Amorphous SiO2 coating layers with thicknesses of ca. 2, 7, 10, and 15 nm are introduced into bulk@nanowire core@shell Si particles via direct thermal oxidation at 650-850 °C. Of the coated samples, Si with a coating thickness of ca. 7 nm has the best electrochemical performance. This sample shows an initial discharge capacity of 2279 mA h g(-1) with a Coulombic efficiency of 92% and displays 83% capacity retention after 50 cycles at 0.2C rate.

With the development of flexible mobile devices, flexible Li-ion batteries have naturally received much attention. Previously, all reported flexible components have had shortcomings related to power and energy performance. In this research, in order to overcome these problems while maintaining the flexibility, honeycomb-patterned Cu and Al materials were used as current collectors to achieve maximum adhesion in the electrodes. In addition, to increase the energy and power multishelled LiNi0.75Co0.11Mn0.14O2 particles consisting of nanoscale V2O5 and LixV2O5 coating layers and a LiδNi0.75-zCo0.11Mn0.14VzO2 doping layer were used as the cathode-anode composite (denoted as PNG-AES) consisting of amorphous Si nanoparticles (<20 nm) loaded on expanded graphite (10 wt %) and natural graphite (85 wt %). Li-ion cells with these three elements (cathode, anode, and current collector) exhibited excellent power and energy performance along with stable cycling stability up to 200 cycles in an in situ bending test.

Core‐shell type nanoalloys in which the Cu atoms uniformly reside as a shell around a core of Sn nanoparticles are achieved by reacting Cu(acac)2 with tin nanoparticles. The core‐shell Sn@Cu nanoparticles further demonstrate significantly improved rate capability at higher C rates than Sn@C nanoparticles.

Despite the advantage of high capacity, the practical use of the silicon anode is still hindered by large volume expansion during the severe pulverization lithiation process, which results in electrical contact loss and rapid capacity fading. Here, a combined electrochemical and computational study on the factor for accommodating volume expansion of silicon-based anodes is shown. 1D silicon-based nanostructures with different internal spaces to explore the effect of spatial ratio of voids and their distribution degree inside the fibers on structural stability are designed. Notably, lotus-root-type silicon nanowires with locally distributed void spaces can improve capacity retention and structural integrity with minimum silicon pulverization during lithium insertion and extraction. The findings of this study indicate that the distribution of buffer spaces, electrochemical surface area, as well as Li diffusion property significantly influence cycle performance and rate capability of the battery, which can be extended to other silicon-based anodes to overcome large volume expansion.

Low-grade heat to electricity conversion has shown a large potential for sustainable energy supply. Recently, the low-grade heat harvesting in the thermally regenerative electrochemical cycle (TREC) is a promising candidate with high energy conversion efficiency. In this system, the electrochemical temperature coefficient (α) plays a dominant role in efficient heat harvesting. However, the internal factors that affect α are still not clear and significant improvements are needed. Here, α of various Prussian Blue analogues (PBAs) is investigated and their lattice change during cation intercalation is monitored using the ex situ X-ray diffraction (XRD) method. For the first time, it is found that α is highly related to the lattice parameter change. Large lattice shrinkage exhibits a large negative α, while lattice expansion is corresponding to a positive α. These are mainly attributed to the different phonon vibration entropy changes upon cation intercalation in various PBAs. Especially, purple cobalt hexacynoferrate delivers the largest α of −0.89 mV K −1 and enables highly efficient heat conversion efficiency up to 2.65% (21% of relative efficiency). The results of this study provide a fundamental understanding of temperature coefficient in electrochemical reactions and pave the way for designing high-performance material for low-grade heat harvesting.of α (negative/positive). These phenomena are in good consistent with our theoretical calculation. In particular, purple cobalt hexacynoferrate (CoHCFe-pp) shows the largest α along with the largest lattice parameter change. Therefore, we selected CoHCFe-pp as the electrode material in TREC for low-grade heat harvesting and achieved a large heat-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 2.65% in the temperature range of 10-50 °C, which is as high as 21% of theoretical limitation.