Flushing Toilets and Cooling Spaces with Seawater Improve Water-Energy Securities and Achieve Carbon Mitigations in Coastal Cities

Exploring alternative water sources and improving the efficiency of energy uses are crucial approaches to strengthening the water-energy securities and achieving carbon mitigations in sub(tropical) coastal cities. Seawater use for toilet flushing and district cooling systems is reportedly practical for achieving multiaspect benefits in Hong...

Polyacrylamide-Poly(vinyl alcohol)-Sodium Alginate-Reduced Graphene Oxide/Nylon Fabrics with Multistimuli Responses

In recent years, various functional fabrics capable of responding to multistimuli have been widely recognized as promising wearable devices. However, the obtained composite functional fabrics have only been applied in a few scenarios, rendering the achievement of multifunctional wearable application scenarios a difficult goal. Therefore,...

A Strategy Inspired by the Cicada Shedding Its Skin for Synthesizing the Natural Material NaFe₃S₅·2H₂O

Sulfide minerals hold significant importance in both fundamental science and industrial advancement. However, certain natural sulfide minerals, such as NaFe₃S₅·2H₂O (NFS), pose great challenges for exploitation and synthesis due to their high susceptibility to oxidation. To date, no successful precedent exists...

Bio-inspired combinable self-powered soft device operating during the disintegration and reconstruction for next-generation artificial electric organs

Hydrogel materials have biocompatibility, flexibility, transparency, self-healing ability, adhesion with various substrates, anti-freeze ability, and high-temperature resistance. However, the existing hydrogel devices cannot continue to operate in the case of damage, and they cannot work during the repair period, which brings great challenges...

Chemoenzymatic intermolecular haloether synthesis

A chemoenzymatic method for the synthesis of haloethers is presented. A combination of enzymatic hypohalite synthesis with spontaneous oxidation of alkenes and nucleophilic attack by various alcohols enabled the synthesis of a wide range of haloethers. The reaction system has been characterised and current imitations have been worked out. In...

Novel Solid-State Sodium-Ion Battery with Wide Band Gap NaTi₂(PO₄)₃ Nanocrystal Electrolyte

NaTi2(PO4)3 (NTP), a well-known anode material, could be used as a solid wide-band gap electrolyte. Herein, a novel solid-state sodium-ion battery (SSIB) with the thickness of electrolyte up to the millimeter level is proposed. The results of the difference in charge density investigated by the first-principles calculations imply that using...

High-Voltage Cathode α-Fe₂O₃Nanoceramics for Rechargeable Sodium-Ion Batteries

Previously, α-Fe2O3 nanocrystals are recognized as anode materials owing to their high capacity and multiple properties. Now, this work provides high-voltage α-Fe2O3 nanoceramics cathodes fabricated by the solvothermal and calcination processes for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs). Then, their structure and electrical conductivity were...

Fundamentals and application of solid-state phase transformations for advanced high strength steels containing metastable retained austenite

Over many decades, significant efforts have been made to improve the strength-elongation product of advanced high strength steels (AHSSs) by creating tailored multi-phase microstructures. Successive solid-state phase transformations for steels with a well selected chemical composition turned out to be the key instrument in the realisation of...

Effective Approaches of Improving the Performance of Chalcogenide Solid Electrolytes for All-Solid-State Sodium-Ion Batteries

All-solid-state sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) possess the advantages of rich resources, low price, and high security, which are one of the best alternatives for large-scale energy storage systems in the future. Also, the chalcogenide solid electrolytes (CSEs) of SIBs have the characteristics of excellent room-temperature ionic conductivity (10...