Single-Phase Ternary Compounds with a Disordered Lattice and Liquid Metal Phase for High-Performance Li-Ion Battery Anodes

Si is considered as the promising anode materials for lithium-ion batteries(LIBs)owing to their high capacities of 4200 mAh g-1and natural abundancy.However,severe electrode pulverization and poor electronic and Li-ionic conductivities hinder their practical applications.To resolve the afore-mentioned problems,we first demonstrate a cation-mixed disordered lattice and unique Li storage mechanism of single-phase ternary GaSiP_(2)compound,where the liquid metallic Ga and highly reactive P are incorporated into Si through a ball milling method.As confirmed by experimental and theoretical analyses,the introduced Ga and P enables to achieve the stronger resistance against volume variation and metallic conductivity,respectively,while the cation-mixed lattice provides the faster Li-ionic diffusion capability than those of the parent GaP and Si phases.The resulting GaSiP_(2)electrodes delivered the high specific capacity of 1615 mAh g-1and high initial Coulombic efficiency of 91%,while the graphite-modified GaSiP_(2)(GaSiP_(2)@C)achieved 83%of capacity retention after 900 cycles and high-rate capacity of 800 at 10,000 mA g-1.Furthermore,the LiNi_(0.8)Co_(0.1)Mn_(0.1)O_(2)//Ga SiP_(2)@C full cells achieved the high specific capacity of 1049 mAh g-1after 100 cycles,paving a way for the rational design of high-performance LIB anode materials.

A class of Ga-Al-P-based compounds with disordered lattice as advanced anode materials for Li-ion batteries

Phosphides possess large reversible capacity, small voltage hysteresis, and high energy efficiency, thus promising to be new anode candidates to replace commercial graphite for Li-ion batteries(LIBs).Through a facile mechanochemistry method, we prepare a novel ternary phosphide of Ga0.5Al0.5P whose crystalline structure is determined to be a cation-disordered cubic zinc sulfide structure according to XRD refinement. As an anode for LIBs, the Ga0.5Al0.5P delivers a reversible capacity of 1,352 mA h g^(-1)at100 mA g^(-1)with an initial Coulombic efficiency(ICE) up to 90.0% based on a reversible Li-storage mechanism integrating intercalation and subsequent conversion processes as confirmed by various characterizations techniques including in-situ XRD, ex-situ Raman, and XPS and electrochemical characterizations.Graphite-modified Ga0.5Al0.5P exhibits a long-lasting cycling stability of retaining 1,182 mA h g^(-1)after300 cycles at 100 m A g^(-1), and 625 mA h g^(-1)after 800 cycles at 2,000 mA g^(-1), and a high-rate performance of remaining 342 m A h g^(-1)at 20,000 mA g^(-1). The outstanding electrochemical performances can be attributed to enhanced reaction kinetics enabled by the capacitive behaviors and the faster Liion diffusion enabled by the cation-mixing. Importantly, by tuning the cationic ratio, we develop a novel series of cation-mixed compounds of Ga_(1/3)Al_(2/3)P, Ga_(1/4)Al_(3/4)P, Ga_(1/5)Al_(4/5)P, Ga_(2/3)Al_(1/3)P, Ga_(3/4)Al_(1/4)P, and Ga_(4/5)Al_(1/5)P, which demonstrate large capacity, high ICE, and suitable anode potentials. Broadly, these compounds with disordered lattices probably present novel physicochemical properties, and high electrochemical performances, thus providing a new perspective for new materials design.

Spatial structure of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a combined trap

We study the spatial structure of a Bose-Einstein condensate(BEC)with a space-dependent s-wave scattering length in a combined trap.There exists a space-dependent nonlinear atomic current in the system.The atomic current has an important influence on the spatial structure of the BEC.Research findings reveal that a large chemical potential can effectively suppress the chaotic spatial structure in the BEC system.Due to the large chemical potential,a strong atomic current is necessary to make the system lose its periodic spatial structure and lead the system into a chaotic spatial structure.But when the atomic current intensity exceeds a critical value,the chaotic spatial structure of the BEC will be completely eliminated and the system will always be kept in a series of single-periodic states as the atomic current becomes stronger.For a very weak atomic current,the spatial structure of the BEC is very sensitive to the intensity of the atomic current and a very small change of the intensity can dramatically change the spatial structure of the BEC.The effects of the combined trap parameters on the spatial structure of BECs are also discussed.

Van der Waals ferroelectric transistors:the all-round artificial synapses for high-precision neuromorphic computing

State number,operation power,dynamic range and conductance weight update linearity are key synaptic device performance metrics for high-accuracy and low-power-consumption neuromorphic com-puting in hardware.However,high linearity and low power consump-tion couldn’t be simultaneously achieved by most of the reported synaptic devices,which limits the performance of the hardware.This work demonstrates van der Waals(vdW)stacked ferroelectric field-effect transistors(FeFET)with single-crystalline ferroelectric nanoflakes.Ferroelectrics are of fine vdW interface and partial polar-ization switching of multi-domains under electric field pulses,which makes the FeFETs exhibit multi-state memory characteristics and ex-cellent synaptic plasticity.They also exhibit a desired linear conduc-tance weight update with 128 conductance states,a sufficiently high dynamic range of G_(max)/G_(min)>120,and a low power consumption of 10 fJ/spike using identical pulses.Based on such an all-round device,a two-layer artificial neural network was built to conduct Modified Na-tional Institute of Standards and Technology(MNIST)digital num-bers and electrocardiogram(ECG)pattern-recognition simulations,with the high accuracies reaching 97.6%and 92.4%,respectively.The remarkable performance demonstrates that vdW-FeFET is of obvious advantages in high-precision neuromorphic computing applications.

Magnetism tuned by intercalation of various metal ions in coordination polymer

Incorporation of guest ions into porous frameworks changed magnetism of the host materials significantly. However, in most cases, the guest ions were monovalent due to lack of reliable method to insert divalent and trivalent guest ions. In this work, we demonstrated that divalent and trivalent metal ions could be inserted into frameworks of a coordinate polymer, Cu3[Fe(CN)6]2, through electrochemical intercalation. The magnetism of the host frameworks was changed among paramagnetic, superparamagnetic, and ferromagnetic as demonstrated by physical property measurement system (PPMS). Furthermore, the magnetization of the frameworks under low temperatures correlated to the guest ions significantly. The ionic radius and net charge of the guest ions influenced the intercalation amount of the guest ions, therefore affected the valence change of Fe3+ ions in the host frameworks, finally leading to variation of the magnetism of the host materials.