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Low ionic conductivity and large interfacial impedance between the electrode and electrolyte are the main bottleneck issues of the current solid electrolytes. In this study, a novel 3D hierarchical solid electrolyte was developed to tackle the large interfacial impedance problem. A flexible polyethylene oxide/lithium chlorate (PEO/LiClO 4) was in-situ formed inside the 3D porous Li 6.28 La 3 Zr 2 Al 0.24 O 12 (LLZAO) network by simply using a cleanroom wiper as the template. The obtained 3D LLZAO-PEO/LiClO 4 composite solid electrolyte exhibited a high ionic conductivity of 2.25 × 10−5 S cm−1 at 30 °C, being 30.7 times higher than that of pristine PEO/LiClO 4 electrolyte. The improved ionic conductivity was attributed to the 3D porous LLZAO structure with continuous fast ion transport pathways. In addition, the 3D LLZAO network can effectively inhibited the growth of lithium dendrite, leading to excellent stability and desirable safety during lithium stripping/plating cycling. Furthermore, the all-solid-state LiFePO 4 /Li battery system based on the obtained 3D LLZAO-PEO/LiClO 4 electrolyte showed a high initial discharge specific capacity of 143.8 mAh·g−1 and a high capacity retention of 86% after 200 cycles at 60 °C. This 3D composite solid electrolyte design is very effective in reducing the interfacial impedance and provides a solution for the further development of high-performance solid electrolyte for all-solid-state rechargeable batteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bandgap modulation and electronic properties modulation of two-dimensional HfSi 2 N 4 monolayer induced by strain, electric field and atomic adsorption are studied by first principles. The HfSi 2 N 4 monolayer was found to be dynamically, thermally, and mechanically stable at equilibrium, and it is a direct semiconductor with a bandgap of 1.87 eV. The bandgap of the HfSi 2 N 4 monolayer can be precisely modulated by strain. Under the action of strain, HfSi 2 N 4 monolayer not only transforms from direct semiconductor to indirect semiconductor, but also improves the absorption of visible light. An external electric field in the 0-0.5 eV/Å range can also modulate the bandgap of HfSi 2 N 4 monolayer from 1.87 eV to 0 eV, and most importantly, at an external electric field of 0.5 eV/Å, HfSi 2 N 4 monolayer shows the characteristics of spin gapless semiconductor. The calculated adsorption energy shows that the structures of H, O and F atoms adsorbed by HfSi 2 N 4 monolayer can all exist stably. The bandgap of the configuration after adsorption of O and F atoms is significantly reduced compared with that of HfSi 2 N 4 monolayer. Furthermore, the HfSi 2 N 4 monolayer after adsorption of H and F atoms is transformed into a magnetic semiconductor. METHOD: All calculations were performed using Vienna ab initial simulation package, The electronic structure, mechanical properties, electronic properties and other properties were carried out using generalized gradient approximation (GGA-PBE), supplemented by HSE06 and GGA + U. The total-energy and force convergence are less than 10 -6  eV and 0.001 eV/Å, respectively. The vacuum on the z-axis is selected 20 Å. The vdW interactions were corrected using the Grimme scheme (DFT-D3)., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Diamond is considered the most promising next-generation semiconductor material due to its excellent physical characteristics. It has been more than three decades since the discovery of a special structure named n-diamond. However, despite extensive efforts, its crystallographic structure and properties are still unclear. Here, we show that subdisordered structures in diamond provide an explanation for the structural feature of n-diamond. Monocrystalline diamond with subdisordered structures is synthesized via the chemical vapor deposition method. Atomic-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy characterizations combined with the picometer-precision peak finder technology and diffraction simulations reveal that picometer-scale shifts of atoms within cells of diamond govern the subdisordered structures. First-principles calculations indicate that the bandgap of diamond decreases rapidly with increasing shifting distance, in accordance with experimental results. These findings clarify the crystallographic structure and electronic properties of n-diamond and provide new insights into the bandgap adjustment in diamond.

Cytokinesis is required for faithful division of cytoplasmic components and duplicated nuclei into two daughter cells. Midbody, a protein-dense organelle that forms at the intercellular bridge, is indispensable for successful cytokinesis. However, the regulatory mechanism of cytokinesis at the midbody still remains elusive. Here, we unveil a critical role for NudC-like protein 2 (NudCL2), a co-chaperone of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90), in cytokinesis regulation by stabilizing regulator of chromosome condensation 2 (RCC2) at the midbody in mammalian cells. NudCL2 localizes at the midbody, and its downregulation results in cytokinesis failure, multinucleation and midbody disorganization. Using iTRAQ-based quantitative proteomic analysis, we find that RCC2 levels are decreased in NudCL2 knockout (KO) cells. Moreover, Hsp90 forms a complex with NudCL2 to stabilize RCC2, which is essential for cytokinesis. RCC2 depletion mirrors phenotypes observed in NudCL2-downregulated cells. Importantly, ectopic expression of RCC2 rescues the cytokinesis defects induced by NudCL2 deletion, but not vice versa. Together, our data reveal the significance of the NudCL2/Hsp90/RCC2 pathway in cytokinesis at the midbody., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Higher Education Press.)

Due to their high wavelength selectivity and strong anti-interference capability, solar-blind UV photodetectors hold broad and important application prospects in fields like flame detection, missile warnings, and secure communication. Research on solar-blind UV detectors for amorphous Ga 2 O 3 is still in its early stages. The presence of intrinsic defects related to oxygen vacancies significantly affects the photodetection performance of amorphous Ga 2 O 3 materials. This paper focuses on growing high quality amorphous Ga 2 O 3 films on silicon substrates through atomic layer deposition. The study investigates the impact of annealing atmospheres on Ga 2 O 3 films and designs a blind UV detector for Ga 2 O 3 . Characterization techniques including atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) are used for Ga 2 O 3 film analysis. Ga 2 O 3 films exhibit a clear transition from amorphous to polycrystalline after annealing, accompanied by a decrease in oxygen vacancy concentration from 21.26% to 6.54%. As a result, the response time of the annealed detector reduces from 9.32 s to 0.47 s at an external bias of 10 V. This work demonstrates that an appropriate annealing process can yield high-quality Ga 2 O 3 films, and holds potential for advancing high-performance solar blind photodetector (SBPD) development., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Lipoprotein(a) (Lp[a]) is a particle consisting of a low-density lipoprotein (LDL)-like core connected to an apolipoprotein(a) chain, which is an established risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However, studies addressing the relationship between atrial fibrillation (AF) and Lp(a) demonstrated conflicted results. Thus, we sought to evaluate this relationship by conducting this systemic review and meta-analysis. We performed a comprehensive systematic search of health science databases, including PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, MEDLINE, and ScienceDirect, to identify all relevant literature from their inception to March 1, 2023. We identified nine related articles, which were eventually included in this study. Our study showed no association between Lp(a) with new-onset AF (HR = 1.45, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.57-3.67, p = .432). In addition, genetically elevated Lp(a) was not associated with the risk of atrial fibrillation (OR = 1.00, 95% CI: 1.00-1.00, p = .461). Different stratification of Lp(a) levels may have different outcomes. Also, higher Lp(a) levels may be inversely associated with the risk of developing AF compared to those with lower levels. Lp(a) levels were not associated with incident AF. Further research is needed to identify the mechanism underlying these results and better understand Lp(a) stratification for AF and the possible inverse association between Lp(a) and AF., (© 2023 The Authors. Clinical Cardiology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Flexible solar cells, with the merits of structure compactness and shape transformation, are promising power sources for future electronic devices. However, frangible indium tin oxide-based transparent conductive substrates severely limit the flexibility of solar cells. Herein, we develop a flexible transparent conductive substrate of silver nanowires semi-embedded in colorless polyimide (denoted as AgNWs/cPI) via a simple and effective substrate transfer method. A homogeneous and well-connected AgNW conductive network can be constructed through modulating the silver nanowire suspension with citric acid. As a result, the prepared AgNWs/cPI shows low sheet resistance of about 21.3 ohm sq. -1 , high transmittance at 550 nm of 94%, and smooth morphology with the peak-to-valley roughness value of 6.5 nm. The perovskite solar cells (PSCs) on AgNWs/cPI exhibit power conversion efficiency of 14.98% with negligible hysteresis. Moreover, the fabricated PSCs maintain nearly 90% initial efficiency after bending for 2000 cycles. This study sheds light on the importance of suspension modification for the distribution and connection of AgNWs and paves a way for the development of high-performance flexible PSCs for practical applications., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts to declare., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Micro-oxidation is a fatal problem for some precision oxygen-free copper materials, and it is difficult to detect with the naked eyes. However, manual inspection using microscope equipment is expensive, subjective, and time-consuming. The automatic high-definition micrograph system equipped with micro-oxidation detection algorithm can detect more quickly, efficiently, and accurately. In this study, a micro-oxidation small objection detection model, MO-SOD, is proposed to detect the oxidation degree on oxygen-free copper surface based on microimaging system. This model is developed for rapid detection on the robot platform combined with high-definition microphotography system. The proposed MO-SOD model consists of three modules: small target feature extraction layer, key small object attention pyramid integration layer, and anchor-free decoupling detector. The small object feature extraction layer focuses on the local features of small object to improve the perception of micro-oxidation spots and also takes the global features into account to reduce the impact of noisy background on feature extraction. Key small object attention pyramid integration block couples key small object feature attention and pyramid to detect the micro-oxidation spots in the image. The performance of MO-SOD model is further improved by combining the anchor-free decoupling detector. In addition, the loss function is improved to combine CIOU loss and focal loss to achieve effective micro-oxidation detection. The MO-SOD model is trained and tested from three oxidation levels in an oxygen-free copper surface microscope image data set. The test results show that the average accuracy (mAP) of MO-SOD model is 82.96%, which is superior to other most advanced detectors., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

A new two-dimensional material B 2 S 2 has been successfully synthesized for the first time and validated using first-principles calculations, with fundamental properties analyzed in detail. B 2 S 2 has a similar structure as transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) such as MoS 2 , and the experimentally prepared free-standing B 2 S 2 nanosheets show a uniform height profile lower than 1 nm. A thickness-modulated and unique oxidation-level dependent band gap of B 2 S 2 is revealed by theoretical calculations, and vibration signatures are determined to offer a practical scheme for the characterization of B 2 S 2 . It is shown that the functionalized B 2 S 2 is able to provide favorable sites for lithium adsorption with low diffusion barriers, and the prepared B 2 S 2 shows a wide band photoluminescence response. These findings offer a feasible new and lighter member for the TMD-like 2D material family with potential for various aspects of applications, such as an anode material for Li-ion batteries and electronic and optoelectronic devices.

Metallic vanadium dichalcogenides with high conductivity and large layer spacing are fantastically potential to be cathode candidates for aqueous zinc ion batteries. However, simply reliance on the reversible Zn 2+ intercalation/deintercalation process in the layer structure of vanadium dichalcogenides makes it suffer from low specific capacity and limited cycling number. Here we report a facile in-situ electrochemical oxidation strategy to boost the zinc ion storage capacity of interlayer-expanded vanadium disulfide (VS 2 ·NH 3 ) hollow spheres with satisfying cyclic stability. The hydrated vanadium oxide (V 2 O 5 ·nH 2 O) generated from oxidized VS 2 ·NH 3 , are endowed with reduced nanosheet size and subordinated porous structure, which provides abundant accessible sites and accelerates the zinc ion diffusion process. As a result, the VS 2 ·NH 3 derived cathode after the electrochemical oxidation process delivers a high reversible capacity of 392 mA h g -1 at 0.1 A g -1 and long cyclic stability (110% capacity retention at 3 A g -1 after 2000 cycles). The efficient oxidation process of VS 2 ·NH 3 cathode and the storage mechanism in the subsequent cycles are schematically investigated. This work not only reveals the zinc ion storage mechanism of the oxidized VS 2 ·NH 3 but also sheds light on advanced design for high-performance Zn ion cathode materials., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The second near-infrared window emission (1.0-1.7 μm, NIR-II) has received extensive attention with the advantages of negligible tissue scattering, reduced autofluorescence, and less background noise. Here a novel analysis platform based on quantum dots (QDs) for highly selective detection of Zn 2+ and Cd 2+ with an enhanced NIR-II fluorescence is reported for the first time. We have developed a facile two-step route to synthesize the water-soluble Ag 2 S QDs, constituting of a green hydrothermal process and followed surface ligands exchange. Surface passivation was proposed to be the mechanism for the enhanced fluorescence. The added Zn 2+ or Cd 2+ could react with the surface thioglycollic acid to form Zn-thiol or Cd-thiol complex passivation shell, which restored surface defects and suppressed nonradiative recombination pathway. The detection platform exhibited a linear relationship between the ion concentrations and enhanced fluorescence and had a detection limit as low as 760 nM for Zn 2+ and 546 nM for Cd 2+ at pH = 7.4. Furthermore, the as-synthesized Ag 2 S QDs showed good robustness in real sample matrix and were demonstrated to be able to detect exogenous Zn(II) in cells. These properties suggest potential applications of detection of Zn 2+ in biology and Cd 2+ in environment via the NIR-II fluorescent Ag 2 S QDs.

Ni 3 S 2 nanowire arrays doped with vanadium(V) are directly grown on nickel foam by a facile one-step hydrothermal method. It is found that the doping can promote the formation of Ni 3 S 2 nanowires at a low temperature. The doped nanowires show excellent electrocatalytic performance toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), and outperform pure Ni 3 S 2 and other Ni 3 S 2 -based compounds. The stability test shows that the performance of V-doped Ni 3 S 2 nanowires is improved and stabilized after thousands of linear sweep voltammetry test. The onset potential of V-doped Ni 3 S 2 nanowire can be as low as 39 mV, which is comparable to platinum. The nanowire has an overpotential of 68 mV at 10 mA cm -2 , a relatively low Tafel slope of 112 mV dec -1 , good stability and high Faradaic efficiency. First-principles calculations show that the V-doping in Ni 3 S 2 extremely enhances the free carrier density near the Fermi level, resulting in much improved catalytic activities. We expect that the doping can be an effective way to enhance the catalytic performance of metal disulfides in hydrogen evolution reaction and V-doped Ni 3 S 2 nanowire is one of the most promising electrocatalysts for hydrogen production.

The superior performance of metal oxide nanocomposites has introduced them as excellent candidates for emerging energy sources, and attracted significant attention in recent years. The drawback of these materials is their inherent structural pulverization which adversely impacts their performance and makes the rational design of stable nanocomposites a great challenge. In this work, functional V 2 O 5 -C-SnO 2 hybrid nanobelts (VCSNs) with a stable structure are introduced where the ultradispersed SnO 2 nanocrystals are tightly linked with glucose on the V 2 O 5 surface. The nanostructured V 2 O 5 acts as a supporting matrix as well as an active electrode component. Compared with existing carbon-V 2 O 5 hybrid nanobelts, these hybrid nanobelts exhibit a much higher reversible capacity and architectural stability when used as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries. The superior cyclic performance of VCSNs can be attributed to the synergistic effects of SnO 2 and V 2 O 5 . However, limited data are available for V 2 O 5 -based anodes in lithium-ion battery design.