Storing energy within flexible and safe materials is one of the most important goals for energy storage devices. To that end, high‐performance conformable electrolytes, which can transport ions quickly and safely, and can also effectively separate and bond strongly to the two electrodes, are of great importance. However, it is challenging to develop an electrolyte that can play these multiple roles simultaneously. Here, aiming to overcome this challenge, a particle‐based approach to the fabrication of a high‐performance, gum‐like electrolyte is described. The intriguing properties of the gum‐like electrolyte include high ionic conductivity, good mechanical properties, excellent adhesion properties, and, more importantly, thermal‐protection capability. It is shown that these significant properties are well‐controlled by the incorporation of wax particles with variable size, loading, and surface properties that can be designed through the use of an apporpriate surfactant. This provides a promising solution for high‐performance electrolytes and indicates a cost‐effective approach to fabricating multifunctional ion‐conducting materials.

Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) with fl exibility [ 1,2 ] and safety are increasingly demanded and have become critical for the development of various industry sectors including electronics, electric vehicles, aircraft and biomedical electronics. [ 3 ] An ideal electrolyte for safe and fl exible LIBs should possess the high ionic conductivity of liquid electrolyte levels, good safety and mechancial properties of solid electrolyte materials, conformability/fl exibility and excellent contact/adhesion with electrodes and so on. However, it is a challenge to integrate these properties in one electrolyte and the existing electrolytes are facing various unsolved issues. [ 3,4 ] Specifi cally, solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) are safe in essence; nonetheless, the low ionic conductivity and poor contact/adhesion at the electrolyte-electrode interfaces prevent the real applications of SPEs to commerical batteries. For liquid-state electrolytes, including ionic liquid electrolytes, the liquid attribute causes safety concerns, such as leakage or gasgenerating reactions at high temperature, [ 5 ] and low mechanical properties. Gel electrolytes are a promising solution for highperformance lithium ion batteries because they can simultaneously possess high ionic conductivity and good mechanical properties. [ 6 ] However, for existing gel electrolytes, the safety issues still exist because of the high content of liquid electrolyte and an unstable retention of the liquid electrolyte especially under deformations. [ 7 ] Addressing these problems is a critical challenge towards unlocking the vast potential of LIBs; in particular, safety is an increasing concern, as demonstrated by the recent grounding of the Boeing 787 due to battery safety problems. Currently, there are two main approaches to improve the safety of LIBs. The fi rst one is to replace the existing liquid electrolytes with safer electrolytes, such as solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) or ionic liquid electrolytes. The second way is to introduce various sensors or additives for the commonly used liquid electrolytes, such as redox shuttles, [ 8 ] or polymerizable organics. [ 9 ] Unfortunately, though these methods could improve the safety of the LIBs, these electrolytes have their intrinsic disadvantages as introduced above. Moreover, as fl exibility is attracting more and more attention for new high-performance LIBs, [ 10 ] excellent performance stability as well as leakage-free behavior under various deformations are the most important factors for their applications. [ 11 ] It is noted that for fl exible/stretchable energy storage devices, not only good mechanical properties of the battery electrolytes are desired, but also a stable and effective electrolyte-electrode interface under deformation are highly required. [ 12 ] The aim of our work on the gum-like electrolyte reported in this communication is to achieve the ideal electrolyte properties described above. To that end, we specially designed a hybrid electrolyte with multi-network structures (see Figure 1 a)....

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A stable dispersion of graphitic nanofillers in aqueous solution is an important prerequisite for the applications and development in graphitic nanofiller-based nanocomposites. Traditional treatments of the graphitic surfaces with different chemicals are time and energy consuming, and more seriously raise great environmental concerns. In this study, through combination of simulations and experiments we demonstrate that the soy protein, one of the most widely available proteins from the renewable resource, when properly denatured by trifluoroethanol (TFE) and heat, can be utilized to effectively treat the graphite nanoplatelet (GNP) surface and improve the dispersion. Through molecular simulations we find that the tertiary structures of soy protein are mostly destroyed under the action of TFE at high temperature. As a consequence, most aromatic residues which are originally hidden inside the hydrophobic cores become accessible and form π–π stacking interaction with the GNP surface, strengthening the adsorption of soy proteins onto the GNP surface. The adsorption of soy protein modifies the GNP surface energy, reduces the interaction force among GNPs and leads to better dispersion. Our simulation results agree with the experimental measurements on GNP dispersion. The work herein demonstrates the importance and the potential of the concept that a protein, when its structures are properly manipulated, can be exploited in nanotechnologies to improve performance and explore new functionalities.

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The wound composite impeller, developed at Michigan State University, is a new way of manufacturing turbomachine impellers with a wide range of potential applications, even including use in gas turbines. The production can be rapid, inexpensive, and utilize commercially available winding machines. This work focuses on the modeling of the Wound Impeller for computer simulation and optimization processes, and for automation of the production process.