The rapid development of novel organic technologies has led to significant applications of the organic electronic devices such as light‐emitting diodes, solar cells, and field‐effect transistors. There is a great need for conducting polymers with high conductivity and transparency to act as the charge transport layer or electrical interconnect in organic devices. Poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene): poly(styrenesulfonic acid) (PEDOT:PSS), well‐known as the most remarkable conducting polymer, has this role owing to its good film‐forming properties, high transparency, tunable conductivity, and excellent thermal stability. In this Review, various of interesting physical and chemical approaches that can effectively improve the electrical conductivity of PEDOT:PSS are summarized, focusing especially on the mechanism of the conductivity enhancement as well as applications of PEDOT:PSS films. Prospects for future research efforts are also provided. It is expected that PEDOT:PSS films with high conductivity and transparency could be the focus of future organic electronic materials breakthroughs.
The intrinsic catalytic activity at 10 mA cm for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is currently working out at overpotentials higher than 320 mV. A highly efficient electrocatalyst should possess both active sites and high conductivity; however, the loading of powder catalysts on electrodes may often suffer from the large resistance between catalysts and current collectors. This work reports a class of bulk amorphous NiFeP materials with metallic bonds from the viewpoint of electrode design. The materials reported here perfectly combine high macroscopic conductivity with surface active sites, and can be directly used as the electrodes with active sites toward high OER activity in both alkaline and acidic electrolytes. Specifically, a low overpotential of 219 mV is achieved at the geometric current density 10 mA cm in an alkaline electrolyte, with the Tafel slope of 32 mV dec and intrinsic overpotential of 280 mV. Meanwhile, an overpotential of 540 mV at 10 mA cm is attained in an acidic electrolyte and stable for over 30 h, which is the best OER performance in both alkaline and acidic media. This work provides a different angle for the design of high-performance OER electrocatalysts and facilitates the device applications of electrocatalysts.
Noninvasive prenatal detection of common fetal aneuploidies is a more sensitive and specific method than triple maternal serum screening. It has a remarkable low false positive rate and is applicable to women younger than 35 years old.
Chlorophyll (Chl) is an important photosynthetic pigment to the plant, largely determining photosynthetic capacity and hence plant growth. However, this concept has not been verified in natural forests, especially at a large scale. Furthermore, how Chl varies in natural forests remains unclear. In this study, the leaves of 823 plant species were collected from nine typical forest communities, extending from cold-temperate to tropical zones in China, to determine the main factors influencing leaf chlorophyll content in different regions and at different scales. We measured chlorophyll a (Chl a), chlorophyll b (Chl b), Chl (Chl a+Chl b), and the ratio of Chl a and Chl b (Chl a/b). The results showed that Chl a, Chl b, and Chl a/b values were in the range of 0.87-15.92 mg g −1 (mean: 4.18 mg g −1 ), 0.32-6.42 mg g −1 (mean 1.72 mg g −1 ), and 1.43-7.07 (mean: 2.47). The values of these three Chl parameters significantly differed among plant functional groups (trees < shrubs < herbs, coniferous trees < broadleaved trees, and evergreens < deciduous trees). Unexpectedly, Chl a, Chl b, and Chl a+b increased slightly with increasing latitude. Climate, soil, and phylogeny exert only a small effect on the spatial variation of Chl in natural forests, with large variation in the Chl of coexisting species masking the spatial patterns. This study is the first to report variations in Chl among different types of natural forests at a large scale, demonstrating that the fuzzy regulation of Chl makes it very difficult to take Chl as the main input parameter to the models of natural forests.
The ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) resulted from the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in December 2019. Currently, multiple efforts are being made to rapidly develop vaccines and treatments to fight COVID-19. Current vaccine candidates use inactivated SARS-CoV-2 viruses; therefore, it is important to understand the architecture of inactivated SARS-CoV-2. We have genetically and structurally characterized β-propiolactone-inactivated viruses from a propagated and purified clinical strain of SARS-CoV-2. We observed that the virus particles are roughly spherical or moderately pleiomorphic. Although a small fraction of prefusion spikes are found, most spikes appear nail shaped, thus resembling a postfusion state, where the S1 protein of the spike has disassociated from S2. Cryoelectron tomography and subtomogram averaging of these spikes yielded a density map that closely matches the overall structure of the SARS-CoV postfusion spike and its corresponding glycosylation site. Our findings have major implications for SARS-CoV-2 vaccine design, especially those using inactivated viruses.
With the rapid development of mobile electronics and electric vehicles, future electrochemical capacitors (ECs) need to store as much energy as possible in a rather limited space. As the core component of ECs, dense electrodes that have a high volumetric energy density and superior rate capability are the key to achieving improved energy storage. Here, the significance of and recent progress in the high volumetric performance of dense electrodes are presented. Furthermore, dense yet porous electrodes, as the critical precondition for realizing superior electrochemical capacitive energy, have become a scientific challenge and an attractive research focus. From a pore-engineering perspective, insight into the guidelines of engineering the pore size, connectivity, and wettability is provided to design dense electrodes with different porous architectures toward high-performance capacitive energy storage. The current challenges and future opportunities toward dense electrodes are discussed and include the construction of an orderly porous structure with an appropriate gradient, the coupling of pore sizes with the solvated cations and anions, and the design of coupled pores with diverse electrolyte ions.
Ecological stoichiometry connects different levels of biology, from the gene to the globe, by scaling up elemental ratios (e.g. carbon [C], nitrogen [N] and phosphorus [P]). Thus, ecological stoichiometry could be a powerful tool for revealing certain physiological processes of plants. However, C:N:P stoichiometry remains unclear at the community and ecosystem levels, despite it being potentially important for primary productivity. In this study, we measured the C, N and P contents of different plant organs, litter and soil in nine natural forest ecosystems (from cold‐temperate to tropical forests along a 3,700‐km transect in China) to explore C:N:P stoichiometry and the main influencing factors. C:N:P stoichiometry was evaluated for different components in the forest ecosystems (plant community, soil, litter and ecosystem) and, at the community level, for different organs (leaves, branches, trunks and roots) from 803 plant species. The ratios of C:P and N:P decreased with increasing latitude, with spatial patterns being primarily regulated by climate. Interestingly, the homeostasis of N, P and N:P was highest in leaves, followed by branches, roots and trunks, supporting the hypothesis that more active organs have a higher capacity to maintain relatively stable element content and ratios. At the community level, the leaf N:P ratio indicated increasing P limitation in forests of lower latitude (i.e. more southerly) in China's forests. Our findings demonstrate the spatial patterns of C:N:P stoichiometry and the strategies of element distribution among different organs in a plant community, providing important data on C:N:P to improve the parameterization of future ecological models. A http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12979/suppinfo is available for this article.
Our study supports the idea that enhancing organisational justice can increase the impact of emotional intelligence. Managers should take into account the importance of emotional intelligence and perceptions of organisational justice in human resources management and apply targeted interventions to foster work engagement.
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