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    Building Hierarchical Martensite
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2020) Schwabe, Stefan; Niemann, Robert; Backen, Anja; Wolf, Daniel; Damm, Christine; Walter, Tina; Seiner, Hanuš; Heczko, Oleg; Nielsch, Kornelius; Fähler, Sebastian
    Martensitic materials show a complex, hierarchical microstructure containing structural domains separated by various types of twin boundaries. Several concepts exist to describe this microstructure on each length scale, however, there is no comprehensive approach bridging the whole range from the nano- up to the macroscopic scale. Here, it is described for a Ni-Mn-based Heusler alloy how this hierarchical microstructure is built from scratch with just one key parameter: the tetragonal distortion of the basic building block at the atomic level. Based on this initial block, five successive levels of nested building blocks are introduced. At each level, a larger building block is formed by twinning the preceding one to minimize the relevant energy contributions locally. This naturally explains the coexistence of different types of twin boundaries. The scale-bridging approach of nested building blocks is compared with experiments in real and reciprocal space. The approach of nested building blocks is versatile as it can be applied to the broad class of functional materials exhibiting diffusionless transformations. © 2020 The Authors. Advanced Functional Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
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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