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Now showing 1 - 10 of 12
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    Steering Directional Light Emission and Mode Chirality through Postshaping of Cavity Geometry
    (Hoboke, NJ : Wiley, 2020) Wang, Jiawei; Tang, Min; Yang, Yue-De; Yin, Yin; Chen, Yan; Saggau, Christian Niclaas; Zhu, Minshen; Yuan, Xiaobo; Karnaushenko, Dmitriy; Huang, Yong-Zhen; Ma, Libo; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Dielectric optical microcavities have been explored as an excellent platform to manipulate the light flow and investigate non‐Hermitian physics in open optical systems. For whispering gallery mode optical microcavities, modifying the rotational symmetry is highly desirable for intriguing phenomena such as degenerated chiral modes and directional light emission. However, for the state‐of‐the‐art approaches, namely deforming the cavity geometry by precision lithography or introducing local scatterers near the cavity boundary via micromanipulation, there is a lack of flexibility in fine‐adjusting of chiral symmetry and far‐field emission direction. Here, precise engineering of cavity boundary using electron‐beam‐induced deposition is reported based on rolled‐up nanomembrane‐enabled spiral‐shaped microcavities. The deformation of outer boundary results in delicate tailoring of asymmetric backscattering between the outer and inner rolling edges, and hence deterministically strong mode chirality. Besides, the crescent‐shaped high‐index nanocap leads to modified light tunneling channels and inflected far‐field emission angle. It is envisioned that such a localized deposition‐assisted technique for adjusting the structural deformation of 3D optical microcavities will be highly useful for understanding rich insights in non‐Hermitian photonics and unfolding exotic properties on lasing, sensing, and cavity quantum electrodynamics.
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    Imperceptible Supercapacitors with High Area-Specific Capacitance
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2021) Ge, Jin; Zhu, Minshen; Eisner, Eric; Yin, Yin; Dong, Haiyun; Karnaushenko, Dmitriy D.; Karnaushenko, Daniil; Zhu, Feng; Ma, Libo; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Imperceptible electronics will make next-generation healthcare and biomedical systems thinner, lighter, and more flexible. While other components are thoroughly investigated, imperceptible energy storage devices lag behind because the decrease of thickness impairs the area-specific energy density. Imperceptible supercapacitors with high area-specific capacitance based on reduced graphene oxide/polyaniline (RGO/PANI) composite electrodes and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/H2SO4 gel electrolyte are reported. Two strategies to realize a supercapacitor with a total device thickness of 5 µm—including substrate, electrode, and electrolyte—and an area-specific capacitance of 36 mF cm−2 simultaneously are implemented. First, the void volume of the RGO/PANI electrodes through mechanical compression is reduced, which decreases the thickness by 83% while retaining 89% of the capacitance. Second, the PVA-to-H2SO4 mass ratio is decreased to 1:4.5, which improves the ion conductivity by 5000% compared to the commonly used PVA/H2SO4 gel. Both advantages enable a 2 µm-thick gel electrolyte for planar interdigital supercapacitors. The impressive electromechanical stability of the imperceptible supercapacitors by wrinkling the substrate to produce folds with radii of 6 µm or less is demonstrated. The supercapacitors will be meaningful energy storage modules for future self-powered imperceptible electronics.
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    Covalent Organic Frameworks for Efficient Energy Electrocatalysis: Rational Design and Progress
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2021) Zhang, Hua; Zhu, Minshen; Schmidt, Oliver G.; Chen, Shuillang; Zhang, Kai
    An efficient catalyst with a precisely designed and predictable structure is highly desired to optimize its performance and understand the mechanism beyond the catalytic activity. Covalent organic frameworks (COFs), as an emerging class of framework materials linked by strong covalent bonds, simultaneously allow precise structure design with predictable synthesis and show advantages of large surface areas, tunable pore sizes, and unique molecular architectures. Although the research on COF‐based electrocatalysts is at an early age, significant progress has been made. Herein, the recent significant progress in the design and synthesis of COFs as highly efficient electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is summarized. Design principles for COFs as efficient electrocatalysts are discussed by considering essential factors for catalyzing the OER, ORR, and HER processes at the molecular level. Herein, a summary on the in‐depth understanding of the catalytic mechanism and kinetics limitations of COFs provides a general instruction for further exploring their vast potential for designing highly efficient electrocatalysts.
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    A compact tube-in-tube microsized lithium-ion battery as an independent microelectric power supply unit
    ([New York, NY] : Elsevier, 2021) Weng, Qunhong; Wang, Sitao; Liu, Lixiang; Lu, Xueyi; Zhu, Minshen; Li, Yang; Gabler, Felix; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Independent and well-packaged miniaturized energy storage devices (MESDs) are indispensable as power sources or backup units for integrated circuits and many dispersive electronics applications. Challenges associated with MESD development relate to their low packaged areal energy density and poor battery performance. Here, we propose a compact tube-in-tube battery configuration to overcome the areal energy density and packaging problems in microbatteries. Compact microtubular microelectrodes rolled up from patterned nanomembranes are sealed in an inert glass capillary with a thin tube wall. The resultant tube-in-tube microsized lithium-ion batteries (micro-LIBs), based on various active materials, exhibit very high and scalable packaged areal energy densities up to 605 microampere hours per square centimeter (μAh cm−2) or 313 μWh cm−2 with footprints as small as 0.39–0.79 mm2. This approach is a practical alternative for microbattery microelectrode, packaging, and configuration innovations.
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    Stamping Fabrication of Flexible Planar Micro‐Supercapacitors Using Porous Graphene Inks
    (Hoboken : Wiley, 2020) Li, Fei; Qu, Jiang; Li, Yang; Wang, Jinhui; Zhu, Minshen; Liu, Lixiang; Ge, Jin; Duan, Shengkai; Li, Tianming; Bandari, Vineeth Kumar; Huang, Ming; Zhu, Feng; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    High performance, flexibility, safety, and robust integration for micro‐supercapacitors (MSCs) are of immense interest for the urgent demand for miniaturized, smart energy‐storage devices. However, repetitive photolithography processes in the fabrication of on‐chip electronic components including various photoresists, masks, and toxic etchants are often not well‐suited for industrial production. Here, a cost‐effective stamping strategy is developed for scalable and rapid preparation of graphene‐based planar MSCs. Combining stamps with desired shapes and highly conductive graphene inks, flexible MSCs with controlled structures are prepared on arbitrary substrates without any metal current collectors, additives, and polymer binders. The interdigitated MSC exhibits high areal capacitance up to 21.7 mF cm−2 at a current of 0.5 mA and a high power density of 6 mW cm−2 at an energy density of 5 µWh cm−2. Moreover, the MSCs show outstanding cycling performance and remarkable flexibility over 10 000 charge–discharge cycles and 300 bending cycles. In addition, the capacitance and output voltage of the MSCs are easily adjustable through interconnection with well‐defined arrangements. The efficient, rapid manufacturing of the graphene‐based interdigital MSCs with outstanding flexibility, shape diversity, and high areal capacitance shows great potential in wearable and portable electronics.
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    Antifreezing Hydrogel with High Zinc Reversibility for Flexible and Durable Aqueous Batteries by Cooperative Hydrated Cations
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2020) Zhu, Minshen; Wang, Xiaojie; Tang, Hongmei; Wang, Jiawei; Hao, Qi; Liu, Lixiang; Li, Yang; Zhang, Kai; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Hydrogels are widely used in flexible aqueous batteries due to their liquid-like ion transportation abilities and solid-like mechanical properties. Their potential applications in flexible and wearable electronics introduce a fundamental challenge: how to lower the freezing point of hydrogels to preserve these merits without sacrificing hydrogels' basic advantages in low cost and high safety. Moreover, zinc as an ideal anode in aqueous batteries suffers from low reversibility because of the formation of insulative byproducts, which is mainly caused by hydrogen evolution via extensive hydration of zinc ions. This, in principle, requires the suppression of hydration, which induces an undesirable increase in the freezing point of hydrogels. Here, it is demonstrated that cooperatively hydrated cations, zinc and lithium ions in hydrogels, are very effective in addressing the above challenges. This simple but unique hydrogel not only enables a 98% capacity retention upon cooling down to −20 °C from room temperature but also allows a near 100% capacity retention with >99.5% Coulombic efficiency over 500 cycles at −20 °C. In addition, the strengthened mechanical properties of the hydrogel under subzero temperatures result in excellent durability under various harsh deformations after the freezing process. © 2019 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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    Nano energy for miniaturized systems
    (Amsterdam : Elsevier, 2021) Zhu, Minshen; Zhu, Feng; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Skin mountable electronic devices are in a high-speed development at the crossroads of materials science, electronics, and computer science. Sophisticated functions, such as sensing, actuating, and computing, are integrated into a soft electronic device that can be firmly mounted to any place of human body. These advanced electronic devices are capable of yielding abilities for us whenever they are needed and even expanding our abilities beyond their natural limitations. Despite the great promise of skin mounted electronic devices, they still lack satisfactory power supplies that are safe and continuous. This Perspective discusses the prospects of the development of energy storage devices for the next generation skin mountable electronic devices based on their unique requirements on flexibility and miniaturized size.
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    Stress‐Actuated Spiral Microelectrode for High‐Performance Lithium‐Ion Microbatteries
    (2020) Tang, Hongmei; Karnaushenko, Dmitriy D.; Neu, Volker; Gabler, Felix; Wang, Sitao; Liu, Lixiang; Li, Yang; Wang, Jiawei; Zhu, Minshen; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Miniaturization of batteries lags behind the success of modern electronic devices. Neither the device volume nor the energy density of microbatteries meets the requirement of microscale electronic devices. The main limitation for pushing the energy density of microbatteries arises from the low mass loading of active materials. However, merely pushing the mass loading through increased electrode thickness is accompanied by the long charge transfer pathway and inferior mechanical properties for long‐term operation. Here, a new spiral microelectrode upon stress‐actuation accomplishes high mass loading but short charge transfer pathways. At a small footprint area of around 1 mm2, a 21‐fold increase of the mass loading is achieved while featuring fast charge transfer at the nanoscale. The spiral microelectrode delivers a maximum area capacity of 1053 µAh cm−2 with a retention of 67% over 50 cycles. Moreover, the energy density of the cylinder microbattery using the spiral microelectrode as the anode reaches 12.6 mWh cm−3 at an ultrasmall volume of 3 mm3. In terms of the device volume and energy density, the cylinder microbattery outperforms most of the current microbattery technologies, and hence provides a new strategy to develop high‐performance microbatteries that can be integrated with miniaturized electronic devices.
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    Perovskite Origami for Programmable Microtube Lasing
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2021) Dong, Haiyun; Saggau, Christian Niclaas; Zhu, Minshen; Liang, Jie; Duan, Shengkai; Wang, Xiaoyu; Tang, Hongmei; Yin, Yin; Wang, Xiaoxia; Wang, Jiawei; Zhang, Chunhuan; Zhao, Yong Sheng; Ma, Libo; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Metal halide perovskites are promising materials for optoelectronic and photonic applications ranging from photovoltaics to laser devices. However, current perovskite devices are constrained to simple low-dimensional structures suffering from limited design freedom and holding up performance improvement and functionality upgrades. Here, a micro-origami technique is developed to program 3D perovskite microarchitectures toward a new type of microcavity laser. The design flexibility in 3D supports not only outstanding laser performance such as low threshold, tunable output, and high stability but also yields new functionalities like 3D confined mode lasing and directional emission in, for example, laser “array-in-array” systems. The results represent a significant step forward toward programmable microarchitectures that take perovskite optoelectronics and photonics into the 3D era. © 2021 The Authors. Advanced Functional Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.
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    A Patternable and In Situ Formed Polymeric Zinc Blanket for a Reversible Zinc Anode in a Skin-Mountable Microbattery
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2021) Zhu, Minshen; Hu, Junping; Lu, Qiongqiong; Dong, Haiyun; Karnaushenko, Dmitriy D.; Becker, Christian; Karnaushenko, Daniil; Li, Yang; Tang, Hongmei; Qu, Zhe; Ge, Jin; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Owing to their high safety and reversibility, aqueous microbatteries using zinc anodes and an acid electrolyte have emerged as promising candidates for wearable electronics. However, a critical limitation that prevents implementing zinc chemistry at the microscale lies in its spontaneous corrosion in an acidic electrolyte that causes a capacity loss of 40% after a ten-hour rest. Widespread anti-corrosion techniques, such as polymer coating, often retard the kinetics of zinc plating/stripping and lack spatial control at the microscale. Here, a polyimide coating that resolves this dilemma is reported. The coating prevents corrosion and hence reduces the capacity loss of a standby microbattery to 10%. The coordination of carbonyl oxygen in the polyimide with zinc ions builds up over cycling, creating a zinc blanket that minimizes the concentration gradient through the electrode/electrolyte interface and thus allows for fast kinetics and low plating/stripping overpotential. The polyimide's patternable feature energizes microbatteries in both aqueous and hydrogel electrolytes, delivering a supercapacitor-level rate performance and 400 stable cycles in the hydrogel electrolyte. Moreover, the microbattery is able to be attached to human skin and offers strong resistance to deformations, splashing, and external shock. The skin-mountable microbattery demonstrates an excellent combination of anti-corrosion, reversibility, and durability in wearables. © 2021 The Authors. Advanced Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH