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Insulating hexagonal boron nitride suppresses the electrochemical corrosion and provides a more effective long-term corrosion barrier than graphene.

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This paper reports the finding of the superior auricular artery, which is a fairly large arterial branch, about 1 mm in diameter, arising from the superficial temporal artery anterior to the auricular helix. It is covered by skin, the anterior auricular muscle, and the fascia of the parotid gland. It runs together with its concomitant vein posteriorly in the groove between the cartilage of the ear and the temporal bone and anastomoses with the posterior auricular artery. This artery has been used successfully to raise large retroauricular arterial island flaps for one case of total nose reconstruction and seven cases of reconstruction of the severely constricted anophthalmic socket. These operative procedures are described in detail.

The integration of energy harvesting and energy storage device not only enables to convert ambient energy into electricity but also provides sustainable power source for various electronic devices and systems. It is highly desirable to improve the integration level and minimize unnecessary energy loss in the power-management circuits between energy harvesting and storage devices. In our work, we integrate a PVDF film into a supercapacitor as both the separator and the energy harvester. The double-sides of the polarized PVDF films are coated with H 2 SO 4 /poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) gel electrolyte. Functionalized carbon cloths are assembled with H 2 SO 4 /PVA electrolyte as both anode and cathode, forming a flexible all-solid-state supercapacitor. Externally mechanical impacts establish a piezoelectric potential across the PVDF films, and drive ions in the electrolyte to migrate towards the interface of the supercapacitor electrode, storing the electricity in the form of electrochemical energy. The asymmetric output characteristic of the piezoelectric PVDF film under mechanical impact results in the effective charging of the supercapacitor without any rectification device. The integrated piezo-supercapacitor shows the specific capacitance of 357.6 F/m 2 , the power density of 49.67 mWh/m 2 , and the energy density of 400 mW/m 2 . Our hybridized energy harvesting and storage device can be further extended for providing sustainable power source of various types of sensors.

Commercial Dacron cloth is directly used as a substrate for the growth of Cu(OH)2 nanobelt arrays for application in flexible all-solid-state supercapacitors.

Bismuth ferrite (BFO) nanofibers were synthesized via a sol-gel-based electrospinning process followed by thermal treatment. The influences of processing conditions on the final structure of the samples were investigated. Nanofibers prepared under optimized conditions were found to have a perovskite structure with good quality of crystallization and free of impurity phase. Ferroelectric and piezoelectric responses were obtained from individual nanofiber measured on a piezoelectric force microscope. A prototype photovoltaic device using laterally aligned BFO nanofibers and interdigital electrodes was developed and its performance was examined on a standard photovoltaic system. The BFO nanofibers were found to exhibit an excellent ferroelectric photovoltaic property with the photocurrent several times larger than the literature data obtained on BFO thin films.

An ultra-long PVDF/SnCl2 nanofiber transparent conducting electrode with high transmittance, low sheet resistance and good flexibility was fabricated at ambient temperature onto a flexible substrate via combining electrospinning and electroless metal deposition methods.