Lowering Charge Transfer Barrier of LiMn2O4 via Nickel Surface Doping To Enhance Li+ Intercalation Kinetics at Subzero Temperatures.

Sluggish interfacial kinetics leading to considerable loss of energy and power capabilities at subzero temperatures is still a big challenge to overcome for Li-ion batteries operating under extreme environmental conditions. Herein, using LiMn2O4 as the model system, we demonstrated that nickel surface doping to construct a new interface owning lower charge transfer energy barrier, could effectively facilitate the interfacial process and inhibit the capacity loss with decreased temperature. Detailed investigations on the charge transfer process via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and density functional theory calculation, indicate that the interfacial chemistry tuning could effectively lower the activation energy of charge transfer process by nearly 20%, endowing the cells with ∼75.4% capacity at -30 °C, far surpassing the hardly discharged unmodified counterpart. This control of surface chemistry to tune interfacial dynamics proposes insights and design ideas for batteries to well survive under thermal extremes.

Honeycomb-Lantern-Inspired 3D Stretchable Supercapacitors with Enhanced Specific Areal Capacitance.

Traditional stretchable supercapacitors, possessing a thin electrode and a 2D shape, have limited areal specific areal capacitance and are incompatible with 3D wearables. To overcome the limitations of 2D stretchable supercapacitors, it is highly desirable to develop 3D stretchable supercapacitors with higher mass loading and customizable shapes. In this work, a new 3D stretchable supercapacitor inspired by a honeycomb lantern based on an expandable honeycomb composite electrode composed of polypyrrole/black-phosphorous oxide electrodeposited on carbon nanotube film is reported. The 3D stretchable supercapacitors possessing device-thickness-independent ion-transport path and stretchability can be crafted into customizable device thickness for enhancing the specific areal energy storage and integrability with wearables. Notably, a 1.0 cm thick rectangular-shaped supercapacitor shows enhanced specific areal capacitance of 7.34 F cm-2 , which is about 60 times higher than that of the original 2D supercapacitor (120 mF cm-2 ) at a similar discharge rate. The 3D supercapacitor can also maintain a capacitance ratio of 95% even under the reversible strain of 2000% after 10 000 stretch-and-release cycles, superior to state-of-the-art stretchable supercapacitors. The enhanced specific areal energy storage and the customizablility in shapes of the 3D stretchable supercapacitors show immense promise in a wide range of applications in stretchable and wearable electronics.

Anode modification with capacitive materials for a microbial fuel cell: an increase in transient power or stationary power.

Extensive efforts have been devoted to improve the anode performance of a microbial fuel cell (MFC) by using modified carbon-based anode materials, but most of them did not recognize that the power performance measured by the commonly-used varying circuit resistance (VCR) or linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) method was overestimated due to the effect of anode capacitance. Here, we examined and compared the transient power and the stationary power of a series of MFCs equipped with the polypyrrole-graphene oxide (PPy-GO)-modified graphite felt anodes. It was found that noticeable transient power was recorded when the VCR or LSV method was chosen for power measurements. Calculations on the contribution of different sources to the measured maximum power density showed that the discharge of bio-electrons stored in the high-capacitance anode was a dominant contributor, especially when the time duration (for the VCR method) was not sufficiently long or the scan rate (for the LSV method) was not sufficiently low. Although anode modification with capacitive materials can result in the increased stationary power obtained from the fed-batch cycle test, owing to the increases in the anode surface area and the number of bacteria attached to anode, the increase in the transient power was more remarkable.

One-step fabrication of membraneless microbial fuel cell cathode by electropolymerization of polypyrrole onto stainless steel mesh.

A unique one-step method for fabrication of a membraneless microbial fuel cell (MFC) cathode was developed by coating a conductive polymer onto stainless steel mesh. The resulting polypyrrole/anthraquinone-2-sulfonate (PPy/AQS) film was synthesized via electropolymerization using AQS as the dopants. The scanning electron microscopy results indicated that the PPy/AQS film was uniformly formed on the metal mesh electrode without cracks on its surface and featuring a globular structure. Being equipped with such a cathode that was able to catalyze oxygen reduction and prevent water leakage, the membraneless MFC allowed power generation over 250 h and exhibited a maximum power density of 575 mW m(-2). Increasing film thickness seemed to result in a reduction in power performance due to the increased ohmic resistance of the cathode material and the enhanced difficulty for oxygen diffusion inside the cathode.