Highly active air electrode catalysts for Zn‐air batteries: Catalytic mechanism and active center from obfuscation to clearness

Carbon‐based materials have been found to accelerate the sluggish kinetic reaction and are largely subject to the overall Zn‐air batteries (ZABs) property, while their full catalytic mechanism is still not excavated because of the indistinct internal structure and immature in‐situ technology. Up to now, systematic methods have been utilized to study and design promising high‐performance carbon‐based catalysts. To resolve the real active units and catalytic mechanism, developing molecular catalyst is a significant strategy. Herein, the review will initiate to briefly introduce the working principle and composition of ZABs. An important statement is correspondingly provided about the typical structure and catalytic mechanisms for the air cathode material. It also presents the tremendous endeavors on the catalytic performance and stability of carbon‐based material. Furthermore, combined with theoretical calculation, the self‐defined active sites are analyzed to understand the catalytic character, where the molecular catalyst is subsequently summarized and discussed through highlighting the unambiguous and controllable structure, in the hope of surfacing the optimum catalyst. Building on the fundamental understanding of carbon‐based and molecular catalysts, this review is expected to provide guidance and direction toward designing future mechanistic studies and ORR electrocatalysts

Heteroatoms Induce Localization of the Electric Field and Promote a Wide Potential-Window Selectivity Towards CO in the CO2 Electroreduction

Carbon dioxide electroreduction (CO2RR) is a sustainable way of producing carbon-neutral fuels. Product selectivity in CO2RR is regulated by the adsorption energy of reaction-intermediates. Here, we employ differential phase contrast-scanning transmission electron microscopy (DPC-STEM) to demonstrate that Sn heteroatoms on a Ag catalyst generate very strong and atomically localized electric fields. In situ attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy (ATR-IR) results verified that the localized electric field enhances the adsorption of *COOH, thus favoring the production of CO during CO2RR. The Ag/Sn catalyst exhibits an approximately 100 % CO selectivity at a very wide range of potentials (from -0.5 to -1.1 V, versus reversible hydrogen electrode), and with a remarkably high energy efficiency (EE) of 76.1 %

Effect of Surface Passivation on Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting Performance of WO3 Vertical Plate-Like Films

WO3 vertical plate-like arrays provide a direct pathway for charge transport, and thus hold great potential as working electrodes for photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting. However, surface recombination due to surface defects hinders the performance improvement. In this work, WO3 vertical plate-like arrays films with HfO2 passivation layer were fabricated via a simple dip-coating method. In the images of transmission electron microscope, a fluffy layer and some small sphere particles existed on the surface of WO3 plate. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) showed a higher concentration of Hf element than the result of energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), which means that HfO2 is rich on the surface of WO3 plates. A higher photocurrent under visible light irradiation was gained with surface passivation. Meanwhile, the results of intensity modulated photocurrent spectrum (IMPS) and incident photon to current conversion efficiency (IPCE) indicate that HfO2 passivation layer, acting as a barrier for the interfacial recombination, is responsible for the improved photoelectrochemical performance of WO3 vertical plate-like arrays film

Faults locating of power distribution systems based on successive PSO-GA algorithm

Abstract As the terminal of the power system, the distribution network is the main area where failures occur. In addition, with the integration of distributed generation, the traditional distribution network becomes more complex, rendering the conventional fault location algorithms based on a single power supply obsolete. Therefore, it is necessary to seek a new algorithm to locate the fault of the distributed power distribution network. In existing fault localization algorithms for distribution networks, since there are only two states of line faults, which can usually be represented by 0 and 1, most algorithms use discrete algorithms with this characteristic for iterative optimization. Therefore, this paper combines the advantages of the particle swarm algorithm and genetic algorithm and uses continuous real numbers for iteration to construct a successive particle swarm genetic algorithm (SPSO-GA) different from previous algorithms. The accuracy, speed, and fault tolerance of SPSO-GA, discrete particle swarm Genetic algorithm, and artificial fish swarm algorithm are compared in an IEEE33-node distribution network with the distributed power supply. The simulation results show that the SPSO-GA algorithm has high optimization accuracy and stability for single, double, or triple faults. Furthermore, SPSO-GA has a rapid convergence velocity, requires fewer particles, and can locate the fault segment accurately for the distribution network containing distorted information

Lightweight Transparent Java Thread Migration for Distributed JVM

A distributed JVM on a cluster can provide a highperformance platform for running multi-threaded Java applications transparently. E#cient scheduling of Java threads among cluster nodes in a distributed JVM is desired for maintaining a balanced system workload so that the application can achieve maximum speedup. We present a transparent thread migration system that is able to support high-performance native execution of multi-threaded Java programs. To achieve migration transparency, we perform dynamic native code instrumentation inside the JIT compiler. The mechanism has been successfully implemented and integrated in JESSICA2, a JIT-enabled distributed JVM, to enable automatic thread distribution and dynamic load balancing in a cluster environment

Coal and gas outburst dynamic system

Coal and gas outburst is an extremely complex dynamic disaster in coal mine production process which will damage casualties and equipment facilities, and disorder the ventilation system by suddenly ejecting a great amount of coal and gas into roadway or working face. This paper analyzed the interaction among the three essential elements of coal and gas outburst dynamic system. A stress-seepage-damage coupling model was established which can be used to simulate the evolution of the dynamical system, and then the size scale of coal and gas outburst dynamical system was investigated. Results show that the dynamical system is consisted of three essential elements, coal-gas medium (material basis), geology dynamic environment (internal motivation) and mining disturbance (external motivation). On the case of C13 coal seam in Panyi Mine, the dynamical system exists in the range of 8–12 m in front of advancing face. The size scale will be larger where there are large geologic structures. This research plays an important guiding role for developing measures of coal and gas outburst prediction and prevention. Keywords: Coal and gas outburst, Dynamic system, Coal-gas medium, Geology dynamic environment, Mining disturbance, Stress-seepage-damage coupling mode

Comparison of DNA strand-break simulated with different DNA models

In Monte Carlo simulation of DNA damage, the geometric model of DNA is of great importance. To study the influence of DNA model on the simulation of DNA damage, three DNA models were created in this paper. They were a volume model and two atomic models with different parameters. Direct DNA strand-break induced by low-energy electrons were simulated respectively with the three models. The results show that most of the energy depositions in the DNA segments do not lead to strand-breaks. The simple single strand-break (SSB) tends to be the predominant damage type, and the contribution of complex double strand-break (DSB) to the total DSB cannot be neglected. Among the yields of all the three DNA target models applied here, the yields of the volume model are the highest, the yields of the atomic model with double van der Waals radii (r) take the second place, whereas the yields of the atomic model with single r come last. On average, the ratios of SSB yields are approximately equivalent to the corresponding ratios of the models’ volume. However, there seems to be no clear relationship between the DSB yields and the models’ volume