Mendozaeason3310

Our theoretical study would provide comprehensive information and shed light on understanding the spectroscopy and dynamics of the electronic excited states of Ge2.The ever-increasing energy demand motivates the pursuit of inexpensive, safe, scalable, and high-performance rechargeable batteries. Carbon materials have been intensively investigated as electrode materials for various batteries on account of their resource abundance, low cost, nontoxicity, and diverse electrochemistry. Taking use of the reversible donor-type cation intercalation/de-intercalation (including Li+, Na+, and K+) at low redox potentials, carbon materials can serve as ideal anodes for 'Rocking-Chair' alkali metal-ion batteries. Meanwhile, acceptor-type intercalation of anions into graphitic carbon materials has also been revealed to be a facile, reversible process at high redox potentials. Based on anion-intercalation graphitic carbon materials, a number of dual-ion battery and Al-ion battery technologies are experiencing booming development. In this review, we summarize the significant advances of carbon materials in terms of the porous structure, chemical composition, and interlayer spacing control. Fundamental mechanisms of carbon materials as the cation host and anion host are further revisited by elaborating the electrochemistry, intercalant effect, and intercalation form. Subsequently, the recent progress in the development of novel carbon nanostructures and carbon-derived energy storage devices is presented with particular emphasis on correlating the structures with electrochemical properties as well as assessing the device configuration, electrochemical reaction, and performance metric. Finally, perspectives on the remaining challenges are provided, which will accelerate the development of new carbon material concepts and carbon-derived battery technologies towards commercial implementation.Boron, the fifth lightest element, in its sub-valent state in the form of borylene is able to activate inert dinitrogen all the way to the ammonium ion. The entire conversion has been established through a successive reduction-cum-protonation sequence, through the isolation of all intermediate species involving addition of two electrons and two protons. The activation of dinitrogen by the ambiphilic borylene is a parallel tactic to that of the well-known Haber-Bosch process. This chemistry can be potentially extrapolated to the activation of similar small molecules by low valent compounds of boron and other p-block elements.Aqueous electrochemical devices such as batteries and electrolytic cells have emerged as promising energy storage and conversion systems owing to their environmental friendliness, low cost, and high safety characteristics. However, grand challenges are faced to address some critical issues, including how to enhance the potential window and energy density of electrochemical power devices (e.g. fuel cells, batteries, and supercapacitors), and how to minimize the energy consumption in electrolysis. The use of decoupled acid-base asymmetric electrolytes shows great potential in improving the performance of aqueous devices by electrochemically converting the conventional thermal energy of acid-base neutralization into electricity, i.e., electrochemical neutralization energy (ENE). This review aims to introduce the little-known concept of the ENE, including its development history, thermodynamic fundamentals, operating principles, device configurations, and applications. The recent progress made in ENE-assisted electrochemical energy devices emphasizing fuel cells, batteries, supercapacitors, and electrolytic cells is summarized specifically. Finally, the challenges and future perspectives of ENE associated technology are discussed. It is believed that this tutorial review will give a better understanding of the mechanism and operating principles of the ENE to newcomers, which would shed light on the innovative design and fabrication of ENE-assisted devices and thus pave the way for the development of high-performance aqueous electrochemical energy devices.The accurate quantification of cellular motility and of the structural changes occurring in multicellular aggregates is critical in describing and understanding key biological processes, such as wound repair, embryogenesis and cancer invasion. Selleck Wnt-C59 Current methods based on cell tracking or velocimetry either suffer from limited spatial resolution or are challenging and time-consuming, especially for three-dimensional (3D) cell assemblies. Here we propose a conceptually simple, robust and tracking-free approach for the quantification of the dynamical activity of cells via a two-step procedure. We first characterise the global features of the collective cell migration by registering the temporal stack of the acquired images. As a second step, a map of the local cell motility is obtained by performing a mean squared amplitude analysis of the intensity fluctuations occurring when two registered image frames acquired at different times are subtracted. We successfully apply our approach to cell monolayers undergoing a jamming transition, as well as to monolayers and 3D aggregates that exhibit a cooperative unjamming-via-flocking transition. Our approach is capable of disentangling very efficiently and of assessing accurately the global and local contributions to cell motility.Efficient ab initio computational methods for the calculation of the thermoelectric transport properties of materials are of great interest for energy harvesting technologies. The constant relaxation time approximation (CRTA) has been largely used to efficiently calculate thermoelectric coefficients. However, CRTA usually does not hold for real materials. Here we go beyond the CRTA by incorporating realistic k-dependent relaxation time models of the temperature dependence of the main scattering processes, namely, screened polar and nonpolar scattering by optical phonons, scattering by acoustic phonons, and scattering by ionized impurities with screening. Our relaxation time models are based on a smooth Fourier interpolation of Kohn-Sham eigenvalues and its derivatives, taking into account non-parabolicity (beyond the parabolic or Kane models), degeneracy and multiplicity of the energy bands on the same footing, within very low computational cost. In order to test our methodology, we calculated the anisotropic thermoelectric transport properties of the low temperature phase (Pnma) of intrinsic p-type and hole-doped tin selenide (SnSe).