Improving Electrochemical Performance in Planar On-Chip Zn-ion Micro-Batteries via Interlayer Strategies

The imperative development of planar on-chip micro-batteries featuring high-capacity electrodes and environmentally safer, cost-effective, and stable systems is crucial for powering forthcoming miniaturized systems-on-chip smart devices. However, research in the area of high-stability micro-batteries is limited due to the complex fabrication process, the stability of micro-electrodes during cycling, and the challenge of maintaining higher capacity within a limited device footprint. In response to this need, this study focuses on providing highly stable and high-capacity micro-electrodes. This involves adding a PEDOT layer between the electrode material and the current collector, applied within a planar polyaniline cathode and zinc anode device structure to enhance charge storage performance. This straightforward strategy not only improves device stability over long-term cycling and reduces charge transfer resistance but also increases charge storage capacities from 17.64 to 19.75 µAh cm−2 at 0.1 mA cm−2. Consequently, the Zn-ion micro-batteries achieve notable peak areal energy and power of 18.82 µWh cm−2 and 4.37 mW cm−2, respectively. This work proposes an effective strategy to enhance the electrochemical performance of planar micro-batteries, a critical advancement for the development of advanced portable electronics

Chemically Processed Porous V2O5 Thin-Film Cathodes for High-Performance Thin-film Zn-Ion Batteries

Thin-film rechargeable batteries have a wide range of applications due to their unique properties such as small size, thinness, and the ability to power smart devices, including portable electronic devices, medical devices, smart cards, RFID tags, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Processing thin-film electrodes for these batteries generally relies on standard physical vapor deposition technologies. However, producing porous thin-films using these techniques presents significant challenges. Here, a rapid and cost-effective chemical route for processing porous vanadium oxide (V2O5) thin-film cathodes for application in Zinc-ion-based thin-film batteries (Zn-TFBs) is explored. The V2O5 precursor process uses an industrially viable spraying technique, which not only offers impressive charge storage performance of an areal capacity of 47.34 µAh cm−2, areal energy of 50.18 µWh cm−2, and areal power of 53 µW cm−2 at 50 µA cm−2 in the optimized gel-electrolyte composition. This study introduces a cost-effective and industrially viable method for processing highly porous thin-film cathodes, enabling the production of high-performance, affordable, and safer thin-film batteries

Microfluidic system development for drug delivery

Development and application of a microfluidic system for generating drug delivery carriers are investigated in this research. Various types of microfluidic devices are designed and fabricated for peptide nanotubes, liposome vesicles and double emulsions formation. The microfluidic system offers a better control over the formation process of all three drug delivery carriers. Comparing to traditional methods such as bulk mixing, the process efficiency, size and size distribution of the final products are significantly improved. The results generated show that tuning the flow rate ratios between different reagents from the inlet streams successfully controls the sizes and size distributions of liposomes vesicles. The relationship between the flow rate ratio and the size of the resulting vesicles is established. Macrocycle (AP-169) that was found to self-assemble into an anti-parallel β-sheet nanotube with a triggering agent is successfully synthesized and purified for peptide nanotube self-assembling process. A microfluidic device is designed and fabricated to control the interaction between AP-169 and its self-assembling triggering agent, dimethyl sulfoxide. Double emulsions with different radii are produced with the microfluidic system by adjusting the flow rate ratio between each phase of the solution, and changing the wetting properties of the microchannels. The stability of double emulsions is enhanced by introducing various surfactants. The sizes and size distributions of liposomes and double emulsions have been successfully controlled and optimized for drug delivery. In conclusion, various drug delivery carriers have been successfully generated and optimized with a designed and modified microfluidic system. These products can be further applied in drug encapsulation, biomolecular screening and in vitro compartmentalization in the future.Thesis (M.Eng.Sc.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Chemical Engineering, 2016

Storage Allocation in Automated Container Terminals: the Upper Level

Nowadays automation is a trend of container terminals all over the world. Although not applied in current automated container terminals, storage allocation is indispensable in conventional container terminals, and promising for automated container terminals in future. This paper seeks into the storage allocation problem in automated container terminals and proposed a two level structure for the problem. A mixed integer programming model is built for the upper level, and a modified Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is applied to solve the model. The applicable conditions of the model is investigated by numerical experiments, so as the performance of the algorithm in different problem scales. It is left to future research the lower level of the problem and the potential benefit of storage allocation to automated container terminals

Cause Mechanism of Metro Collapse Accident Based on Risk Coupling

A metro collapse accident is the main type of metro construction accidents. How to scientifically analyze the key cause factors and their interaction coupling mechanism of the existing metro collapse accidents is crucial to reduce the occurrence of metro collapse. Based on the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and the Behavior security “2-4” Model (24Model), the FTA-24Model accident cause analysis framework was constructed by combing their respective characteristics. To be more specific, a logical analysis program was developed to analyze the accident causes by the four-module analysis method. An empirical study was carried out by taking the “12.1” major cave-in accident at the construction site of the Metro Line 11 in Guangzhou as an example. Compared with the case accident report, the FTA-24Model framework analysis method can not only systematically deduce the logical relationship between the accident causes and provides a panorama of the accident cause chain and its evolution process, but also identify the key causes of accidents and their coupling risk effects. For a metro construction accident, this method can not only effectively investigate the accident causes, but also provide a reference for the formulation of prevention strategies.</jats:p

Cause Mechanism of Metro Collapse Accident Based on Risk Coupling

A metro collapse accident is the main type of metro construction accidents. How to scientifically analyze the key cause factors and their interaction coupling mechanism of the existing metro collapse accidents is crucial to reduce the occurrence of metro collapse. Based on the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and the Behavior security &ldquo;2-4&rdquo; Model (24Model), the FTA-24Model accident cause analysis framework was constructed by combing their respective characteristics. To be more specific, a logical analysis program was developed to analyze the accident causes by the four-module analysis method. An empirical study was carried out by taking the &ldquo;12.1&rdquo; major cave-in accident at the construction site of the Metro Line 11 in Guangzhou as an example. Compared with the case accident report, the FTA-24Model framework analysis method can not only systematically deduce the logical relationship between the accident causes and provides a panorama of the accident cause chain and its evolution process, but also identify the key causes of accidents and their coupling risk effects. For a metro construction accident, this method can not only effectively investigate the accident causes, but also provide a reference for the formulation of prevention strategies