Elucidating electrochemical intercalation mechanisms of biomass-derived hard carbon in sodium-/potassium-ion batteries

Hard carbon materials are characterized by having rich resources,simple processing technology,and low cost,and they are promising as one of the anode electrodes for commercial applications of sodium-/potassium-ion batteries.Simultaneously,exploring the alkali metal ion storage mechanism is particularly important for designing high-performance electrode materials.However,the structure of hard carbon is more complex,and the description of energy storage behavior is quite controversial.In this study,the Magnolia grandiflora Lima leaf is used as a precursor,combined with simple pyrolysis and impurity removal processes,to obtain biomass-derived hard carbon material(carbonized Magnolia grandiflora Lima leaf[CMGL]).When it is used as an anode for sodium-ion batteries,it exhibits a high specific capacity of 315mAh/g,and the capacity retention rate is 90.0%after 100 cycles.For potassium-ion batteries,the charge specific capacity is 263.5mAh/g,with a capacity retention rate of 85.5%at the same cycling.Furthermore,different electrochemical analysis methods and microstructure characterization techniques were used to further elucidate the sodium/potassium storage mechanism of the material.All the results indicate that the high potential slope region represents the adsorption/desorption characteristics on the surface active sites,whereas the low-potential quasiplateau region belongs to the ion insertion/extraction in the graphitic microcrystallites interlayer.It is noteworthy that potassium ion is randomly intercalated between the graphitic microcrystallite layer without forming a segmented intercalation compound structure.

Determination of Melamine in Fresh Milk by Electrochemistry with Solid Phase Microextraction at Bismuthyl Chloride Modified Graphite Epoxy Composite Electrode

Melamine as an important chemical raw material and a harmful additive in foods has attracted many people’s attention. In the present paper, The graphite-epoxy composited solid phase electrode was modified with bismuth layer by cyclic voltammetric deposition of bismuth from Bi(NO3)3 aqueous solution including 0.10 M HNO3, and hydrolyzed into micro bismuthyl chloride on-sites. Melamine in fresh milk was extracted with solid phase micro-extraction on the bismuthyl chloride modified graphite-epoxy composited solid electrode. The adsorption of melamine on bismuthyl chloride particle surfaces follows a Freundlich adsorption model, and results in the decrease of the reduction peak current of bismuth in bismuthyl chloride, and determined by differential pulse voltammetry from fresh milk in a larger concentration range of 10–4 ? 10–12 M with detection limit of 2.5 ? 10–12 M and relative standard deviation of 2.7%. The method is sensitive, convenient and was applied in the detection of melamine in fresh milk with relative deviation of 4.2% in content of 0.45 mg/kg melamine in the fresh milk.

Transmittance and phase measurement via self-calibrated balanced heterodyne detection

It is rare for a conventional direct detection method to measure the transmittance uniformity of mirrors with rigorous standards, especially to meet the requirement of transmittance/reflectance and phase detection simultaneously. In this study, a new method of self-calibrated balanced heterodyne detection（SCBHD） is proposed. It can be self-calibrated by a two-channel structure to overcome the environmental effects in large optics scanning detection by employing highly accurate heterodyne interference. A typical transmittance measurement experiment was performed at 1053 nm wavelength via SCBHD. A standard deviation（SD） of 0.038% was achieved in the preliminary experiment. The experimental results prove to reduce the SD by approximately two orders of magnitude compared with the conventional direct detection method in the same condition. The proposed method was verified as being promising not only for its wider dynamic measurement range and its higher accuracy but also for its simultaneous transmittance and phase detection ability.