Facile and Widely Applicable Route to Self-Adaptive Emissivity Modulation: Energy-Saving Demonstration with Transparent Wood.

The cooling power provided by radiative cooling is unwanted during cold hours. Therefore, self-adaptive regulation is desired for radiative cooling, especially in all-weather applications. However, current routes for radiative cooling regulation are constrained by substrates and complicated processing. Here, self-adaptive radiative cooling regulation on various potential substrates (transparent wood, PET, normal glass, and cement) was achieved by a Fabry-Perot structure consisting of a silver nanowires (AgNWs) bottom layer, PMMA spacer, and W-VO2 top layer. The emissivity-modulated transparent wood (EMTW) exhibits an emissivity contrast of 0.44 (ε8-13-L = ∼0.19 and ε8-13-H = ∼0.63), which thereby yields considerable energy savings across different climate zones. The emissivity contrast can be adjusted by varying the spinning parameters during the deposition process. Positive emissivity contrast was also achieved on three other industrially relevant substrates via this facile and widely applicable route. This proves the great significance of the approach to the promotion and wide adoption of radiative cooling regulation concept in the built environment.

Synergetic Effect of Mo-Doped and Oxygen Vacancies Endows Vanadium Oxide with High-Rate and Long-Life for Aqueous Zinc Ion Battery.

Vanadium (V)-based oxides have garnered significant attention as cathode materials for aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) due to their multiple valences and high theoretical capacity. However, their sluggish kinetics and low conductivity remain major obstacles to practical applications. In this study, Mo-doped V2O3 with oxygen vacancies (OVs, Mo-V2O3-x@NC) is prepared from a Mo-doped V-metal organic framework. Ex situ characterizations reveal that the cathode undergoes an irreversible phase transformation from Mo-V2O3-x to Mo-V2O5-x·nH2O and serves as an active material exhibiting excellent Zn2+ storage in subsequent charge-discharge cycles. Mo-doped helps to further improve cycling stability and increases with increasing content. More importantly, the synergistic effect of Mo-doped and OVs not only effectively reduces the Zn2+ migration energy barrier, but also enhances reaction kinetics, and electrochemical performance. Consequently, the cathode demonstrates ultrafast electrochemical kinetics, showing a superior rate performance (190.9 mAh g-1 at 20 A g-1) and excellent long-term cycling stability (147.9 mAh g-1 at 20 A g-1 after 10000 cycles). Furthermore, the assembled pouch cell exhibits excellent cycling stability (313.6 mAh g-1 at 1 A g-1 after 1000 cycles), indicating promising application prospects. This work presents an effective strategy for designing and fabricating metal and OVs co-doped cathodes for high-performance AZIBs.

Stepwise Energy Transfer: Near-Infrared Persistent Luminescence from Doped Polymeric Systems.

Organic near infrared (NIR) persistent-luminescence systems with bright and long-lived emission are highly valuable for applications in communication, imaging, and sensors. However, realizing these materials (especially lifetime over 0.1 s) is a challenge, mainly because of non-radiative quenching of their long-lived excitons. Herein, a universal strategy of stepwise Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) for a bright NIR system with remarkable persistent luminescence (up to 0.2 s at 810 nm) is presented, based on a new triphenylene-dye-doped polymer (triphenylene-2-ylboronic acid@poly(vinyl alcohol) (TP@PVA)) with a persistent blue phosphorescence of 3.29 s. This persistent NIR luminescence is demonstrated for application not only in NIR anti-counterfeiting but also NIR bioimaging with penetrating a piece of skin as thick as 2.0 mm. By co-doping a red dye (such as Nile red) and an NIR dye Cyanine 7 (Cy7) into this doped PVA film, the shortage of spectral overlap between TP emission and Cy7 absorbance is successfully solved, through a stepwise FRET process involving triplet to singlet (TS)-FRET from TP to the intermediate red dye and then singlet to singlet (SS)-FRET to Cy7. It is noted that the efficiency of the upper TS-FRET is enhanced significantly by the lower SS-FRET, leading to high efficiencies for the continuous FRETs.

A coupling process of electrodialysis with oxime hydrolysis reaction for preparation of hydroxylamine sulfate.

A coupling process of electrodialysis with oxime hydrolysis reaction for preparing hydroxylamine sulfate was developed in this work. The three steps, including the oxime hydrolysis, the hydroxylamine protonation reaction, and the separation process, are integrated into a triple-chamber electrodialysis stack. In this novel method, the impacts of current density, oxime concentration, and reaction time were investigated. The results indicated that the decomposition voltage is above 1.93 V. Furthermore, the current density is 4.69 × 10-2 A cm-2, the oxime concentration is 1.00 mol L-1, and when reaction time reaches 600 min, the yield of hydroxylamine sulfate is 67.59%. Moreover, the process has excellent mass transfer performance, mild reaction conditions, and simple operation compared with conventional methods. This work will provide a theoretical basis for the green and continuous manufacture of hydroxylamine sulfate and a guide for preparing other hydroxylamine salts through such hydrolysis methods.

Correction: A coupling process of electrodialysis with oxime hydrolysis reaction for preparation of hydroxylamine sulfate.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1039/D1RA02766B.].

Fertilizer properties of ash from corn-stover pellets using the sequential extraction and matrix expression.

In order to get sufficient information on biomass ash for its fertilizer application, sequential extraction method was adopted for its measurement and appropriate solvents were selected to embody its nutrition characteristics. A matrix was proposed to describe the mobility of nutrients in the ash. Based on this, fertilizer property of the ash from corn-stover pellets burnt at different temperatures in a tube furnace was measured and analyzed. The identification and comparison of fertilizer properties were demonstrated. Experimental results showed that the effect of temperature on the solubility of metallic nutrients was more significant than that of non-metallic nutrients. Coarse calculation showed that there is a great potential in balancing nutrients for farmland via recycling ash from corn-stover pellets burnt at low temperature. The method and the result provide a reference for applications of ash as fertilizer.