bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Electrochemical Probe of the Acidity in Room Temperature Ionic Liquids Using Quinone/Hydroquinone System
Authors: El kharbachi Abdel , Gilbert Bernard 
Published: February 2020

Room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) have been shown as alternative solvents for greener organic reactions and acid catalyzed processes [1]. High levels of acidity can be reached in acidified ionic liquids [2]. The Brønsted acidity has been first evaluated based on the determination of the Hammett acidity function H0 using UV-Vis spectroscopy in the presence of the adequate indicator [3]. Nevertheless, the uncertainty on the pKa values of the color indicators seems to be solvent dependent. In fact, it has been observed that two different indicators can lead to significant results deviation which may require additional corrections [4]. As a consequence, a novel approach for the assessment of the acidity in RTILs is presented, being based on the R0(H+) Strehlow function and using the Fc+/Fc as an internal reference couple. Protonation features of the addition of p-benzoquinone to an acidified ionic liquid medium is presented. Fig.1 shows the recorded CV redox behavior of p-benzoquinone in BMImBF4 (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate), along with Fc+/Fc couple without any interference. Hence, the reversible redox waves can be followed for both entities upon the increase of the acidity level. The electrochemical pathways will be addressed, first in a “neutral” and in a gradually acidified media. The results will be discussed and compared to other aprotic solvents, along useful aspects of quinones for the emerging applications (e.g. Li-ion and redox flow batteries).

Acknowledgements

The IFP (Institut Français du Pétrole) is acknowledged for financial support.

References

[1] H. Olivier-Bourbigou, L. Magna, Ionic liquids: perspectives for organic and catalytic reactions, J. Mol. Catal. A: Chem., 182–183 (2002) 419-437.
[2] C. Thomazeau, H. Olivier-Bourbigou, L. Magna, S. Luts, B. Gilbert, Determination of an Acidic Scale in Room Temperature Ionic Liquids, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 125 (2003) 5264-5265.
[3] T. Robert, L. Magna, H. Olivier-Bourbigou, B. Gilbert, A Comparison of the Acidity Levels in Room-Temperature Ionic Liquids, J. Electrochem. Soc., 156 (2009) F115-F121.
[4] T. Robert, H. Olivier-Bourbigou, L. Magna, B. Gilbert, About the Acidity Level in Room Temperature Ionic Liquids, ECS Transactions, 3 (2007) 71-82.

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Increasing Electrode Utilization and Developing a Robust Charging Method for Silver-Zinc Rechargeable Button Cell Batteries
Authors: Pourdarvish Reza , Powers Timothy W , Ortega Jeffrey Vincent , Dueber Ross Eugene 
Published: February 2020

Recently, silver-zinc (AgZn) rechargeable batteries have become commercially available in small sizes which have greater capacity and energy densities over comparatively sized rechargeable Li-ion and Li-polymer batteries. Silver-zinc batteries typically do not utilize 100% of their stored capacity; therefore, an accurate charging procedure needs to be employed to prevent overcharging and undercharging events. Charging the cell properly will increase the performance and cycle life. However, charging a cell without a battery management system is a considerable challenge since it is normally required to determine the state of charge of the battery accurately. This work provides a new robust charge algorithm which utilizes a two-zone charging approach. Silver-zinc rechargeable batteries have two voltage plateaus during discharge (Figure 1). Zone 1 is utilized when the cell is discharging in the lower plateau prior to charge (OCV~1.59V). Zone 2 is utilized when the cell was discharging in the upper plateau or transition zone prior to charge (OCV~1.82V). The cell is charged using a CC-CV (constant current-constant voltage) algorithm with a maximum charge current and a maximum charge voltage. Also, the use of additives in different electrolytes was explored and characterized with respect to increasing electrode utilization, charge rate capability, and cycle life improvement in silver-zinc rechargeable button cell batteries.
Figure 1: Discharge voltage profile for Silver-Zinc button cell batteries

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Ti Substitution into P2-Type Na0.67CoO2 for Structural Stabilizer and Facile Kinetics of High Energy Na-Ion Batteries
Authors: Kang Seok Mun , Sung Yung-Eun 
Published: February 2020

Sodium ion batteries (NIBs) have attracted much attention as promising alternatives of lithium ion batteries (LIBs) for large scale energy storage systems. This is because sodium is cheap and abundant throughout the world contrary to lithium. However, low gravimetric/volumetric energy density of NIBs hinders its practical use. For sodium layered oxide, Na+/vacancy ordering appears at certain Na concentration, which is caused by energy minimization of electrostatic interactions between cations. This ordering leads to first-order transition that acts as kinetic barrier in battery application. In order to investigate how Na+/vacancy ordering affects battery performance, we report P2-type Na0.67Co1-xTixO2 (x≤0.2) cathode with different ordering characters. The Ti-substituted cathode utilize more Na+ ions through expanded cut-off potential, whereas Na0.67CoO2 suffers a severe capacity loss at the same condition. Also, as the ordering is mitigated, rate capability of the sample is improved. In this study, we will discuss the detailed mechanism of the improvement through TEM, in-situ XRD, and electrochemical methods.
Macroscale Films of Highly Ordered Periodic 3D Semiconductor Nanostructures Generated Via Lithography-Free Photoelectrodeposition
Authors: Carim Azhar I , Batara Nicolas A. , Premkumar Anjali , Atwater Harry A , Lewis Nathan S 
Published: February 2020

Electrodeposition of Se-Te alloy films under illumination spontaneously generates nanopatterned films with significant periodic order. The feature sizes, periodicities, anisotropies, and orientations of the nanoscale pattern are a function of the exact nature of the optical excitation. Isotropic morphologies consisting of ordered arrays of nanopores were generated using unpolarized illumination whereas linearly polarized light resulted in highly-anisotropic lamellar morphologies with the long axes of the patterns aligned along the E-field vector. The use of two non-orthogonal polarized sources simultaneously generated patterns oriented along the average E-field vector and with degrees of anisotropy related to the difference in orientation between the two input E-field vectors and the phase correlation between the sources. The pattern periodicity was encoded by the illumination spectral profile. A single periodicity in single spatial direction was only generated even with the use of broadband and multimodal spectral profiles and multiple polarization inputs and the periodicity was found to be sensitive to all investigated tuning of such profiles. The incidence of the illumination set the direction the material grew from the substrate, mimicking natural phototropism: grazing illumination resulted in growth at significant angle to the surface normal. Also, additional 3D morphological complexity could be directed by utilizing temporal changes in the illumination; for example, zig-zag structures resulted from oscillation of the illumination incidence back and forth across the surface normal and woodpile structures were generated by periodically switching between orthogonal polarization states.
The nanopatterning process occurred without the use of any type of physical or chemical templating agents: no photomask, patterned substrate nor surfactants/ligands were used to influence the morphology. Modeling of the growth using a combination of full-wave electromagnetic simulations of light absorption and scattering coupled with Monte Carlo simulations of mass addition successfully reproduced the experimentally observed morphologies and indicated that morphology development was a consequence of the fundamental light-matter interactions during growth.
Local Structure of Highly Conductive Vanadate Glass Containing Tinoxide Studied By RT-MöSsbauer Spectrum
Authors: Oka Nobuto , Fujita Yuki , Izumi Tomoka , Kubuki Shiro , Nishida Tetsuaki 
Published: February 2020

Barium iron vanadate glass, e.g., 20BaO‧10Fe2O3‧ 70V2O5 (in mol %), and its analogs show high electrical conductivity amounting to the order of 10-1 Scm-1 [1-4]. This is brought about by the isothermal annealing for only several ten minutes at a given temperature higher than its glass transition temperature or crystallization temperature. The electrical conductivity are tunable from the order of 10-6 to 10-1 Scm-1 by changing the condition of isothermal annealing. The marked increase in the electrical conductivity was attributed to the structural relaxation of the “3D-network” which was preferable for the small polaron hopping from VIV to VV. Substitution of CuI (3d10), ZnII (3d10) and CuII (3d9) for FeIII (3d5) caused a further increase in the electrical conductivity [2-4], e.g., 20BaO‧5Cu2O‧5Fe2O3‧70V2O5 glass annealed at 450 °C for 30 min showed an increase of the electrical conductivity from 5.1×10–6 Scm–1 to 2.0×10–1 Scm–1, which was one order of magnitude larger than that of non-substituted vanadate glass (3.4×10–2 Scm–1) [2-4].
In this study, we investigated the substitutional effect of SnIV (4d10) and SnII (5s2) on the structure and the electrical conductivity of barium iron vanadate glass annealed at 500℃ for 0 - 300 min. The electrical conductivity of the annealed vanadate glass containing SnO (20BaO‧5Fe2O3‧5SnO‧70V2O5) was three orders of magnitude smaller than that of the conventional conductive vanadate glass (20BaO‧ 10Fe2O3‧70V2O5). Figure shows RT-Mössbauer spectrum of conductive vanadate glasses annealed at 500℃ for 60 min. The quadrupole splitting (Δ) of FeIII increase from 0.57 to 0.66 mms−1 as the composition of SnO increase, which reflected a decreased symmetry or an increased distortion of FeO4 and VO4tetrahedra [2-4]. Such a local distortion of the network should decrease the carrier mobility, and be contributed to the lower conductivity.

References:
1) Fukuda, A. Ikeda and T. Nishida, Solid State Phenom., 90/91, 215-220 (2003).
2) Nishida, S. Kubuki, K. Matsuda and Y. Otsuka, Croat. Chem. Acta
88(4) 427-435 (2015).
3) K. Matsuda, S. Kubuki and T. Nishida, AIP Conf. Proc. (msms2014), 1622, 3-7 (2014).
4) T. Nishida, Y. Izutsu, M. Fujimura, K. Osouda, Y. Otsuka, S. Kubuki and N. Oka, Pure and Appl. Chem. (2017). [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2016-0916]

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(Invited) Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems (INFEWS) and Beyond
Authors: Jones James W. 
Published: February 2020

Food, energy, and water are essential to survival and well-being of humankind. Recently, there have been shortages of these essential resources that led to food and energy price spikes and fresh water shortages. These shortages and price spikes have occurred at different spatial and temporal scales and in different contexts; some have even led to social unrest that threatens food, energy, and/or water security. Such insecurity issues are likely to worsen in the future due to continued population growth and limited sources of fossil fuels, water, and land. Furthermore, a changing climate and threats to soil health in many areas could alter our capabilities to provide these necessities.
Most research has been conducted to assess these food, energy, and water security issues individually. Such studies are mostly done without considering important interactions that occur among food, energy, and water subsystems, limiting the robustness of results and solutions. In response to the need to more holistically address these resources, the National Science Foundation (NSF) developed a cross-discipline initiative called INFEWS (Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems). FEW systems incorporate physical, natural, biological, and social/behavioral processes in addition to cyber elements. Investigations of these complex systems may produce discoveries that cannot emerge from research on food or energy or water systems alone. It is the synergy among these components in the context of sustainability that will open innovative science and engineering pathways to produce new knowledge, novel technologies, and predictive capabilities to solve the challenges of scarcity and variability.
Although several established NSF programs prioritize this area of research, NSF’s major emphasis is a multi-Directorate solicitation for proposals to address FEW systems (https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?WT.z_pims_id=505241&ods_key=nsf17530) with 3 tracks: understanding and modeling, cyber systems for decision support, and solution inspired research. NSF and USDA-NIFA jointly manage this initiative.
This presentation will highlight some INFEWS projects as well as some of the challenges associated with these large transdisciplinary research efforts. It will also include comments about some of NSF’s 10 Big Ideas for future research investments and another multi-Directorate, multi-Agency transdisciplinary effort that is being considered.
SOFC Co-Generation of Electricity and Clean Water
Authors: Wachsman Eric D. , Hays Thomas H 
Published: February 2020

Energy and water are basic necessities for human civilization. For too long these basic necessities have been provided by separately designed and operated independent large-scale infrastructures. In contrast the co-generation of electric power and potable water provides for significant improvement in system efficiency as well as the possibility for smaller distributed co-generation. One approach to do this is to not only use the electricity generated by solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), but also use the heat generated to drive water purification technology, as well as capture the H2O in the SOFC exhaust. By leveraging both electrical and thermal energy, very high system efficiency is possible. Moreover, the fuel flexibility, modularity, and solid-state nature of SOFCs make them ideal for operation in remote areas.
Addressing this at the local level with a strategy of distributed water purification powered by local fuel resources will be very effective. Using methane derived from agricultural waste, durable small scale SOFC units can generate significant amounts of electricity and heat. Electrical and thermal outputs from a biogas fueled SOFC were measured and total cell efficiency calculated to inform design criteria for the proposed power units. SOFC stability to sulfur contamination was improved using anode infiltration and evaluated in long term tests. Using the information gathered from these tests an analysis of the system size and fuel requirements necessary for a developing world community system were determined.
(Invited) In Vivo Electroanalytical Measurements of Norepinephrine in the Brain: Current Status and Remaining Challenges
Authors: Park Jinwoo , Bhimani Rohan , Wakabayashi Ken , Bass Caroline 
Published: February 2020

Norepinephrine (NE), one of the major catecholamines in the brain, is involved in many physiological processes and behaviors ranging from fear and anxiety to reward. Despite its important roles, NE has largely been unexplored compared to the other central catecholamine, dopamine (DA). This is due in part to the diffuse distribution of NE projections throughout the brain and challenges of its low physiological concentration and anatomy, complicating its detection. Specifically, NE is ordinarily one to two orders of magnitude lower in concentration than that of DA and many rodent brain regions that have appreciable amounts of NE are only a few hundred microns across. Recent studies have demonstrated that fast-scan cyclic voltammetry (FSCV) coupled with carbon-fiber microelectrodes enables the detection of subsecond changes of NE in the brain of anesthetized and awake behaving rats in real time, offering a local view of NE regulation (release and clearance). Although the regulatory mechanisms of NE and DA neurotransmission have many similarities, these studies have revealed that NE has important functional differences compared to DA. These results have provided new insights into the understudied role of NE in reward/aversion processes and drug abuse, and their related behavioral responses for the last decade. However, there are still limitations in the electroanalytical determination of NE in vivo in terms of selectivity and sensitivity. Here, the current state of electrochemical measurements of NE and associated findings are highlighted and the remaining challenges are discussed.
A Novel Soft Sensor Approach for Estimating Individual Biomass in Mixed Cultures with Applications to Agricultural Waste and Wastewater Treatment
Authors: Roberts Nathan , Chin Bryan A , He Q. Peter , Wang Jin 
Published: February 2020

Mixed cultures are prevalent in nature, which are biological systems with more than one type of organism sharing or competing for available nutrients. Compared to single cultures, mixed culture present many advantages. For example, when organisms in mixed cultures work symbiotically, the cells’ metabolic pathways complement each other and can result in efficient utilization of substrates and increased product yield. Other advantages include the use of mixed or cheaper substrates, reduction in sterilization and increased robustness to environmental changes. The application of mixed cultures in biotechnology has expanded rapidly in the last a few years, with applications ranging from wastewater treatment, biogas production, soil remediation, to chemical production such as solvent, antibiotics, acids and other valued commodities.
At the same time, many challenges remain for effective mixed culture applications. One of them is how to efficiently and accurately monitor the individual cell populations in a mixed culture. The current approaches on individual cell mass quantification are suitable for off-line, infrequent characterization of mixed cultures. In this work, we propose a fast and accurate ‘soft sensor’ approach for estimating individual cell concentrations in mixed cultures. The proposed approach utilizes absorption spectrum of a mixed culture sample measured by a spectrophotometer over a range of wavelengths. A multivariate linear regression method, partial least squares or PLS, is applied to correlate individual cell concentrations to the spectrum.
The proposed soft sensor is demonstrated using a methanotroph microalgae coculture. Recent findings published in Nature and Nature Geoscience suggest that the coupling of methane oxidation and oxygenic photosynthesis are prevalent in nature and reduce CH4 emissions and reuse CO2. These findings suggest that the coculture of methanotrophs and microalgae represents not only a feasible, but also a highly promising strategy for agriculture waste and wastewater treatment: the biogas and wastewater produced from anaerobic digestion of agriculture waste can be converted by the coculture of methanotroph and microalgae to cell biomass for animal food or biodiesel production, which not only significantly reduces the greenhouse gases emission, but also captures the valuable nutrients contained in digester effluent. Several case studies are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the soft sensor approach.
Detection of Salmonella
Enterica with Magnetoelastic Biosensors in Wash Water Containing Clorox and Chlorine Dioxide
Authors: Chen I-Hsuan , Du Songtao , Liu Yuzhe , Xi Jianguo , Lu Xu , Horikawa Shin , Wikle Howard Clyde , Suh Sang-Jin , Chin Bryan Allen 
Published: February 2020

Magnetoelastic (ME) biosensors with phage-displayed oligopeptide probes have been demonstrated to be highly successful in rapid detection of various pathogens, including Salmonella enterica, on the fruit and vegetable surfaces. However, in lieu of testing each produce individually, it is advantageous to detect pathogens in the produce wash water for high-throughput analysis. The sanitizing guidelines of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggest adding Clorox and chlorine dioxide to the produce wash water in processing plants to disinfect harmful food-borne pathogens on fruit and vegetable surfaces. Therefore, to determine the efficacy of our ME biosensors in testing for food-borne pathogens in produce wash water, we assessed the stability of our biosensors in the presence of Clorox and chlorine dioxide. Specifically, Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) was used to study the potential effect of Clorox and chlorine dioxide on the S. Typhimurium capturing ability of our phage probe. At concentrations recommended by the FDA for Clorox (100 ppm free chlorine content) and by the United States Environmental Protection Agency for chlorine dioxide (4 ppm), we observed no negative effect of these chemicals on the stability and S. Typhimurium capturing ability of our phage-displayed oligopeptide probe. These data demonstrate the potential efficacy of using our ME biosensors with phage-displayed oligopeptide probes in produce wash waters to determine the presence of food-borne pathogens.
Lithium Ion Conductive Ceramic Fabric: Fabrication and Application
Authors: Gong Yunhui , Fu Kun , Dai Jiaqi , Hamann Tanner R. , Zhang Lei , Hitz Gregory T , Hu Liangbing , Wachsman Eric D. 
Published: February 2020

Fibrous ceramic fabrics are commercially available products in different technical fields[1]. The fabrication technologies of fibrous ceramic fabrics are mainly categorized into direct spinning process and indirect template process. Here, we employed the template process to create the proof-of-concept lithium ion conductive fibrous ceramic fabrics, which generates unique structure with fine 3D scale distribution of continues lithium ion conductive phase, high surface area/volume ratio, low gravimetric density, multi-level porosity, certain strength and flexibility. The architectural advantages may allow the fibrous ceramic fabrics to be integrated to build components of solid state lithium metal batteries, such as flexible composite polymer electrolyte and rigid electrode skeleton. Because of the simplicity, rapidity and cost saving characteristics of template method, applicable transition from laboratory scale fabrication procedure to industry scale manufacturing is potentially achievable.
The generally sequential procedures of template method to prepare the fibrous ceramic fabric are: (1) Pretreating the replica template; (2) Impregnating the replica template with the precursor solution; (3) Converting the precursors into nano-sized ceramic oxide, pyrolysis of the replica template and sintering of the relic structure. Figure 1 presents the photo image of the fibrous ceramic fabrics composed of lithium ion conductive garnet phase. Different from the structure of conventional sintering of powder compact, the ceramic fabric retained the characteristic features of replica template, exhibiting complex geometric structure of woven pattern of continuous interlocked fibers and interlaced yarns. The fibrous garnet textile shows pronounced new characteristic features to tolerate certain flexural strength, geometrical tailoring and organic solvent erosion, which are distinct from the rigid appearance of typical sintered ceramic body. The chemical analysis confirmed cubic phase of the fibrous garnet fabric and homogenous distribution of the constituent elements.

Figure 1. Photo image of the fibrous ceramic fabric composed of lithium ion conductive garnet phase, which essentially retained the structural characteristics of the replica template.

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