Ion gel electrolytes show great potential in solid-state batteries attributed to their outstanding characteristics. However, because of the strong ionic nature of ionic liquids, ion gel electrolytes generally exhibit low lithium-ion transference number, limiting its practical application. Aminefunctionalized boron nitride (BN) nanosheets (AFBNNSs) are used as an additive into ion gel electrolytes for improving their ion transport properties. The AFBNNSs-ion gel shows much improved mechanical strength and thermal stability. The lithium-ion transference number is increased from 0.12 to 0.23 due to AFBNNS addition. More importantly, for the first time, nuclear magnetic resonance analysis reveals that the amine groups on the BN nanosheets have strong interaction with the bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide anions, which significantly reduces the anion mobility and consequently increases lithium-ion mobility. Battery cells using the optimized AFBNNSs-ion gel electrolyte exhibit stable lithium deposition and excellent electrochemical performance. A LiFePO 4 |Li cell retains 92.2% of its initial specific capacity after the 60th cycle while the cell without AFBNNSs-gel electrolyte only retains 53.5%. The results not only demonstrate a new strategy to improve lithium-ion transference number in ionic liquid electrolytes, but also open up a potential avenue to achieve solid-state lithium metal batteries with improved performance. and high safety levels. Lithium metal batteries (LMBs), owing to the low redox potential (−3.04 V vs standard hydrogen electrode) and ultrahigh theoretical capacity (3860 mAh g −1 ) of the lithium (Li) metal anode, are promising to fulfill these requirements. [1] However, the organic liquid electrolyte (LE), currently widely used in the LMBs, makes LMBs face severe safety concerns such as electrolyte leakage and combustion due to the intrinsic fluidity, flammability, and electrochemical instability. Replacing the organic liquid electrolyte with solid-state electrolytes (SSEs) has been proven to be an efficient way to overcome these problems. [2] Because of their high mechanical stability and structural integrity, SSEs enable facile cell fabrication and prevent electrolyte leakage, offering greater safety than liquid electrolytes. Current solid-state electrolytes include solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) and inorganic electrolytes (IEs). Unfortunately, SPEs suffer from a poor ionic conductivity at room temperature, while the IEs show innate brittleness and intrinsically narrow electrochemical stability along with high contact resistance. Compared to SPEs and IEs, gel electrolytes, which are prepared by entrapping liquid electrolytes into a solid matrix, provide exceptional properties such as high ionic conductivity, low interfacial resistance, good mechanical strength, and flexibility.Liquid mediums are one of the key components in gel electrolytes. Among the candidates, ionic liquids (ILs), also known as room temperature molten salts, can result in high performance gel electrolytes because of the...

High-speed high-resolution imaging of the whole-brain hemodynamics is critically important to facilitating neurovascular research. High imaging speed and image quality are crucial to visualizing real-time hemodynamics in complex brain vascular networks, and tracking fast pathophysiological activities at the microvessel level, which will enable advances in current queries in neurovascular and brain metabolism research, including stroke, dementia, and acute brain injury. Further, real-time imaging of oxygen saturation of hemoglobin (sO2) can capture fast-paced oxygen delivery dynamics, which is needed to solve pertinent questions in these fields and beyond. Here, we present a novel ultrafast functional photoacoustic microscopy (UFF-PAM) to image the whole-brain hemodynamics and oxygenation. UFF-PAM takes advantage of several key engineering innovations, including stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) based dual-wavelength laser excitation, water-immersible 12-facet-polygon scanner, high-sensitivity ultrasound transducer, and deep-learning-based image upsampling. A volumetric imaging rate of 2 Hz has been achieved over a field of view (FOV) of 11 × 7.5 × 1.5 mm3 with a high spatial resolution of ~10 μm. Using the UFF-PAM system, we have demonstrated proof-of-concept studies on the mouse brains in response to systemic hypoxia, sodium nitroprusside, and stroke. We observed the mouse brain’s fast morphological and functional changes over the entire cortex, including vasoconstriction, vasodilation, and deoxygenation. More interestingly, for the first time, with the whole-brain FOV and micro-vessel resolution, we captured the vasoconstriction and hypoxia simultaneously in the spreading depolarization (SD) wave. We expect the new imaging technology will provide a great potential for fundamental brain research under various pathological and physiological conditions.

With the oil and gas industry growing rapidly, increasing the yield and profit require advances in technology for cost-effective production in key areas of reservoir exploration and in oil-well production-management. In this paper we review our group’s research into fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) and their applications in the oil industry, especially in the well-logging field. FBG sensors used for seismic exploration in the oil and gas industry need to be capable of measuring multiple physical parameters such as temperature, pressure, and acoustic waves in a hostile environment. This application requires that the FBG sensors display high sensitivity over the broad vibration frequency range of 5 Hz to 2.5 kHz, which contains the important geological information. We report the incorporation of mechanical transducers in the FBG sensors to enable enhance the sensors’ amplitude and frequency response. Whenever the FBG sensors are working within a well, they must withstand high temperatures and high pressures, up to 175 °C and 40 Mpa or more. We use femtosecond laser side-illumination to ensure that the FBGs themselves have the high temperature resistance up to 1100 °C. Using FBG sensors combined with suitable metal transducers, we have experimentally realized high- temperature and pressure measurements up to 400 °C and 100 Mpa. We introduce a novel technology of ultrasonic imaging of seismic physical models using FBG sensors, which is superior to conventional seismic exploration methods. Compared with piezoelectric transducers, FBG ultrasonic sensors demonstrate superior sensitivity, more compact structure, improved spatial resolution, high stability and immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI). In the last section, we present a case study of a well-logging field to demonstrate the utility of FBG sensors in the oil and gas industry.

A miniature fiber Fabry–Perot interferometer (FFPI) for temperature measurement is proposed and demonstrated. The sensor consists of a section of single-mode fiber (SMF) tip coated with a thin film of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) at the end of the fiber tip. A well-defined interference pattern is obtained as the result of the FFPI based on Fresnel reflection. The sensing head is extremely sensitive to ambient temperature, and provides a stable temperature sensitivity with a maximum value up to 173.5 pm °C−1 above 80 °C. This proposed sensor has advantages of low cost, ultra-compactness, a small degree of hysteresis and high stability.

Flexible and high-performance batteries are urgently required for powering flexible/wearable electronics. Lithium−sulfur batteries with a very high energy density are a promising candidate for high-energy-density flexible power source. Here, we report flexible lithium−sulfur full cells consisting of ultrastable lithium cloth anodes, polysulfone-functionalized separators, and freestanding sulfur/graphene/boron nitride nanosheet cathodes. The carbon cloth decorated with lithiophilic three-dimensional MnO 2 nanosheets not only provides the lithium anodes with an excellent flexibility but also limits the growth of the lithium dendrites during cycling, as revealed by theoretical calculations. Commercial separators are functionalized with polysulfone (PSU) via a phase inversion strategy, resulting in an improved thermal stability and smaller pore size. Due to the synergistic effect of the PSU-functionalized separators and boron nitride−graphene interlayers, the shuttle of the polysulfides is significantly inhibited. Because of successful control of the shuttle effect and dendrite formation, the flexible lithium−sulfur full cells exhibit excellent mechanical flexibility and outstanding electrochemical performance, which shows a superlong lifetime of 800 cycles in the folded state and a high areal capacity of 5.13 mAh cm −2 . We envision that the flexible strategy presented herein holds promise as a versatile and scalable platform for large-scale development of high-performance flexible batteries.