Nitride solid-state electrolytes for all-solid-state lithium metal batteries
DOI: 10.1039/D4EE04927F, Review Article Open Access   This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.Weihan Li, Minsi Li, Haoqi Ren, Jung Tae Kim, Ruying Li, Tsun-Kong Sham, Xueliang Sun
Nitride solid-state electrolytes (SSEs) hold significant potential for addressing critical interfacial issues between SSEs and lithium metal in all-solid-state lithium metal batteries. These batteries are at the forefront of energy...
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“Head Surgery” of Polycyclic o-Quinones with Cyanated Aromatic Rings towards High Electron Mobility Acceptors Enable 19.6% Additive-Free Binary Organic Solar Cells
DOI: 10.1039/D5EE00031A, PaperTainan Duan, Jia Wang, Xiaochan Zuo, Yanyi Zhong, Yuhong Long, Peiran Wang, Kaihuai Tu, Cheng Zhong, Jiangbin Zhang, Oleg Alekseevich Rakitin, Zhaoyang Yao, Xiangjian Wan, Yan Zhao, Bin Kan, Yongsheng Chen
The development of high-performance organic electron acceptors is pivotal for advancing organic optoelectronic devices. In this paper, a new synthetic approach was developed to construct fused-ring aromatic backbones and the...
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Thu 13 Mar 17:00: Formal verification of the 5th Busy Beaver value
We prove that S(5) = 47,176,870. The Busy Beaver value S(n) gives the maximum number of steps a halting n-state 2-symbol Turing machine can perform from the all-0 tape before halting and S was historically introduced as one of the simplest examples of a noncomputable function.
Using the Coq proof assistant, we enumerate 181,385,789 5-state Turing machines, and for each, decide whether it halts or not. Most of these machines are decided using new algorithms that simplify the halting problem by building Finite State Automata to approximate the machine’s set of reachable configurations. For 13 challenging Sporadic Machines, we provide individual Coq proofs of nonhalting.
Our result marks the first determination of a new Busy Beaver value in over 40 years, leveraging Coq’s computing capabilities and demonstrating the effectiveness of collaborative online research.
- Speaker: Tristan Stérin (Maynooth University, Ireland) and Maja Kądziołka
- Thursday 13 March 2025, 17:00-18:00
- Venue: MR14 Centre for Mathematical Sciences.
- Series: Formalisation of mathematics with interactive theorem provers ; organiser: Anand Rao Tadipatri.
Anode-Free Sodium Metal Batteries: Optimisation of Electrolytes and Interphases
DOI: 10.1039/D5EE00136F, Review Article Open Access   This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.Huihua Li, Fanglin Wu, Jian Wang, Jingxuan Wang, Hongxu Qu, Minghua Chen, Huang Zhang, Stefano Passerini
Anode-free sodium metal batteries (AFSMBs) represent a significant advancement in energy storage technology, offering high energy density and cost-effective solutions. However, their applications are impeded by the critical sodium deposition...
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Wed 02 Apr 16:00: A short and personal history of planar cell polarity
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Peter A. Lawrence - Department of Zoology
- Wednesday 02 April 2025, 16:00-17:30
- Venue: Max Perutz Lecture Theatre. LMB. Cambridge..
- Series: Cambridge Fly Meetings; organiser: Daniel Sobrido-Cameán.
Wed 02 Apr 16:00: The fly connectome
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Tomke Stürner - Drosophila Connectomics Group, Department of Zoology and Neurobiology Division, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
- Wednesday 02 April 2025, 16:00-17:30
- Venue: Max Perutz Lecture Theatre. LMB. Cambridge..
- Series: Cambridge Fly Meetings; organiser: Daniel Sobrido-Cameán.
Fri 14 Mar 14:00: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Marcin Mucha-Kruczynski (Bath)
- Friday 14 March 2025, 14:00-15:30
- Venue: TCM Seminar Room.
- Series: Theory of Condensed Matter; organiser: Bo Peng.
Thu 05 Jun 16:00: Dr Ewan Harrison, Wellcome Sanger Institute
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Thursday 5 June 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Dr Ewan Harrison, Head of Respiratory Virus and Microbiome Initiative, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Title: TBC
Host: Patrycja Kozik, MRC -LMB, Cambridge
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Dr Ewan Harrison, Wellcome Sanger Institute
- Thursday 05 June 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Thu 22 May 16:00: Prof. Vincenzo Bronte, Universita di Verona, Italy
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Thursday 22 May 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Prof. Vincenzo Bronte, Universita di Verona, Italy
Title: TBC
Host: Virginia Pedicord, CITIID , Cambridge
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Prof. Vincenzo Bronte, Universita di Verona, Italy
- Thursday 22 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Thu 22 May 16:00: Prof. Vincenzo Bronte, Universita di Verona, Italy
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Prof. Vincenzo Bronte, Universita di Verona, Italy
- Thursday 22 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Thu 24 Apr 16:00: Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Thursday 24 April 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: TBC
Title: TBC
Host: TBC
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
- Thursday 24 April 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Thu 10 Apr 16:00: Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Thursday 4 April 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: TBC
Title: TBC
Host:
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Speaker to be confirmed
- Thursday 10 April 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Thu 15 May 16:00: Inflammation in vaccines and infection: it’s (even) more complex than we think
This Cambridge Immunology and Medicine Seminar will take place on Thursday 15 May 2025, starting at 4:00pm, in the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre (JCBC)
Speaker: Prof John Tregoning, Professor of Vaccine Immunology at Imperial College London
Title: ‘Inflammation in vaccines and infection: it’s (even) more complex than we think’
Prof John Tregoning is currently Professor of Vaccine Immunology at Imperial College London, where he has studied the immune responses to vaccination and respiratory infection for more than 25 years. His group is currently focusing on the immune response to RNA vaccination. John has written more than 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles. He is also the author of two books Live Forever? A Curious Scientist’s Guide to Wellness, Disease and Ageing and Infectious: Pathogens and how we fight them.
Host: Ravindra Gupta, CITIID , Cambridge
Refreshments will be available following the seminar.
- Speaker: Prof John Tregoning, Professor of Vaccine Immunology at Imperial College London
- Thursday 15 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre, Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
- Series: Cambridge Immunology Network Seminar Series; organiser: Ruth Paton.
Self-powered electrochemical synthesis of hydrogen peroxide from air and lignin
DOI: 10.1039/D4EE06106C, PaperYongrong Li, Denghao Ouyang, Xi Liu, Yichen Zhang, Zhiqiang Niu, JunYong Zhu, Xuejun Pan, Xuebing Zhao
Lignin, which is typically available as a by-product of pulping process and biomass biorefinery, is a sustainable feedstock for production of carbon fuels and materials. Here, we report a novel...
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Targeted Deflecting Zn2+ Migration Trajectory by Piezomagnetic Effect to Enable Horizontal Zn Deposition
DOI: 10.1039/D4EE04115A, PaperChenming Zhou, Zhezhong Zhang, Mu Zhang, Xudong Sun, Jun Zhang, Gang Huang, Zhaolin Na
The rampant growth of dendrites caused by inhomogeneous Zn2+ ion flux and "tip effect" significantly hinder the development of aquesous Zn-ion batteries. The conventional artificial protective layers (APLs) improve Zn...
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Tue 11 Mar 13:10: The Book of protecting Osiris among those of the Netherworld: An annotated version of the First Hour.
Ancient Egyptian funerary texts were writings used to help the spirit of a deceased person be protected and guided through the afterlife and toward resurrection. The Book of Gates, also more properly called The Book of Protecting Osiris among those of the Netherworld, is one such text, dating back to the period of the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, around the 16th century B.C.
In it, the deceased must pass through 12 gates, coinciding with 12 hours, which represent the 12 hours of the night. Near the end, they will be judged and deemed either worthy or unworthy to “return to the daylight” or be resurrected. The First Hour of this text serves as an introduction to this nocturnal voyage.
As an archaeologist and Egyptology enthusiast, my talk looks at the theological and cosmological themes that the first Hour of the Book of Gates discusses and seeks to understand implicit cultural and intellectual interconnections between ancient Egypt and other African societies. By combining textual analysis with archaeological and historical perspectives, this reading of the Book of Gates argues for its internalization as not just a religious text, but as a symbolic one that is reflective of ancient Egyptian and indeed universal human themes.
One of these major themes involves the human desire to live forever, and the means through which our quest for immortality might be obtained.
- Speaker: Chike Pilgrim, PhD Student, Department of Archaeology
- Tuesday 11 March 2025, 13:10-14:00
- Venue: Richard King room, Darwin College.
- Series: Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Seminars; organiser: Dr Amelia Hassoun.
Mon 17 Mar 15:00: Quantum Chemistry of Molecular Building Blocks
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Bo Peng, Cavendish Laboratory
- Monday 17 March 2025, 15:00-16:00
- Venue: Dept of Chemistry, Unilever Lecture Theatre.
- Series: Chemistry Departmental-wide lectures; organiser: Xani Thorman.
Thu 13 Mar 14:00: Classical and Quantum Algorithms for Characters of the Symmetric Group
Characters of irreducible representations are ubiquitous in group theory yet prove challenging to compute. Here we describe a Matrix Product State (MPS) algorithm for characters of Sn building on a mapping from characters of Sn to quantum spin chains proposed by Crichigno and Prakash (of which we also provide a simplified derivation). We complement this result by presenting a poly(n) size quantum circuit that prepares the corresponding MPS obtaining an efficient quantum algorithm for certain sampling problems based on characters of Sn. To assess classical hardness of these problems we present a general reduction from strong simulation (computing a given probability) to weak simulation (sampling with a small error). This reduction applies to any sampling problem with a certain granularity structure and may be of independent interest. Joint work with Sergey Bravyi, David Gosset, and Vojtech Havlicek.
- Speaker: Louis Schatzki (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
- Thursday 13 March 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building, Room FW11.
- Series: Quantum Computing Seminar; organiser: Tom Gur.
Spontaneous Charging from Sliding Water Drops Determines the Interfacial Deposition of Charged Solutes
When water drops slide on hydrophobic surfaces, they spontaneously leave behind negative charges along their path, resulting in the drops becoming positively charged. Here, it is shown that this phenomenon, known as slide electrification, influences the deposition of charged dissolved molecules. Using charged fluorophores and biomolecules, a preferential deposition of cations along the drop's trail is demonstrated, following the charge distribution pattern.
Abstract
It has been discovered during the last decade that when water drops slide on hydrophobic surfaces, they spontaneously leave negative charges along the drop path. The drops become positively charged with a potential of 1 kV. This process, called slide electrification, influences drop motion and alters contact angles. Here, a third effect of slide electrification is demonstrated: the preferential deposition of dissolved solutes with positive charges. To illustrate this, water drops containing dissolved charged fluorophore ions are allowed to slide down a tilted hydrophobic surface, and their track is imaged. Two perylene derivatives are applied as fluorophores, one chromophore carrying positive charges, PDI+, and one carrying negative charges, PDI─. PDI+ is deposited at a concentration as low as 0.5 µm. In contrast, PDI─ is only deposited above 5 µm. Experiments using grounded drops or a hydrophobic coating on a conducting substrate indicate that the electric field generated from the negative surface charges behind the drop causes a preferential deposition of the dissolved ions near the interface. This hypothesis also agrees with Kelvin probe measurements. Complex biomolecules deposition e.g. DNA can be also affected by this. These findings contribute to a better understanding of mass transfer processes at interfaces.
In Situ Grown RuNi Alloy on ZrNiNx as a Bifunctional Electrocatalyst Boosts Industrial Water Splitting
Bimetallic nitrides supported RuNi alloy (RuNi/ZrNiNx) epitaxial heterostructure as a bifunctional catalyst achieves highly stable and active hydrogen and oxygen evolution at ampere-scale current densities. Charge redistribution induced high-valence Zr promotes the water dissociation, electron-deficient Ru facilitates H desorption, and the hollow site of tri-coordinated Ni in NiNx that is adjacent to Zr atom favors the energetically favorable O2 production.
Abstract
Alkaline water electrolysis represents a pivotal technology for green hydrogen production yet faces critical challenges including limited current density and high energy input. Herein, a heterostructured bimetallic nitrides supported RuNi alloy (RuNi/ZrNiNx) is developed through in situ epitaxial growth under ammonolysis, achieving exceptional bifunctional activity and durability for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in 1 m KOH electrolyte. The RuNi/ZrNiNx exhibits a HER current density of −2 A cm−2 at an overpotential of 392.8 mV, maintaining initial overpotential after 1000 h continuous electrolysis at −500 mA cm−2. For OER, it delivers a current density of 2 A cm−2 at 1.822 V versus RHE, and sustains stable operation for 705 h at 500 mA cm−2. Experimental and theoretical studies unveil that the charge redistribution-induced high-valence Zr centers effectively polarize H─O bonds and promote water dissociation, and the electron-deficient interface Ru sites optimize hydrogen desorption kinetics. Dynamic OH spillovers from Zr sites to the adjacent tri-coordinated Ni hollow sites in NiNx promote rapid *OH intermediate desorption and active site regeneration. Notably, the tri-coordinated Ni hollow sites in NiNx proximal to Zr atoms exhibit tailored adsorption strength for oxo-intermediates, enabling a more energetically favorable pathway for O2 production.