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Aqueous Zn‐metal batteries (AZMBs) have gained great interest due to their low cost, eco‐friendliness, and inherent safety, which serve as a promising complement to the existing metal‐based batteries, e.g., lithium‐metal batteries and sodium‐metal batteries. Although the utilization of aqueous electrolytes and Zn metal anode in AZMBs ensures their improved safety over other metal batteries meanwhile guaranteeing their decent energy density at the cell level, plenty of challenges involved with metallic Zn anode still await to be addressed, including dendrite growth, hydrogen evolution reaction, and zinc corrosion and passivation. In the past years, several attempts have been adopted to address these problems, among which engineering the aqueous electrolytes and additives is regarded as a facile and promising approach. In this review, a comprehensive summary of aqueous electrolytes and electrolyte additives will be given based on the recent literature, aiming at providing a fundamental understanding of the challenges associated with the metallic Zn anode in aqueous electrolytes, meanwhile offering a guideline for the electrolytes and additives engineering strategies toward stable AZMBs in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of the ancient Silk Road is a model of cross-nation production of space in early human history. During the Western Han Dynasty, after a passage way to the Western regions was "hollowed out" and secured, commerce and trade along the route boomed, people started to form clusters, and towns and cities were established. Since the late Tang Dynasty, under the combined effects of natural disasters and manmade misfortunes, regions along the Silk Road in Northwest China were severely depopulated, the towns and cities declined, the ecological environment became fragile, and the social space in West China shrank dramatically. The West Development Strategy later launched by the People' s Republic of China had its focus on optimization and reconstruction of domestic social space, whereas the Belt and Road Initiative (referring respectively to "the Silk Road Economic Belt", hereinafter "the Belt", and "the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road", " the Road") is rooted in the planning of space for long-term development and production. In building the Belt and Road, we should take the initiative and necessary steps to manage sound top-level designs; further break down the space alienation emanating from the domestic administrative divisions, and stick to the policy of all around opening up; base the endeavor on the new types of urbanization and strengthen social construction to optimize spatial structures; pay attention to the leading role of space consumption by vigorously developing Silk Road tourism; enhance the transportation and communication infrastructure in the node cities to achieve seamless docking and deep-level integration of both social space and natural space along the Belt and Road.

Abstract: An indium-doped detector grade Cd0.9Zn0.1Te crystal was grown by the THM technique from Te-rich solution. The as-grown crystal showed the dark resistivity of (1–3)×1010 Ωcm. Through IR transmission microscopy Te inclusion with regular triangular or circular shapes could be observed, and the size of Te inclusion was around 7μm and the concentration was ∼105 cm−3. The impurity concentrations were greatly reduced for the THM grown CZT, as compared to the Bridgman method grown CZT. A resolution of 8.5% was achieved under the 662keV 137Cs gamma ray radiation at room temperature for the as-grown CZT samples. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, the photoluminescence (PL) spectra were detected to characterize Cd0.8Mn0.2Te crystals grown by the vertical Bridgman method. Several monocrystalline (111) face plates with dimension of 30×40×2mm3 were sliced from the as-grown Cd0.8Mn0.2Te ingot, where the PL analysis was conducted. The PL spectra revealed the neutral acceptor bound exciton (A0, X) peaks and the donor–acceptor pair (DAP) peaks. The activation energies derived from the temperature-dependent PL quenching of the (A0, X) peak was estimated to be 5.3meV and 45.8meV, which suggested the binding energy of excitons to acceptors at lower temperatures and the Auger recombination at higher temperatures. A relationship for the bandgap energy of Cd0.8Mn0.2Te as a function of temperature ranging from 10K to 300K was obtained. The composition uniformity of the (111) face Cd0.8Mn0.2Te plates were analyzed with PL spectra, which shown that the variation of Mn concentration is within 0.012 mole fraction. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]