Dead-zone-compensated design as general method of flow field optimization for redox flow batteries.

One essential element of redox flow batteries (RFBs) is the flow field. Certain dead zones that cause local overpotentials and side effects are present in all conventional designs. To lessen the detrimental effects, a dead-zone-compensated design of flow field optimization is proposed. The proposed architecture allows for the detection of dead zones and their compensation on existing flow fields. Higher reactant concentrations and uniformity factors can be revealed in the 3D multiphysical simulation. The experiments also demonstrate that at an energy efficiency (EE) of 80%, the maximum current density of the novel flow field is 205 mA cm-2, which is much higher than the values for the previous ones (165 mA cm-2) and typical serpentine flow field (153 mA cm-2). Extensions of the design have successfully increased system EE (2.7 to 4.3%) for a variety of flow patterns. As a result, the proposed design is demonstrated to be a general method to support the functionality and application of RFBs.

Flexible Multiscale Pore Hybrid Self-Powered Sensor for Heart Sound Detection.

This research introduces an idea of producing both nanoscale and microscale pores in piezoelectric material, and combining the properties of the molecular ß-phase dipoles in ferroelectric material and the space charge dipoles in order to increase the sensitivity of the sensor and modulate the response frequency bandwidth of the material. Based on this idea, a bi-nano-micro porous dual ferro-electret hybrid self-powered flexible heart sound detection sensor is proposed. Acid etching and electrospinning were the fabrication processes used to produce a piezoelectric film with nanoscale and microscale pores, and corona poling was used for air ionization to produce an electret effect. In this paper, the manufacturing process of the sensor is introduced, and the effect of the porous structure and corona poling on improving the performance of the sensor is discussed. The proposed flexible sensor has an equivalent piezoelectric coefficient d33 of 3312 pC/N, which is much larger than the piezoelectric coefficient of the common piezoelectric materials. Experiments were carried out to verify the function of the flexible sensor together with the SS17L heart sound sensor (BIOPAC, Goleta, CA, USA) as a reference. The test results demonstrated its practical application for wearable heart sound detection and the potential for heart disease detection. The proposed flexible sensor in this paper could realize batch production, and has the advantages of flexibility, low production cost and a short processing time compared with the existing heart sound detection sensors.