In response to the problems of large interfacial diffusion resistance and low lithium extraction efficiency in traditional high-loading film electrodes during lithium extraction from salt lakes by the electrochemical de-intercalation method, this paper presents an interfacial engineering strategy based on the carboxymethyl cellulose lithium (CMC[sbnd]Li) binder. By modulating the structure of the inner Helmholtz plane (IHP) of the electrical double layer and enlarging the effective specific surface area, the migration rate of Li⁺ and the lithium extraction efficiency are remarkably enhanced. In this study, a CMC-Li composite electrode sheet was prepared using Spent LiFePO₄ as the raw material. It was demonstrated that the carboxyl (-COOH) and hydroxyl (-OH) functional groups of CMC-Li can be directionally adsorbed on the electrode surface. This adsorption event reconstructs the IHP-layer structure, reduces the solvation energy barrier of Li⁺, and increases the effective specific surface area of the film electrode. As a result, the contact angle decreased from 130.01° to 55.17°. Furthermore, in the CMC-Li system, the lithium extraction rate in simulated brine increased from 0.33 mg·g⁻¹·min⁻¹ to 0.69 mg·g⁻¹·min⁻¹, while the energy consumption decreased by a factor of 3. In the West Taijinar brine, the lithium extraction capacity reached 23.01 mg·g⁻¹ with a concurrent dramatic reduction in the Mg/Li ratio from 141 to 0.42. These results indicate that the CMC-Li system exhibits excellent lithium extraction performance and high selectivity. Overall, this study proposes a groundbreaking interfacial design concept that achieves both high efficiency and sustainability for lithium extraction from salt lake brines.

Online social networks have become a crucial medium to disseminate the latest political, commercial, and social information. Users with high visibility are often selected as seeds to spread information and affect their adoption in target groups. We study how gender differences and similarities can impact the information spreading process. Using a large-scale Instagram dataset and a small-scale Facebook dataset, we first conduct a multi-faceted analysis taking the interaction type, directionality and frequency into account. To this end, we explore a variety of existing and new single and multihop centrality measures. Our analysis unveils that males and females interact differently depending on the interaction types, e.g., likes or comments, and they feature different support and promotion patterns. We complement prior work showing that females do not reach top visibility (often referred to as the glass ceiling effect) jointly factoring in the connectivity and interaction intensity, both of which were previously mainly discussed independently. Inspired by these observations, we propose a novel seeding framework, called Disparity Seeding, which aims at maximizing spread while reaching a target user group, e.g., a certain percentage of females - promoting the influence of under-represented groups. Disparity Seeding ranks influential users with two gender-aware measures, the Target HI-index and the Embedding index. Extensive simulations comparing Disparity Seeding with target-agnostic algorithms show that Disparity Seeding meets the target percentage while effectively maximizing the spread. Disparity Seeding can be generalized to counter different types of inequality, e.g., race, and proactively promote minorities in the society.