Amorphous Fe-Phytate Enables Fast Polysulfide Redox for High-Loading Lithium Sulfur Batteries.

Utilizing catalysts to accelerate polysulfides conversion are of paramount importance to eliminate the shuttling effect and improve the practical performance of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries. The amorphism, attributes to the abundant unsaturated surface active sites, has recently been recognized as a contribution to increase the activity of catalysts. However, the investigation on amorphous catalysts has received limited interest in lithium-sulfur batteries due to lack of understanding of their composition structure activity. Herein, a amorphous Fe-Phytate structure is proposed to enhance polysulfide conversion and suppress polysulfide shuttling by modifying polypropylene separator (C-Fe-Phytate@PP). The polar Fe-Phytate with distorted VI coordination Fe active centers strongly intake polysulfide electron by forming FeS bond to accelerate the polysulfide conversion. The surface mediated polysulfides redox gives rise to a higher exchange current in comparison with carbon. Furthermore, Fe-Phytate owns robust adsorption to polysulfide and effectively reduce the shuttling effect. With the C-Fe-Phytate@PP separator, the Li-S batteries exhibit an outstanding rate capability of 690 mAh g-1 at 5 C and an ultrahigh areal capacity of 7.8 mAh cm-2 even at a high sulfur loading of 7.3 mg cm-2 . The work provides a novel separator for facilitating the actual applications of Li-S batteries.

Organosulfur Compounds Enable Uniform Lithium Plating and Long-Term Battery Cycling Stability.

Lithium metal represents an ultimate anode material of lithium batteries for its high energy density. However, its large negative redox potential and reactive nature can trigger electrolyte decomposition and dendrite formation, causing unstable cycling and short circuit of batteries. Herein, we engineer a resilient solid electrolyte interphase on the Li anode by compositing the battery separator with organosulfur compounds and inorganic salts from garlic. These compounds take part in battery reactions to suppress dendrite growth through reversible electrochemistry and attenuate ionic concentration gradient. When the Li anode and the separator are paired with the LiFePO4 cathode, one obtains a battery delivering long-term cycling stability of 3000 cycles, a rate capacity of 100 mAh g-1 at 10 C (2.5 mA cm-2), a Coulombic efficiency of 99.9%, and a low battery polarization. Additionally, with high-loading 20 mg cm-2 LiFePO4 cathodes, an areal capacity of 3.4 mAh cm-2 is achieved at 0.3 C (1 mA cm-2).

Diminishing Self-Discharge of High-Loading Li-S Batteries with Oxygen-Rich Biomass Carbon Interlayers.

Lithium-sulfur batteries (Li-S) have possessed gratifying development in the past decade due to their high theoretical energy density. However, the severe polysulfide shuttling provokes undesirable self-discharge effect, leading to low energy efficiency in Li-S batteries. Herein, an interlayer composed of oxygen-rich carbon nanosheets (OCN) derived from bagasse is elaborated to suppress the shuttle effect and reduce the resultant self-discharge effect. The OCN interlayer is able to physically block the shuttling behavior of polysulfides and its oxygen-rich functional groups can strongly interact with polysulfides via O-S bonds to chemically immobilize mobile polysulfides. The self-discharge test for seven days further shows that the self-discahrge rate is diminished by impressive 93 %. As a result, Li-S batteries with the OCN interlayer achieve an ultrahigh discharge specific capacity of 710 mAh g-1 at a high mass loading of 7.18 mg. The work provides a facile method for designing functional interlayers and opens a new avenue for realizing Li-S batteries with high energy efficiency.

Discrimination rancidity degree of infant formula rice flour based on Headspace Solid-Phase Microextraction combined with Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry as an alternative to sensory evaluation.

To mitigating the serious threat of harmful volatile substances to the health of infants, an alternative method of odor evaluation were proposed based on Headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) combined with Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) to discriminate the degree of rancidity of infant formula rice flour (IFRF). Inspectors can simply calculate the rancidity degree of infant formula rice flour according to the regression equation based on the concentration of rancidity markers. The results showed that the joint application of OPLS-DA, molecular sensory experiments, and unsaturated fatty acids (UFAs) degradation experiments could successfully recognize the rancidity markers without collinearity in multiple linear regression analysis. The rancidity markers curve fitting was helpful for the establishment of multivariate regression model of rancidity grading. The model had an accuracy of more than 92.90% by the verification of odor evaluation. The application of the model to investigate the market IFRF samples showed that about 3% of the samples collected in the experiment were unsuitable for infant feeding. Therefore, the established model was considered to be a robust and less workload method to replace the olfactory evaluation method for discriminating the rancidity degree of IFRF.

[Determination of glufosinate-ammonium and its three metabolites in litchi and banana by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry].

A method was developed for the determination of glufosinate-ammonium and its metabolites in litchi and banana by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry. The samples were ultrasound extracted by water, centrifuged to precipitate, and filtered through a 0.22 µm Millipore membrane. The sample extract was separated by an Extend-C18 column with 0.1% ammonia-methanol (9:1, v/v) as mobile phase with an isocratic elution, identified by electrospray ionization in negative and multiple reaction monitoring modes, and quantified with external standard method. Moreover, the pretreatment and mass spectrometry conditions were discussed. The method showed good linear relationship in the range of 1-1000 µg/L for glufosinate-ammonium and its metabolites. The average recoveries ranged from 82.9% to 98.6% with the relative standard deviations of 2.6%-6.3% when the litchi and banana samples were spiked at 50, 100, 1000 µg/kg. The limits of detection were 5-10 µg/kg. The method has rapid analysis speed as well as high reliability and sensitivity, which are suitable for the fast determination of glufosinate-ammonium and its metabolites in litchi and banana samples.

Flame-Retardant Bilayer Separator with Multifaceted van der Waals Interaction for Lithium-Ion Batteries.

Safety issues induced by a flammable organic electrolyte challenge the practical applications of high-specific energy lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Here, we develop a robust bilayer separator by incorporating MoO3 and Al-doped Li6.75La3Zr1.75Ta0.25O12 (LLZTO). The bilayer separator is highly flame-resistive and manages to endure intense fire. Density functional calculations reveal that abundant hydrogen bonds and van der Waals forces within the bilayer separator greatly suppress the combustion with interfacial adhesion of MoO3 and LLZTO to poly(vinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene). With MoO3 and LLZTO, the graphitized carbon content of the carbon residues is increased, and the formation of molybdenum fluoride (MoFx) and lanthanum fluoride (LaFx) is induced during combustion, thus suppressing heat accumulation. The bilayer separator owns a large ductility (227%) and low thermal shrinkage (5%) after annealing at 160 °C for 4 h. Based on the bilayer separator, Li/LiFePO4 cells deliver a remarkable discharge capacity of 162 mA h/g at 0.5 C with a high capacity retention of 95% after 100 cycles. This work provides a new strategy for achieving safe LIBs.

Phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors in Chinese tonic liquors by liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry.

Chinese tonic liquor is an important dietary supplement in daily use, but it often happens that illicitly adulterated drugs in Chinese tonic liquor could lead to food safety issues. In this survey, an analytical method consisting of a liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometer (LC-Q-TOF-MS), coupled with quick easy cheap effective rugged safe (QuEChERS) pretreatment, was established for identification of phosphodiesterase type 5 enzyme (PDE-5) inhibitors in Chinese tonic liquors. 86 PDE-5 inhibitors were qualitatively analysed by employing information dependent acquisition mass spectrometry (IDA-MS) in comparison with the accurate mass of the protonated molecular ion, isotopic pattern, library and chemical formula. This method was used to test 28 Chinese tonic liquor samples. The results revealed that the IDA-MS screening method is suitable for qualitative analysis of 86 PDE-5 inhibitors. Four samples were found to be adulterated with sildenafil, tadalafil, vardenafil, isopiperazinoafil, nortadalafil and desmethylsidenafil, which was 14.3% of the tested samples.

Iron-Cobalt Phosphomolybdate with High Electrocatalytic Activity for Oxygen Evolution Reaction.

Iron-cobalt phosphomolybdate (FeCoPM12 ) nanoparticles, which are highly efficient catalytic materials for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), were fabricated through a coprecipitation route. Compared with iron-cobalt hydroxide and state-of-the-art RuO2 electrocatalysts, the as-prepared FeCoPM12 sample exhibited robust OER catalytic activity with a low overpotential of 258 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm-2 and a small Tafel slope of 33 mV dec-1 . Moreover, the as-synthesized sample presented preferable stability and after 10 h at 1.52 V the current density degraded by merely 8.3 %. This is ascribed to the high electrochemical stability and small porous structure of FeCoPM12 , which provide effective electron transmission and improve the catalytic performance for OER in alkaline media.

Three-Dimensional NiMoO4 Nanosheets Supported on a Carbon Fibers@Pre-Treated Ni Foam (CF@PNF) Substrate as Advanced Electrodes for Asymmetric Supercapacitors.

Herein, we report a nanoarchitectured nickel molybdate/carbon fibers@pre-treated Ni foam (NiMoO4 /CF@PNF) electrode for supercapacitors. The synthesis of NiMoO4 /CF@PNF mainly consists of a direct chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of dense carbon fibers (CFs) onto pre-treated Ni foam (PNF) as the substrate, followed by in situ growth of NiMoO4 nanosheets (NSs) on the CF@PNF substrate by means of a hydrothermal process. The NiMoO4 /CF@PNF electrode exhibits a high areal capacitance (5.14 F cm(-2) at 4 mA cm(-2) ) and excellent cycling stability (97 % capacitance retention after 2000 cycles at 10 mA cm(-2) ). Furthermore, we have successfully assembled NiMoO4 NSs//activated carbon (AC) asymmetric supercapacitors, which can achieve an energy density of 45.6 Wh kg(-1) at 674 W kg(-1) , and excellent stability with 93 % capacitance retention after 2000 cycles at 5 mA cm(-2) . These superior properties hold great promise for energy-storage applications.