exhibiting a reversible capacity of 664 mA h g−1 over 300 cycles at the current of 0.4 A g−1 and a high capacity of 537 mA h g−1 even at 10 A g−1. The effects of S-doping on the properties of carbon material were further investigated. XRD and Raman test revealed that the S-doping increased the interspace of carbon crystal face, and improved the amorphous structure of carbon and thus the initial coulombic efficiency.

A water-soluble conductive composite binder consisting of carboxymethyl chitosan (CCTS) as a binder and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) as a conduction-promoting agent is reported for the LiFePO 4 (LFP) cathode in Li-ion batteries. The introduction of conductive PEDOT:PSS as a conductive composite binder facilitates the formation of homogeneous and continuous conducting bridges throughout the electrode and raises the compaction density of the electrode sheet by decreasing the amounts of the commonly used conducting agent of acetylene black. The optimized replacement ratios of acetylene black with PEDOT:PSS (acetylene black/PEDOT:PSS = 1:1, by weight) are obtained by measuring electrical conductivity, peel strength and compaction density of the electrode sheets. The LFP half-cell with the optimized conductive binder exhibits better cycling and rate performance and more favorable electrochemical kinetics than that using only acetylene black conducting agent. The pilot application of PEDOT:PSS/CCTS binder in 10 Ah CCTS-LFP prismatic cell exhibits a comparable cycling performance, retaining 89.7% of capacity at 1 C/2 C (charge/discharge) rate as compared with 90% for commercial PVDF-LFP over 1000 cycles, and better rate capability than that of commercial PVDF-LFP, retaining 98% capacity of 1 C at 7 C rate as compared with 95.4% for PVDF-LFP.

Two fluorosilanes with oligo(ethylene oxide) unites were synthesized through hydrosilylation of chlorosilane with allyl substituted oligo(ethylene oxide) ether followed by fluorination with potassium fluoride. The synthesized fluorosilane compounds exhibited lower viscosity, higher dielectric constant and higher oxidation potential, compared with their non-fluorination counterparts. Difluoro(3-(2-(2-methoxyethoxy)ethoxy)propyl)methylsilane (DFSM 2 ), one of the two compounds, was evaluated as high-voltage and thermal stable electrolyte co-solvent with the conventional carbonate-based electrolytes. Using an optimized electrolyte of 1M LiPF 6 in EC/DFSM 2 /EMC (2/3/5 in vol .) with addition of 5 wt % fluoroethylene carbonate (FEC), high-voltage LiCoO 2 (LCO)/graphite full cell displayed outstanding cycling stability of 92.5% capacity retention after 135 cycles at 4.4 V upper cutoff voltage. Characterized by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis, the DFSM 2 -based electrolyte demonstrated higher thermal stability with lithiated graphite anode and delithiated LCO cathode, thus better safety feature compared with the conventional electrolyte.

Oligo(ethylene oxide)-functionalized trialkoxysilanes can be used as novel electrolytes for high-voltage cathode, such as LiCoO2 (4.35 V) and Li1.2Ni0.2Mn0.6O2 (4.6 V); however, they are not well compatible with graphite anode. In this study, a synergistic solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) film-forming effect between [3-[2-(2-methoxyethoxy)ethoxy]propyl]-trimethoxysilane (TMSM2) and propylene carbonate (PC) on graphite electrode was investigated. Excellent SEI film-forming capability and cycling performance was observed in graphite/Li cells using the electrolyte of 1 M LiPF6 in the binary solvent of TMSM2 and PC, with the PC content in the range of 10–30 vol.%. Meanwhile, the graphite/Li cells delivered higher specific capacity and better capacity retention in the electrolyte of 1 M LiPF6 in TMSM2 and PC (TMSM2:PC = 9:1, by vol.), compared with those in the electrolyte of 1 M LiPF6 in TMSM2 and EC (TMSM2:EC = 9:1, by vol.). The synergistic SEI film-forming properties of TMSM2 and PC on the surface of graphite anode was characterized by electrolyte solution structure analysis through Raman spectroscopy and surface analysis detected by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis.

Three choline-based ionic liquids functionalized with trimethylsilyl, allyl, and cynoethyl groups are synthesized in an inexpensive route as safe electrolytes for high-voltage lithium-ion batteries. The thermal stabilities, viscosities, conductivities, and electrochemical windows of these ILs are reported. Hybrid electrolytes were formulated by doping with 0.6 M LiPF6/0.4 M lithium oxalydifluoroborate (LiODFB) as salts and dimethyl carbonate (DMC) as co-solvent. By using 0.6 M LiPF6/0.4 M LiODFB trimethylsilylated choline-based IL (SN1IL-TFSI)/DMC as electrolyte, LiCoO2/graphite full cell showed excellent cycling performance with a capacity of 152 mAh g-1 and 99% capacity retention over 90 cycles at a cut-off voltage of 4.4 V. The propagation rate of SN1IL-TFSI)/DMC electrolyte is only one quarter of the commercial electrolyte (1 M LiPF6 EC/DEC/DMC, v/v/v = 1/1/1), suggesting a better safety feature.

The spatial variance of target scattering characteristic would introduce severe impact on the imaging results under the wide aperture for bistatic synthetic aperture radar (BSAR) with navigation satellites. If the isotropic point scattering mechanisms are adopted in image formation processing, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the image will decrease in such case. Therefore, it is necessary to study the corresponding compensation processing to improve the image SNR. This study proposes an adaptive imaging algorithm to compensate for the spatial variance caused by the target scattering in wide aperture of the system. By using experimental equipment of the research group, the echo data of 1600 s from the scene was collected and processed. Comparing strong scattering area imaging results before and after adaptive phase compensation, the focusing performance is improved. Also thus, the feasibility of wide aperture BSAR imaging based on navigation satellite was verified preliminarily.

In this paper, we study the problem of generating a set of realistic and diverse backgrounds when given only a small foreground region. We refer to this task as image outpainting. The technical challenge of this task is to synthesize not only plausible but also diverse image outputs. Traditional generative adversarial networks suffer from mode collapse. While recent approaches [32], [28] propose to maximize or preserve the pairwise distance between generated samples with respect to their latent distance, they do not explicitly prevent the diverse samples of different conditional inputs from collapsing. Therefore, we propose a new regularization method to encourage diverse sampling in conditional synthesis. In addition, we propose a feature pyramid discriminator to improve the image quality. Our experimental results show that our model can produce more diverse images without sacrificing visual quality compared to state-of-the-arts approaches in both the CelebA face dataset [29] and the Cityscape scene dataset [2]. Code is available at: https://github.com/owenzlz/DiverseOutpaint

s Arabic gum grafted poly (acrylic acid) (GA-g-PAA) is prepared through a free radical graft polymerization of acrylic acid onto Arabic gum. Crosslinkable aqueous binder is developed by combining GA-g-PAA and branched polyols (pentaerythrotol, PER; triethanolamine, TEOA) as crosslinking agent for Si anodes of lithium-ion batteries. The aqueous composite binder undergoes crosslinking at about 110 °C to form robust crosslinked networks, matching well with the processing temperature of the electrode sheet in industry. GA-g-PAA/PER binder displays higher adhesion strength than GA-g-PAA and GA-g-PAA/TEOA. The Si electrode with GA-g-PAA/PER exhibits a slightly better cycling stability at 0.2C for 100 cycles, better rate capability than GA-g-PAA and GA-g-PAA/TEOA. At a high rate of 1C, Si electrode with GA-g-PAA/P delivers a higher specific capacity of 1968.1 mAhg−1 with a better capacity retention of 57.5% when compared with those with GA-g-PAA and GA-g-PAA/T binder.

Novel the bilayered electrospun biosheet with rapid cell mimiciking and proliferative efficacy will be suitable for wound healing application. The optimized concentration of gelatin (G) and sodium alginate (A) biosheet with nanofibrous Poly (3-hydroxybutyric acid) (P) as a bilayered elctrospun matrix through electrospinning. The engineered GAP bilayered biosheet involves tissue formation at extra cellular matrix (ECM) which further characterized its function in vitro and invivo. Here we fabricated GAP which exhibit better physiochemical properties, biological and mechanical properties with superior prosomes it enhance air passable at skin wounds. The Bilayered biosheet matrix possess better biocompatibility, cell adherence, fructuous and cell to cell interactions evaluated using cell lines. Furthermore, GAP bilayered matrix regulates growth factors to attain maximum wound closure efficiency during invivo. Thus, the fabricated GAP electrospun biosheet would be a possible wound dressing for skin wound applications.

Driven by intriguingly high energy density up to 2600 Wh/kg, lithium sulfur (Li-S) battery is considered as one of the most promising energy storage devices compared with conventional lithium ion battery. The main obstructions plaguing Li-S batteries associated with the electrical resistivity of sulfur/lithium sulfides, the dissolution of polysulfides in ether-based electrolyte and the large volume variation, result in poor cycling performance and rate capability. Here, we develop a polymer optimized cathode that is polydopamine layer coated on the surface of sulfur loaded hierarchical porous graphitic carbon composites (HPGC-S-PD) by a simple in-situ polymerization method toward the highly suppressed shuttle effect, thus the significantly improved cell performance. Attributed to the superiorities of the structure engineering including the strengthened polysulfide trapping, accelerated ionic conductivity and stable electrode construction, this cathode can deliver an excellent cycling performance over 700 cycles at 1 C, a high areal capacity of 7.25 mAh/cm2 with raised sulfur loading as high as 5.15 mg/cm2. Meanwhile, the obtained cathode can work well with a lower E/S ratio compared with the non-coated cell, which suggests the immense possibility for yielding a practically Li-S battery with high energy density based on this electrode architecture. Strikingly, the pouch cell with optimized cathode material can realize an energy density of 272 Wh/kg after 40 cycles at 0.1 C. This rational design of sulfur cathode combining HPGC with polymer coating by a scalable strategy provides a comprehensive understanding of the structural engineering for sulfur cathodes in pursuit of practically high performance Li-S batteries.

Nanostructured sulfur cathode with a multiple core-shelled structure, featured with the spherical double-layered hollow carbon/sulfur composite (DLHC/S) coated with a conductive layer of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS), is designed and synthesized for lithium-sulfur batteries. Transmission electron microscope images of DLHC/S single nanoparticle show that the sulfur aggregates predominantly in the interior space between the two carbon shells by using a vacuum infiltration process. The electric conductivity of DLHC/S@PEDOT:PSS increases over 5 times as comparing to DLHC/S without PEDOT:PSS coating. The composite cathode exhibits a high reversible capacity of 1089 mAh g−1 at 0.2C and superior rate capacity of 510 mAh g−1 even at 4 C, and also remarkable cycling stability with a capacity decay of 0.097% per cycle after 500 cycles at 1 C. The excellent electrochemical performances for DLHC/S@PEDOT:PSS cathode are primarily attributed to the engineering of the unique multiple core-shell structure of DLHC/S@PEDOT:PSS, which inhibits the sulfur dissolution into the electrolyte and the polysulfide shuttle effect, together with the conductivity enhancement due to PEDOT:PSS coating.

Synthesis of a novel small molecule accepter with perylenediimide linked through thiophene ring with triphenylamine is described. Introducing thiophene unit leads to extending the molecular absorption spectrum to the range of 330 nm–700 nm. The molecule showed the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital level (LUMO) of −3.80 eV and the highest occupied molecular orbital level (HOMO) of −5.60 eV. The X-ray Diffraction (XRD) spectra confirmed that the molecule self-assemble in the solid phase by edge-to-face aromatic interaction, and the addition of 1, 8-diiodooctane in the solvent can adjust its stacking, and thus improve the crystallinity and electron mobility. Solution-processed bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells constructed using the small molecule as acceptor and the polymer of PBDTTT-C-T as donor showed the best efficiency of 1.92%.

To improve corrosion resistance of magnesium alloy AZ91D, y-Mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane (MPTS) was assembled on the surface of micro-arc oxidation (MAO) treated magnesium alloy by self-assembly membrane (SAM) technique. The surface morphology and chemical components of the MAO/SAM composite coatings were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS). The corrosion resistance of samples was investigated by potentiodynamic polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and total immersion tests in a 3.5 wt % NaCl solution. The measured EIS data were simulated by an equivalent circuit. Also the molecular dynamic simulation was used to study the adsorption behavior at the molecular level. The results showed that the surface of magnesium alloy was well covered by the MAO/SAM composite coatings with a better corrosion resistance. Chemical adsorption was formed between the organic molecules and the surface of the MAO coating. The approach presented here afforded an effective alternative for surface modification of magnesium-based materials to meet the many aspects of the application requirements.

Al-substituted Ni(OH) 2 samples with Al 3+ /Ni 2+ mole ratio of 0%, 10% and 20% have been prepared by a very facile chemical co-precipitation method. The microstructure of the prepared samples are analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), and Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The results reveal that the pure Ni(OH) 2 sample is β -Ni(OH) 2 with nanosheets hierarchical structure; the sample with 10% Al is mixed phase α / β- Ni(OH) 2 with hybrid nanosheets/nanoparticles hierarchical structure; the sample with 20% Al is α- Ni(OH) 2 with irregular nanoparticles hierarchical structure. The lithium storage performances of the prepared samples are characterized by cyclic voltammograms (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and charge–discharge tests. The results demonstrate that Al substitution could improve the lithium storage performances of nickel hydroxide. In particular, the mixed phase α / β- Ni(OH) 2 with 10% Al exhibited the highest electrochemical activity, the best rate performance, and superior cycling stability. For example, after 30 charge/discharge cycles under a current density of 200 mA g −1 , the mixed phase α / β- Ni(OH) 2 with 10% Al can still deliver a specific discharge capacity of 964 mAh g −1 , much higher than of for the α- Ni(OH) 2 with 20% Al (681 mAh g −1 ) and the pure Ni(OH) 2 (419 mAh g −1 ).

CdS nanoparticles with high uniformity have been synthesized through a new liquid–liquid approach, using dimethyl sulfoxide and the mixture of oleyl amine and oleic acid as separate solvents, more convenient inorganic cadmium salt as cadmium source, and sulfur powder as sulfur source. The process can be conducted under mild conditions. It is found that the initial Cd/S molar ratio of precursor plays important role in controlling particle size. Higher concentration of sulfur precursor results in the larger particle size. The obtained colloidal CdS nanocrystals show obvious absorption and fluorescence in visible light region. When using methylene blue as degradation agent, the obtained CdS nanoparticles exhibit high photocatalytic ability.

A novel organosilicon-based ionic plastic crystal, N,N,N,-diethylmethyl-N-[(trimethylsilyl)methyl]ammonium bistrifluoromethane sulfonimide ([DTMA][TFSI]) was designed and synthesized as solid-state electrolyte for lithium-ion batteries. The chemical structure and the physical and electrochemical properties were characterized in detail. The ionic conductivity of [DTMA][TFSI] was improved significantly by doping with lithium oxalyldifluoroborate (LiODFB) and propylene carbonate (PC). An optimized plastic crystal composite ([DTMA][TFSI]:LiODFB:PC=8:1:1 in molar ratio) as a solid-state electrolyte exhibited a decent cycling stability in LiFePO4/Li half-cell, with a specific discharge capacity of 144 mA·h/g and capacity retention of 94% after 50 cycles at C/20.

Aliovalently Ce 3+ -doped Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 (LTO) is firstly synthesized by a sol-gel method using Ce(CH 3 COOH) 3 as the dopant and CH 3 COOLi/(C 4 H 9 O ) 4 Ti as starting materials. The structure and morphology of Ce 3+ -doped LTO with various doping level (Li 4 Ti 5-x Ce x O 12 ; x = 0, 0.05, 0.10, 0.15 and 0.20) are characterized by XRD, EDX, Raman, XPS, SEM and TEM. Pure phase Ce 3+ -doped Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 is obtained when x ≤ 0.10, while CeO 2 impurity is observed when x > 0.10. The Ce 3+ -doped LTO with appropriate content of CeO 2 impurity shows much improved rate capability and specific capacity compared with the pristine and Ce 3+ -doped LTO without CeO 2 impurity. Particularly, the Li 4 Ti 5-x Ce x O 12 (x = 0.15) electrode exhibits the best rate capability and long-term cycling stability among all samples, delivering a capacity of 120.0 mAh g −1 at 5C even after 1000 cycles. This work demonstrates that aliovalently Ce 3+ -doping is an effective approach for enhancing LTO’s rate-performance.

Main obstacles from the shuttle effect and slow conversion rate of soluble polysulfide compromise the sulfur utilization and cycling life for lithium sulfur (Li-S) batteries. In pursuit of a practically viable high performance Li-S battery, a separator configuration (CoS2 /HPGC/interlayer) as efficient polysulfide trapping barrier is reported. This configuration endows great advantages, particularly enhanced conductivity, promoted polysulfide trapping capability, accelerated sulfur electrochemistry, when using the functional interlayer for Li-S cells. Attributed to the above merits, such cell shows excellent cyclability, with a capacity of 846 mAh g-1 after 250 cycles corresponding to a high capacity retention of 80.2% at 0.2 C, and 519 mAh g-1 after 500 cycles at 1C (1C = 1675 mA g-1 ). In addition, the optimized separator exhibits a high initial areal capacity of 4.293 mAh cm-2 at 0.1C. Moreover, with CoS2 /HPGC/interlayer, the sulfur cell enables a low self-discharge rate with a very high capacity retention of 97.1%. This work presents a structural engineering of the separator toward suppressing the dissolution of soluble Li2 Sn moieties and simultaneously promoting the sulfur conversion kinetics, thus achieving durable and high capacity Li-S batteries.

A novel aminoakyldisiloxane compound, (3-(N,N-dimethylamino)diethoxypropyl) pentamethyldisiloxane (DSON), is reported as an effective electrolyte additive for improving the electrochemical performances of high energy density power batteries of nickel-rich LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 (NCM622)/graphite. The NCM622/graphite cells using DSON addition in the carbonate-based reference electrolyte exhibit enhanced electrochemical performances, especially high temperature performances including long cycle life and high temperature storage. The pouch cell (1 Ah) with 0.2 wt% DSON retained a capacity of 88% as compared with 84% for that without DSON in electrolyte after 200 cycles at 45 °C. The mechanism investigation reveals that DSON acts as a film-forming additive for constructing uniform conductive cathode electrolyte interphase (CEI) layer upon NCM622 particles, which suppresses the internal cracks and prohibits the irreversible phase transformation of NCM622. DSON also serves as an effective water/acid scavenger and inhibits the hydrolysis of LiPF6, thus effectively blocking the occurrence of side reactions and the dissolution of transition metal ions from cathode. Therefore, NCM622 cathode sheet maintains a better integrity surface morphology after 100 cycles. This work demonstrates that aminoakyldisiloxane is promising for practical use as effective electrolyte additive for high energy density power batteries of nickel-rich NCM/graphite.

Dense medium separation (DMS) is an important process for the coal industry, but its time-varying and strongly nonlinear characteristics make it difficult to operate stably. To address this problem, this paper first adopts knowledge-based linear model and data-driven virtual unmodeled dynamics to formulate the DMS process. Then a model-data-based switching adaptive control approach is proposed to achieve the online adjustment of set point of dense medium density, which is a key operation parameter for the low-ash coal in production. To realize adaptive ability of the control system, the online parameter estimation methods for the linear model and virtual unmodeled dynamics are adopted, and their convergence are fully discussed, followed by the stability and convergence analysis of the closed-loop system. Finally, the effectiveness is demonstrated by using real data and semi-physical simulations.

Selenium-sulfur solid solutions (SexSy) attracts soaring attention owing to its improved electrical conductivity over sulfur and higher theoretical specific capacity than selenium. Herein, high-performance lithium-selenium/sulfur batteries with a dual-confined cathode configuration by encapsulating SeS2 in double-layered hollow micro/mesoporous carbon spheres (DSMCs) with a conductive polyaniline (PANI) protection sheath are proposed. Polysulfides/polyselenides are efficiently restricted in the cathode via physical and chemical entrapment from DSMCs and PANI as well as chemical binding between selenium and sulfur. Benefiting from the distinct advantages of SeS2 and the well-constructed host framework, the cathode achieves high capacity utilization of 1018 mAh g−1 at 0.2 A g−1, together with outstanding rate capability of 619 mAh g−1 at 2 A g−1 and excellent cycle life over 500 cycles with almost 100% Coulombic efficiency. The novel SexSy-based cathode demonstrates a promising route to surmount some bottlenecks of current lithium-sulfur systems for high-performance rechargeable batteries.

The influence of the length of cyclic prefix to ML algorithm synchronization performance has been studied. On the basis, an improved algorithm with variable length of cyclic prefix is proposed. The proposed algorithm has better synchronization performance than ML algorithm at low signal to noise ratio.

The polyacrylic latex (LA132) was firstly reported as a water-soluble binder for LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 (NCM) cathode in Li-ion battery. The electrochemical performances of NCM cathode with LA132 binder were investigated and compared with the conventional water-soluble sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and commercial non-aqueous polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF). NCM cathode with LA132 binder exhibited a much higher specific capacity of 146 mAh g−1 and capacity retention of 96.4 % after 100 cycles as compared with 122 mAh g−1/88 % and 121 mAh g−1/75% for the NCM electrode with CMC and PVDF, respectively. In addition, NCM cathode with LA132 binder exhibited better rate capability than that of CMC and PVDF, e.g., retaining 34.3 % capacity of C/5 at 5 C rate as compared with 28.5 and 10.9 % for CMC and PVDF, respectively.

Large scale optimization has become a well-recognised field in many science and engineering applications and a variety of metaheuristic algorithms adopting cooperative coevolution (CC) framework with problem decomposition have been applied to solve them. In this paper, a novel decomposition strategy termed as random selection is proposed. In random selection strategy, only a small part of decision variables are randomly selected to form a group for evolving at every iteration and the maximum number of randomly selected decision variables are limited by the parameter RSSCALE. By random selection, the randomly selected searching subspace is explored sufficiently in each iteration and the whole search space can be fully covered after several iterations. We evaluate the random selection strategy by combining quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization (RSQPSO) and a comparative study is carried out on a set of benchmark functions between RSQPSO and four state-of-the-art algorithms, which were specially designed for large scale optimization. The comparative results show that the proposed approach performs well for solving large scale optimization problems.