Solid composite electrolytes (SCEs) that combine the advantages of solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) and inorganic ceramic electrolytes (ICEs) present acceptable ionic conductivity, high mechanical strength, and favorable interfacial contact with electrodes, which greatly improve the electrochemical performance of all‐solid‐state batteries compared to single SPEs and ICEs. However, there are many challenges to overcome before the practical application of SCEs, including the low ionic conductivity less than 10−3 S cm−1 at ambient temperature, poor interfacial stability, and high interfacial resistance, which greatly restrict the room temperature performance. Herein, the advances of SCEs applied in all‐solid‐state lithium batteries are presented, including the Li ion migration mechanism of SCEs, the strategies to enhance the ionic conductivity of SCEs by various morphologies of ICEs, and construction methods of the low resistance and stable interfaces of SCEs with both cathode and anode. Finally, some typical applications of SCEs in lithium batteries are summarized and future development directions are prospected. This work presents how it is quite significant to further enhance the ionic conductivity of SCEs by developing the novel SPEs with the special morphology of ICEs for advanced all‐solid‐state lithium batteries.

No abstract

Due to high ionic conductivity and low cost, Li1.4Al0.4Ti1.6(PO4)3 (LATP) has emerged as a promising solid‐state electrolyte for next‐generation lithium (Li) metal solid‐state batterie with high safety performance and energy density. However, the extremely high impedance and surface instability of LATP with Li metal retard its practical application. Herein, a novel method is proposed to construct an ultrathin ZnO layer that is tightly coated on the LATP pellets, surface (ZnO@LATP) via magnetron sputtering, which in situ reacts with Li to form a low electronic conductivity and multifunctional solid electrolyte interphase (SEI). The formed SEI can not only effectively lower the interfacial resistance, but also overcome the side reactions of LATP with the Li metal anode and suppress the Li dendrite growth. Specifically, the interface resistance decreases from 80 554 to 353 Ω and the overpotential reduces from 1 V to 20 mV. As a result, the Li/ZnO@LATP@ZnO/Li symmetric batteries can stably cycle for more than 2000 h without short circuit at 0.05 mA cm−2 and Li/ZnO@LATP/LiFePO4 batteries show excellent cycle stability for 200 cycles at 0.1 C. This work highlights the significance of multifunctional interphase between LATP and Li metal for improvement of interfacial impedance and instability.

Benefiting from the advantages of organic field‐effect transistors (OFETs), including synthetic versatility of organic molecular design and environmental sensitivity, gas sensors based on OFETs have drawn much attention in recent years. Potential applications focus on the detection of specific gas species such as explosive, toxic gases, or volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that play vital roles in environmental monitoring, industrial manufacturing, smart health care, food security, and national defense. To achieve high sensitivity, selectivity, and ambient stability with rapid response and recovery speed, the regulation and adjustment of the nano/microstructure of the organic semiconductor (OSC) layer has proven to be an effective strategy. Here, the progress of OFET gas sensors with nano/microstructure is selectively presented. Devices based on OSC films one dimensional (1D) single crystal nanowires, nanorods, and nanofibers are introduced. Then, devices based on two dimensional (2D) and ultrathin OSC films, fabricated by methods such as thermal evaporation, dip‐coating, spin‐coating, and solution‐shearing methods are presented, followed by an introduction of porous OFET sensors. Additionally, the applications of nanostructured receptors in OFET sensors are given. Finally, an outlook in view of the current research state is presented and eight further challenges for gas sensors based on OFETs are suggested.

This paper describes an architecture for robots that combines the complementary strengths of probabilistic graphical models and declarative programming to represent and reason with logic-based and probabilistic descriptions of uncertainty and domain knowledge. An action language is extended to support non-boolean fluents and nondeterministic causal laws. This action language is used to describe tightly-coupled transition diagrams at two levels of granularity, with a fine-resolution transition diagram defined as a refinement of a coarse-resolution transition diagram of the domain. The coarse-resolution system description, and a history that includes (prioritized) defaults, are translated into an Answer Set Prolog (ASP) program. For any given goal, inference in the ASP program provides a plan of abstract actions. To implement each such abstract action, the robot automatically zooms to the part of the fine-resolution transition diagram relevant to this action. A probabilistic representation of the uncertainty in sensing and actuation is then included in this zoomed fine-resolution system description, and used to construct a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). The policy obtained by solving the POMDP is invoked repeatedly to implement the abstract action as a sequence of concrete actions, with the corresponding observations being recorded in the coarse-resolution history and used for subsequent reasoning. The architecture is evaluated in simulation and on a mobile robot moving objects in an indoor domain, to show that it supports reasoning with violation of defaults, noisy observations and unreliable actions, in complex domains. 1 We use the terms "robot" and "agent" interchangeably in this paper. 1 arXiv:1508.03891v4 [cs.RO] 21 Sep 2018 probability reason optimally (or near optimally) about the effects of numerically quantifiable uncertainty in sensing and action. There have been many attempts to combine the benefits of these two classes of systems, including work on joint (i.e., logic-based and probabilistic) representations of state and action, and algorithms for planning and decisionmaking in such formalisms. These approaches provide significant expressive power, but they also impose a significant computational burden. More efficient (and often approximate) reasoning algorithms for such unified probabilisticlogical paradigms are being developed. However, practical robot systems that combine abstract task-level planning with probabilistic reasoning, link, rather than unify, their logic-based and probabilistic representations, primarily because roboticists often need to trade expressivity or correctness guarantees for computational speed. Information close to the sensorimotor level is often represented probabilistically to quantitatively model and reason about the uncertainty in sensing and actuation, with the robot's beliefs including statements such as "the robotics book is on the shelf with probability 0.9". At the same time, logic-based systems are used to reason with (more) abstract commonsen...

ORCID IDs: 0000-0001-8109-5758 (E.Ba.); 0000-0002-6449-6469 (E.Bl.).Cation/H + (NHX-type) antiporters are important regulators of intracellular ion homeostasis and are critical for cell expansion and plant stress acclimation. In Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), four distinct NHX isoforms, named AtNHX1 to AtNHX4, locate to the tonoplast. To determine the concerted roles of all tonoplast NHXs on vacuolar ion and pH homeostasis, we examined multiple knockout mutants lacking all but one of the four vacuolar isoforms and quadruple knockout plants lacking any vacuolar NHX activity. The nhx triple and quadruple knockouts displayed reduced growth phenotypes. Exposure to sodium chloride improved growth while potassium chloride was deleterious to some knockouts. Kinetic analysis of K + and Na + transport indicated that AtNHX1 and AtNHX2 are the main contributors to both vacuolar pH and K + and Na + uptake, while AtNHX3 and AtNHX4 differ in Na + /K + selectivity. The lack of any vacuolar NHX activity resulted in no K + uptake, highly acidic vacuoles, and reduced but not abolished vacuolar Na + uptake. Additional K + /H + and Na + /H + exchange activity assays in the quadruple knockout indicated Na + uptake that was not H + coupled, suggesting the existence of an alternative, cation/H + -independent, Na + conductive pathway in vacuoles. These results highlight the importance of NHXtype cation/H + antiporters in the maintenance of cellular cation homeostasis and in growth and development.

The garnet electrolyte presents poor wettability with Li metal, resulting in an extremely large interfacial impedance and drastic growth of Li dendrites. Herein, a novel ultra-stable conductive composite interface (CCI) consisting of Li y Sn alloy and Li 3 N is constructed in situ between Li 6.4 La 3 Zr 1.4 Ta 0.6 O 12 (LLZTO) pellet and Li metal by a conversion reaction of SnN x with Li metal at 300 8C. The Li y Sn alloy as a continuous and robust bridge between LLZTO and Li metal can effectively reduce the LLZTO/Li interfacial resistance from 4468.0 W to 164.8 W. Meanwhile, the Li 3 N as a fast Li-ion channel can efficiently transfer Li ions and give their uniform distribution at the LLZTO/Li interface. Therefore, the Li/LLZTO@CCI/ Li symmetric battery stably cycles for 1200 h without short circuit, and the all-solid-state high-voltage Li/LLZTO@CCI/ LiNi 0.5 Co 0.2 Mn 0.3 O 2 battery achieves a specific capacity of 161.4 mAh g À1 at 0.25 C with a capacity retention rate of 92.6 % and coulombic efficiency of 100.0 % after 200 cycles at 25 8C.

Induction of pluripotent cells termed callus by auxin represents a typical cell fate change required for plant in vitro regeneration; however, the molecular control of auxin-induced callus formation is largely elusive. We previously identified four Arabidopsis auxin-inducible Lateral Organ Boundaries Domain (LBD) transcription factors that govern callus formation. Here, we report that Arabidopsis basic region/leucine zipper motif 59 (AtbZIP59) transcription factor forms complexes with LBDs to direct auxin-induced callus formation. We show that auxin stabilizes AtbZIP59 and enhances its interaction with LBD, and that disruption of AtbZIP59 dampens auxin-induced callus formation whereas overexpression of AtbZIP59 triggers autonomous callus formation. AtbZIP59-LBD16 directly targets a FAD-binding Berberine (FAD-BD) gene and promotes its transcription, which contributes to callus formation. These findings define the AtbZIP59-LBD complex as a critical regulator of auxin-induced cell fate change during callus formation, which provides a new insight into the molecular regulation of plant regeneration and possible developmental programs.