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    A High-Voltage, Dendrite-Free, and Durable Zn–Graphite Battery
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2019) Wang, Gang; Kohn, Benjamin; Scheler, Ulrich; Wang, Faxing; Oswald, Steffen; Löffler, Markus; Tan, Deming; Zhang, Panpan; Zhang, Jian; Feng, Xinliang
    The intrinsic advantages of metallic Zn, like high theoretical capacity (820 mAh g−1), high abundance, low toxicity, and high safety have driven the recent booming development of rechargeable Zn batteries. However, the lack of high-voltage electrolyte and cathode materials restricts the cell voltage mostly to below 2 V. Moreover, dendrite formation and the poor rechargeability of the Zn anode hinder the long-term operation of Zn batteries. Here a high-voltage and durable Zn–graphite battery, which is enabled by a LiPF6-containing hybrid electrolyte, is reported. The presence of LiPF6 efficiently suppresses the anodic oxidation of Zn electrolyte and leads to a super-wide electrochemical stability window of 4 V (vs Zn/Zn2+). Both dendrite-free Zn plating/stripping and reversible dual-anion intercalation into the graphite cathode are realized in the hybrid electrolyte. The resultant Zn–graphite battery performs stably at a high voltage of 2.8 V with a record midpoint discharge voltage of 2.2 V. After 2000 cycles at a high charge–discharge rate, high capacity retention of 97.5% is achieved with ≈100% Coulombic efficiency. © 2019 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.
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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
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    Digital Electrochemistry for On-Chip Heterogeneous Material Integration
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2021) Bao, Bin; Rivkin, Boris; Akbar, Farzin; Karnaushenko, Dmitriy D.; Bandari, Vineeth Kumar; Teuerle, Laura; Becker, Christian; Baunack, Stefan; Karnaushenko, Daniil; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Many modern electronic applications rely on functional units arranged in an active-matrix integrated on a single chip. The active-matrix allows numerous identical device pixels to be addressed within a single system. However, next-generation electronics requires heterogeneous integration of dissimilar devices, where sensors, actuators, and display pixels sense and interact with the local environment. Heterogeneous material integration allows the reduction of size, increase of functionality, and enhancement of performance; however, it is challenging since front-end fabrication technologies in microelectronics put extremely high demands on materials, fabrication protocols, and processing environments. To overcome the obstacle in heterogeneous material integration, digital electrochemistry is explored here, which site-selectively carries out electrochemical processes to deposit and address electroactive materials within the pixel array. More specifically, an amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) thin-film-transistor (TFT) active-matrix is used to address pixels within the matrix and locally control electrochemical reactions for material growth and actuation. The digital electrochemistry procedure is studied in-depth by using polypyrrole (PPy) as a model material. Active-matrix-driven multicolored electrochromic patterns and actuator arrays are fabricated to demonstrate the capabilities of this approach for material integration. The approach can be extended to a broad range of materials and structures, opening up a new path for advanced heterogeneous microsystem integration.
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    Interfacial Covalent Bonds Regulated Electron-Deficient 2D Black Phosphorus for Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reactions
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2021) Wang, Xia; Raghupathy, Ramya Kormath Madam; Querebillo, Christine Joy; Liao, Zhongquan; Li, Dongqi; Lin, Kui; Hantusch, Martin; Sofer, Zdeněk; Li, Baohua; Zschech, Ehrenfried; Weidinger, Inez M.; Kühne, Thomas D.; Mirhosseini, Hossein; Yu, Minghao; Feng, Xinliang
    Developing resource-abundant and sustainable metal-free bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts is essential for the practical application of zinc–air batteries (ZABs). 2D black phosphorus (BP) with fully exposed atoms and active lone pair electrons can be promising for oxygen electrocatalysts, which, however, suffers from low catalytic activity and poor electrochemical stability. Herein, guided by density functional theory (DFT) calculations, an efficient metal-free electrocatalyst is demonstrated via covalently bonding BP nanosheets with graphitic carbon nitride (denoted BP-CN-c). The polarized P-N covalent bonds in BP-CN-c can efficiently regulate the electron transfer from BP to graphitic carbon nitride and significantly promote the OOH* adsorption on phosphorus atoms. Impressively, the oxygen evolution reaction performance of BP-CN-c (overpotential of 350 mV at 10 mA cm−2, 90% retention after 10 h operation) represents the state-of-the-art among the reported BP-based metal-free catalysts. Additionally, BP-CN-c exhibits a small half-wave overpotential of 390 mV for oxygen reduction reaction, representing the first bifunctional BP-based metal-free oxygen catalyst. Moreover, ZABs are assembled incorporating BP-CN-c cathodes, delivering a substantially higher peak power density (168.3 mW cm−2) than the Pt/C+RuO2-based ZABs (101.3 mW cm−2). The acquired insights into interfacial covalent bonds pave the way for the rational design of new and affordable metal-free catalysts. © 2021 The Authors. Advanced Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
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    High-Entropy Metal-Organic Frameworks for Highly Reversible Sodium Storage
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2021) Ma, Yanjiao; Ma, Yuan; Dreyer, Sören Lukas; Wang, Qingsong; Wang, Kai; Goonetilleke, Damian; Omar, Ahmad; Mikhailova, Daria; Hahn, Horst; Breitung, Ben; Brezesinski, Torsten
    Prussian blue analogues (PBAs) are reported to be efficient sodium storage materials because of the unique advantages of their metal-organic framework structure. However, the issues of low specific capacity and poor reversibility, caused by phase transitions during charge/discharge cycling, have thus far limited the applicability of these materials. Herein, a new approach is presented to substantially improve the electrochemical properties of PBAs by introducing high entropy into the crystal structure. To achieve this, five different metal species are introduced, sharing the same nitrogen-coordinated site, thereby increasing the configurational entropy of the system beyond 1.5R. By careful selection of the elements, high-entropy PBA (HE-PBA) presents a quasi-zero-strain reaction mechanism, resulting in increased cycling stability and rate capability. The key to such improvement lies in the high entropy and associated effects as well as the presence of several active redox centers. The gassing behavior of PBAs is also reported. Evolution of dimeric cyanogen due to oxidation of the cyanide ligands is detected, which can be attributed to the structural degradation of HE-PBA during battery operation. By optimizing the electrochemical window, a Coulombic efficiency of nearly 100% is retained after cycling for more than 3000 cycles.
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    Signatures of Sixfold Degenerate Exotic Fermions in a Superconducting Metal PdSb2
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2020) Kumar, Nitesh; Yao, Mengyu; Nayak, Jayita; Vergniory, Maia G.; Bannies, Jörn; Wang, Zhijun; Schröter, Niels B.M.; Strocov, Vladimir N.; Müchler, Lukas; Shi, Wujun; Rienks, Emile D.L.; Mañes, J.L.; Shekhar, Chandra; Parkin, Stuart S.P.; Fink, Jörg; Fecher, Gerhard H.; Sun, Yan; Bernevig, B. Andrei; Felser, Claudia
    Multifold degenerate points in the electronic structure of metals lead to exotic behaviors. These range from twofold and fourfold degenerate Weyl and Dirac points, respectively, to sixfold and eightfold degenerate points that are predicted to give rise, under modest magnetic fields or strain, to topological semimetallic behaviors. The present study shows that the nonsymmorphic compound PdSb2 hosts six-component fermions or sextuplets. Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, crossing points formed by three twofold degenerate parabolic bands are directly observed at the corner of the Brillouin zone. The group theory analysis proves that under weak spin–orbit interaction, a band inversion occurs. © 2020 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
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    Mechanical Characterization of Compact Rolled-up Microtubes Using In Situ Scanning Electron Microscopy Nanoindentation and Finite Element Analysis
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2021) Moradi, Somayeh; Jöhrmann, Nathanael; Karnaushenko, Dmitriy D.; Zschenderlein, Uwe; Karnaushenko, Daniil; Wunderle, Bernhard; Schmidt, Oliver G.
    Self-assembled Swiss-roll microstructures (SRMs) are widely explored to build up microelectronic devices such as capacitors, transistors, or inductors as well as sensors and lab-in-a-tube systems. These devices often need to be transferred to a special position on a microchip or printed circuit board for the final application. Such a device transfer is typically conducted by a pick-and-place process exerting enormous mechanical loads onto the 3D components that may cause catastrophic failure of the device. Herein, the mechanical deformation behavior of SRMs using experiments and simulations is investigated. SRMs using in situ scanning electron microscopy (SEM) combined with nanoindentation are characterized. This allows us to mimic and characterize mechanical loads as they occur in a pick-and-place process. The deformation response of SRMs depends on three geometrical factors, i.e., the number of windings, compactness of consecutive windings, and inner diameter of the microtube. Nonlinear finite element analysis (FEA) showing good agreement with experiments is performed. It is believed that the insights into the mechanical loading of 3D self-assembled architectures will lead to novel techniques suitable for a new generation of pick-and-place machines operating at the microscale. © 2021 The Authors. Advanced Engineering Materials published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
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    Nonclassical Recrystallization
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2020) Brunner, Julian; Maier, Britta; Rosenberg, Rose; Sturm, Sebastian; Cölfen, Helmut; Sturm, Elena V.
    Applications in the fields of materials science and nanotechnology increasingly demand monodisperse nanoparticles in size and shape. Up to now, no general purification procedure exists to thoroughly narrow the size and shape distributions of nanoparticles. Here, we show by analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC) as an absolute and quantitative high-resolution method that multiple recrystallizations of nanocrystals to mesocrystals is a very efficient tool to generate nanocrystals with an excellent and so-far unsurpassed size-distribution (PDIc=1.0001) and shape. Similar to the crystallization of molecular building blocks, nonclassical recrystallization removes “colloidal” impurities (i.e., nanoparticles, which are different in shape and size from the majority) by assembling them into a mesocrystal. In the case of nanocrystals, this assembly can be size- and shape-selective, since mesocrystals show both long-range packing ordering and preferable crystallographic orientation of nanocrystals. Besides the generation of highly monodisperse nanoparticles, these findings provide highly relevant insights into the crystallization of mesocrystals. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
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    Single-Molecule Magnets DyM2N@C80 and Dy2MN@C80 (M=Sc, Lu): The Impact of Diamagnetic Metals on Dy3+ Magnetic Anisotropy, Dy⋅⋅⋅Dy Coupling, and Mixing of Molecular and Lattice Vibrations
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2020) Spree, Lukas; Schlesier, Christin; Kostanyan, Aram; Westerström, Rasmus; Greber, Thomas; Büchner, Bernd; Avdoshenko, Stanislav M.; Popov, Alexey A.
    The substitution of scandium in fullerene single-molecule magnets (SMMs) DySc2N@C80 and Dy2ScN@C80 by lutetium has been studied to explore the influence of the diamagnetic metal on the SMM performance of dysprosium nitride clusterfullerenes. The use of lutetium led to an improved SMM performance of DyLu2N@C80, which shows a higher blocking temperature of magnetization (TB=9.5 K), longer relaxation times, and broader hysteresis than DySc2N@C80 (TB=6.9 K). At the same time, Dy2LuN@C80 was found to have a similar blocking temperature of magnetization to Dy2ScN@C80 (TB=8 K), but substantially different interactions between the magnetic moments of the dysprosium ions in the Dy2MN clusters. Surprisingly, although the intramolecular dipolar interactions in Dy2LuN@C80 and Dy2ScN@C80 are of similar strength, the exchange interactions in Dy2LuN@C80 are close to zero. Analysis of the low-frequency molecular and lattice vibrations showed strong mixing of the lattice modes and endohedral cluster librations in k-space. This mixing simplifies the spin–lattice relaxation by conserving the momentum during the spin flip and helping to distribute the moment and energy further into the lattice. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.
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    PAH/PAH(CF3)n Donor/Acceptor Charge-Transfer Complexes in Solution and in Solid-State Co-Crystals
    (Weinheim : Wiley-VCH, 2019) Castro, Karlee P.; Bukovsky, Eric V.; Kuvychko, Igor V.; DeWeerd, Nicholas J.; Chen, Yu-Sheng; Deng, Shihu H.M.; Wang, Xue-Bin; Popov, Alexey A.; Strauss, Steven H.; Boltalina, Olga V.
    A solution, solid-state, and computational study is reported of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon PAH/PAH(CF3)n donor/acceptor (D/A) charge-transfer complexes that involve six PAH(CF3)n acceptors with known gas-phase electron affinities that range from 2.11(2) to 2.805(15) eV and four PAH donors, including seven CT co-crystal X-ray structures that exhibit hexagonal arrays of mixed π-stacks with 1/1, 1/2, or 2/1 D/A stoichiometries (PAH=anthracene, azulene, coronene, perylene, pyrene, triphenylene; n=5, 6). These are the first D/A CT complexes with PAH(CF3)n acceptors to be studied in detail. The nine D/A combinations were chosen to allow several structural and electronic comparisons to be made, providing new insights about controlling D/A interactions and the structures of CT co-crystals. The comparisons include, among others, CT complexes of the same PAH(CF3)n acceptor with four PAH donors and CT complexes of the same donor with four PAH(CF3)n acceptors. All nine CT complexes exhibit charge-transfer bands in solution with λmax between 467 and 600 nm. A plot of E(λmax) versus [IE(donor)−EA(acceptor)] for the nine CT complexes studied is linear with a slope of 0.72±0.03 eV eV−1. This plot is the first of its kind for CT complexes with structurally related donors and acceptors for which precise experimental gas-phase IEs and EAs are known. It demonstrates that conclusions based on the common assumption that the slope of a CT E(λmax) versus [IE−EA] plot is unity may be incorrect in at least some cases and should be reconsidered. © 2019 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim