Exploring the role of iron in Fe_(5)Ni_(4)S_(8)toward oxygen evolution through modulation of electronic orbital occupancy

Ni-Fe-based catalysts are considered to be among the most active catalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction(OER)under alkaline conditions,with Fe playing a crucial role.However,Fe leaching occurs during the reaction due to thermodynamic instability,which has resulted in conflicting reports within the literature regarding its role.To clarify this point,we propose a strategy consisting of modulating the electronic orbital occupancy to suppress the extensive loss of Fe atoms during the OER process.Theoretical calculations,in-situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy,molecular dynamics simulations,and a series of characterization showed that the stable presence of Fe not only accelerates the electron transfer process but also optimizes the reaction barriers of the oxygen evolution intermediates,promoting the phase transition of Fe_(5)Ni_(4)S_(8)to highly active catalytic species.The modulated Fe_(5)Ni_(4)S_(8)-based pre-catalysts exhibit improved OER activity and long-term durability.This study provides a novel perspective for understanding the role of Fe in the OER process.

Different Charging-Induced Modulations of Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital Energies in Fullerenes in Comparison with Carbon Nanotubes and Graphene Sheets

The highest occupied molecular orbital（HOMO） energies of fullerenes are found by quantitative first-principles calculations to be raised by negative charging, and the rising rate rank of the fullerenes is C60 >C70 >C80 >C90>C100 >C180. Then we compare fullerenes with carbon nanotubes（CNTs） and graphene sheets（GSs） and find that the increase of the HOMO energy of a fullerene is much faster than that of CNTs and graphene sheets with the same number of C atoms. The rising rate rank is fullerene>CNT>GS, which holds no matter what the number of C atoms is or which structure the fullerene isomer is. This work paves a new path for developing all-carbon devices with low-dimensional carbon nanomaterials as different functional elements.

Modulating eg orbitals through ligand engineering to boost the electrocatalytic activity of NiSe for advanced lithium-sulfur batteries

Accelerating the sluggish redox kinetics of lithium polysulfides(LiPSs)by electrocatalysis is essential to achieve high performance lithium-sulfur(Li-S)batteries.However,the issue of insufficient catalytic activity remains to be addressed.Herein,a strategy of modulating e_(g) orbitals through ligand engineering has been proposed to boost the catalytic activity of NiSe for rapid LiPSs redox conversion.The X-ray spectroscopic measurements and theoretical calculations reveal that partial substitution of Se with N disrupts the octahedral coordination of Ni atoms in NiSe,leading to the reduced degeneracy and upward shift of e_(g) orbitals of Ni 3 d states.As a consequence,the bonding strength of N-substituted NiSe(N-NiSe)with LiPSs is enhanced,which facilitates the interfacial charge transfer kinetics and accelerates the LiPSs redox kinetics.Therefore,the Li-S batteries assembled with N-NiSe present a high capacity of 682.6 mAh g^(-1) at a high rate of 5 C and a high areal capacity of 6.5 mAh cm^(-2)at a high sulfur loading of 6 mg cm^(-2).This work provides a promising strategy to develop efficient transition-metal based electrocatalysts for Li-S batteries through e_(g) orbital modulation.

Topological phase in one-dimensional Rashba wire

We study the possible topological phase in a one-dimensional（1D） quantum wire with an oscillating Rashba spin–orbital coupling in real space. It is shown that there are a pair of particle–hole symmetric gaps forming in the bulk energy band and fractional boundary states residing in the gap when the system has an inversion symmetry. These states are topologically nontrivial and can be characterized by a quantized Berry phase ±π or nonzero Chern number through dimensional extension. When the Rashba spin–orbital coupling varies slowly with time, the system can pump out 2 charges in a pumping cycle because of the spin flip effect. This quantized pumping is protected by topology and is robust against moderate disorders as long as the disorder strength does not exceed the opened energy gap.

Spin-orbit hybrid entanglement quantum key distribution scheme

We propose a novel quantum key distribution scheme by using the SAM-OAM hybrid entangled state as the physical resource.To obtain this state,the polarization entangled photon pairs are created by the spontaneous parametric down conversion process,and then,the q-plate acts as a SAM-to-OAM transverter to transform the polarization entangled pairs into the hybrid entangled pattern,which opens the possibility to exploit the features of the higher-dimensional space of OAM state to encode information.In the manipulation and encoding process,Alice performs the SAM measurement by modulating the polarization stateπ lθx on one photon,whereas Bob modulates the OAM sector state lx' on the other photon to encode his key elements using the designed holograms which is implemented by the computer-controlled SLM.With coincidence measurement,Alice could extract the key information.It is showed that N-based keys can be encoded with each pair of entangled photon,and this scheme is robust against Eve’s individual attack.Also,the MUBs are not used.Alice and Bob do not need the classical communication for the key recovery.