An artificial while very stable solid electrolyte interphase film is formed on lithium metal using an electrochemical strategy. When this protected Li anode is first used in a Li-O2 battery, the film formed on the anode can effectively suppress the parasitic reactions on the Li anode/electrolyte interface and significantly enhance the cycling stability of the Li-O2 battery.

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Inspired by traditional cyanotype, we first design a novel strategy for the fabrication of low-cost, lightweight, and soft patterned electrodes. When employed in flexible potassium-ion battery, the patterned electrodes show superior electrochemical performance, including good cycling stability and high energy density. This appealing photographic printing technique as well as the promising electrochemical results opens a new avenue for the fabrication of flexible energy storage systems.

To recycle rusty stainless-steel meshes (RSSM) and meet the urgent requirement of developing high-performance cathodes for potassium-ion batteries (KIB), we demonstrate a new strategy to fabricate flexible binder-free KIB electrodes via transformation of the corrosion layer of RSSM into compact stack-layers of Prussian blue (PB) nanocubes (PB@SSM). When further coated with reduced graphite oxide (RGO) to enhance electric conductivity and structural stability, the low-cost, stable, and binder-free RGO@PB@SSM cathode exhibits excellent electrochemical performances for KIB, including high capacity (96.8 mAh g ), high discharge voltage (3.3 V), high rate capability (1000 mA g ; 42 % capacity retention), and outstanding cycle stability (305 cycles; 75.1 % capacity retention).

A flexible freestanding air cathode inspired by traditional Chinese calligraphy art is built. When this novel electrode is employed as both a new concept cathode and current collector, to replace conventional rigid and bulky counterparts, a highly flexible and foldable Li-O2 battery with excellent mechanical strength and superior electrochemical performance is obtained.

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P-doped TiO 2 nanoparticles were synthesized by the sol-gel method with various H 3 PO 4 amounts. The samples were calcinated at different temperature and charactered by XPS, ICP, XRD, SEM, Raman, FTIR, and UV-vis methods, so that the formation process of phosphate species could be inspected. The XRD results show that P species hinder the particle growth of anatase and increase the anatase-to-rutile phase transformation temperature to more than 900 °C, and a new titanyl phosphate, Ti 5 O 4 (PO 4 ) 4 , was observed in P-doped TiO 2 when calcined at 1000 °C. The UV-vis results indicate that the P species is likely to have two different states, leading to the variety of visible-light photocatalytic activity and band gap energy of P-doped TiO 2 . One state is the "separated phase". In this state, the P/Ti ratio is very low so that the P species is surrounded by TiO 2 . The "separated phase" of P species introduces oxygen into TiO 2 lattice and hence causes a red-shift of the adsorption band edge of anatase, leading to the increased visible-light photocatalytic activity of P-doped TiO 2 . The other state is the "congregated phase". It appears at the micro region where the ratio of P/Ti is high enough to make the TiO 2 clusters isolated by P species. The "congregated phase" of P species acts as the interface phase between TiO 2 clusters and strongly retards the crystal growth of anatase, resulting in the widened band gap of P-doped TiO 2 . Furthermore, a possible mechanism was also proposed to explain the formation of the two phases during the sol-gel process. The results indicate that in order to improve the visible-light photocatalytic activity of P-doped TiO 2 the percentage of "separated phase" in P species needs to be enhanced.