Organic sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are potential alternatives of current commercial inorganic lithium-ion batteries for portable electronics (especially wearable electronics) because of their low cost and flexibility, making them possible to meet the future flexible and large-scale requirements. However, only a few organic SIBs have been reported so far, and most of them either were tested in a very slow rate or suffered significant performance degradation when cycled under high rate. Here, we are focusing on the molecular design for improving the battery performance and addressing the current challenge of fast-charge and -discharge. Through reasonable molecular design strategy, we demonstrate that the extension of the π-conjugated system is an efficient way to improve the high rate performance, leading to much enhanced capacity and cyclability with full recovery even after cycled under current density as high as 10 A g(-1).
Intricate hollow structures garner tremendous interest due to their aesthetic beauty, unique structural features, fascinating physicochemical properties, and widespread applications. Here, the recent advances in the controlled synthesis are discussed, as well as applications of intricate hollow structures with regard to energy storage and conversion. The synthetic strategies toward complex multishelled hollow structures are classified into six categories, including well-established hard- and soft-templating methods, as well as newly emerging approaches based on selective etching of "soft@hard" particles, Ostwald ripening, ion exchange, and thermally induced mass relocation. Strategies for constructing structures beyond multishelled hollow structures, such as bubble-within-bubble, tube-in-tube, and wire-in-tube structures, are also covered. Niche applications of intricate hollow structures in lithium-ion batteries, Li-S batteries, supercapacitors, Li-O batteries, dye-sensitized solar cells, photocatalysis, and fuel cells are discussed in detail. Some perspectives on the future research and development of intricate hollow structures are also provided.
Inorganic nanomaterials that mimic enzymes are fascinating as they potentially have improved properties relative to native enzymes, such as greater resistance to extremes of pH and temperature and lower sensitivity to proteases. Although many artificial enzymes have been investigated, searching for highly-efficient and stable catalysts is still of great interest. In this paper, we first demonstrated that bovine serum albumin (BSA)-stabilized MnO(2) nanoparticles (NPs) exhibited highly peroxidase-, oxidase-, and catalase-like activities. The activities of the BSA-MnO(2) NPs were evaluated using the typical horseradish peroxidase (HRP) substrates o-phenylenediamine (OPD) and 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) in the presence of either hydrogen peroxide or dissolved oxygen. These small-sized BSA-MnO(2) NPs with good dispersion, solubility and biocompatibility exhibited typical Michaelis-Menten kinetics and high affinity for H(2)O(2), OPD and TMB, indicating that BSA-MnO(2) NPs can be used as satisfactory enzyme mimics. Based on these findings, BSA-MnO(2) NPs were used as colorimetric immunoassay tags for the detection of goat anti-human IgG in place of HRP. The colorimetric immunoassay using BSA-MnO(2) NPs has the advantages of being fast, robust, inexpensive, easily prepared and with no HRP and H(2)O(2) being needed. These water-soluble BSA-MnO(2) NPs may have promising potential applications in biotechnology, bioassays, and biomedicine.
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