Novel electroanalytical techniques and in situ high resolution transmission electron microscopy investigation for phas transformation electrode materials

Lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries are currently being used to power an increasingly diverse range of applications, and have been recognized as a critical enabling technology to make electric vehicle/hybrid electric vehicle (EV/HEV) a success. It has been found that phase transformation electrode materials (such as LiFePO4) are the promising electrode materials for high power Li-ion batteries. However the mechanism of the exceptional rate performance is still undergoing debates, since there is no accurate analysis method to study ion transport phenomena in the phase transformation regions. The analysis methods of current electrochemical techniques, including galvanostatic intermittent titration technique (GITT), potentiostatic intermittent titration technique (PITT), cyclic voltammetry (CV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), can only be used to analyze the ion transport in solid solution electrode materials, because they were developed mainly based on Fick's second law of diffusion without any consideration of the inter-phase boundary movement in phase transformation electrode materials. Motivated by the increasing demand for accurate analysis methods for electroanalytical techniques and recent advances in the theory of phase transformation, a mixed-control phase transformation model is proposed by us. The mixed-control model accounts not only the ion diffusion, but also the phase boundary mobility that depends on the interface coherence, misfit strain/stress, deformations and defects. With LiFePO4 as a specific example, we study the potential hysteresis and strain accommodation energy. By integrating the mixed-control model with GITT, PITT and CV, we determine the Li-ion diffusion coefficient and interface mobility of LiFePO4 electrodes in two-phase region. For the first time, the interface mobility of LiFePO4 is obtained. The electrochemical lithiation of FePO4 particles is investigated by in situ high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), and the anisotropic lithiation mechanism is directly observed. For the first time, a sharp (010) phase boundary between LiFePO4 and FePO4 is observed, which migrates along the [010] direction during lithiation. Furthermore, our in situ HRTEM observations revealed misfit dislocation populations on the (010) phase boundary, overthrowing previous model assumption of fully coherent phase boundary. These misfit dislocations provide a mechanism for long-term lithium ion battery electrode fatigue and failure, due to repeated coherency loss

After the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements: China’s role in the future world of international commercial dispute resolution

This dissertation will analyse the framework of international commercial dispute resolution in China after China signing the 2005 Hague Convention. Firstly, it will discuss the Hague Convention from a Chinese perspective and will explore potential conflicts between the Convention and Chinese law. Since China has not yet ratified the Hague Convention, the issues around the ratification of the Convention will also be discussed. Secondly, the dissertation will examine international commercial arbitration, which is an important and popular international commercial dispute resolution method in China. This part will not only discuss arbitration agreements, arbitration procedure and the effects of arbitration awards in China, but will also explore both the “international” and “Chinese” characteristics in arbitration law and practice. It attempts to answer the question of whether or not international commercial arbitration in China is a success. Thirdly, the dissertation will focus on the Chinese International Commercial Court (CICC) and will make a detailed examination of the essential elements of the CICC. It will assess its future role in international commercial dispute resolution. Then the dissertation will provide a number of recommendations based on Chinese legal reality and culture by analysing international commercial courts in other countries. Lastly, the dissertation will look into the future of international commercial dispute resolution in China. It is concluded that after the signature of the Hague Convention, some modification of Chinese legal framework should be made to apply the Convention. Although there has been a creation of numerous international commercial courts, including new China International Commercial Courts (CICC), it is still too early to tell whether CICC will become a genuine competitor of arbitration and a preferred venue of dispute resolution for parities in international commercial business

Heritage and Romantic Consumption in China

The drums beat, an old man in a grand robe mutters incantations and three brides on horseback led by their grooms on foot proceed to the Naxi Wedding Courtyard, accompanied, watched and photographed the whole way by tourists, who have bought tickets for the privilege. The traditional wedding ceremonies are performed for the ethnic tourism industry in Lijiang, a World Heritage town in southwest China. This book examines how heritage interacts with social-cultural changes and how individuals perform and negotiate their identities through daily practices that include tourism, on the one hand, and the performance of ethnicity on the other. The wedding performances in Lijiang not only serve as a heritage 'product' but show how the heritage and tourism industry helps to shape people's values, dreams and expectations. This book also explores the rise of 'romantic consumerism' in contemporary China. Chinese dissatisfaction with the urban mundane leads to romanticized interests in practices and people deemed to be natural, ethnic, spiritual and aesthetic, and a search for tradition and authenticity. But what, exactly, are tradition and authenticity, and what happens to them when they are turned into performance

Spin-orbit interaction of light induced by transverse spin angular momentum engineering

We report the first demonstration of a direct interaction between the extraordinary transverse spin angular momentum in evanescent waves and the intrinsic orbital angular momentum in optical vortex beams. By tapping the evanescent wave of whispering gallery modes in a micro-ring-based optical vortex emitter and engineering the transverse spin state carried therein, a transverse-spin-to-orbital conversion of angular momentum is predicted in the emitted vortex beams. Numerical and experimental investigations are presented for the proof-of-principle demonstration of this unconventional interplay between the spin and orbital angular momenta, which could provide new possibilities and restrictions on the optical angular momentum manipulation techniques on the sub-wavelength scale. This phenomenon further gives rise to an enhanced spin-direction coupling effect in which waveguide or surface modes are unidirectional excited by incident optical vortex, with the directionality jointly controlled by spin-orbit states. Our results enrich the spin-orbit interaction phenomena by identifying a previously unknown pathway between the polarization and spatial degrees of freedom of light, and can enable a variety of functionalities employing spin and orbital angular momenta of light in applications such as communications and quantum information processing