Smart Lanthanide Metal–Organic Frameworks with Multicolor Luminescence Switching Induced by the Dynamic Adaptive Antenna Effect of Molecular Rotors
Dynamic molecular rotors are used to construct smart lanthanide metal–organic frameworks (Ln-MOFs) emitters with adaptive antenna effects for the first time and precisely regulated the energy transfer pathways of Ln-MOFs to achieve efficient multicolor luminescence switching behavior, upconversion luminescence, multiple smart anti-counterfeiting applications, purity monitoring of commercial gadolinium salts, smart photoresponsive specific antibiotics and amino acids.
Abstract
In this work, dynamic molecular rotors are used to construct smart lanthanide metal–organic frameworks (Ln-MOFs) emitters with adaptive antenna effects for the first time. The movement or distortion of the molecular rotors can be easily regulated by temperature changes, thereby inducing a dynamically changing antenna effect that can automatically match different lanthanide ions, achieving cyclic multicolor luminescence switching behavior and extremely complex multiple encryption anti-counterfeiting technology. In addition, by regulating the doping ratios of Gd(III) and Tb(III) with Eu(III) within the Ln-MOFs, differentiated energy transfer pathways are discovered, and red light emission very close to the BT.2020 color gamut standard is obtained. Gd0.99Eu0.01-MOF containing only 1% Eu(III) can show bright red luminescence, and in the range of 1–9% Eu(III) content, the characteristic emission intensity of Eu(III) ions and the content show an excellent linear relationship with a slope k as high as 2299. This can be used to identify the content of Eu(III) ions impurities in gadolinium salts from different manufacturers. Eu/Tb-MOF showed highly sensitive and visualized smart photoresponse behaviors to specific antibiotics and amino acids, respectively, with detection limits of 3.2/2.7 nM (tetracycline), 1.7/15.5 nM (oxytetracycline), 0.13/0.97 nM (aspartic acid), and 0.26/1.16 nM (glutamic acid).
Electrochromic Smart Windows with On‐Demand Photothermal Regulation for Energy‐Saving Buildings
WO3//MnO2-based electrochromic smart windows with highly selective visible and near-infrared regulation are achieved by decoupling the mechanisms of reversible deposition and ion adsorption. It is found that the hybrid Cu2+/Mn2+ ions promote proton adsorption while hampering proton insertion on the WO3 surface for the first time, endowing the windows with state-of-the-art properties.
Abstract
Electrochromic smart windows with dynamic photothermal management can enhance living comfort and reduce building energy consumption. However, they usually suffer from low selectivity and optical modulation in visible (VIS) and near-infrared (NIR) regions owing to the coupled mechanism restriction. Here, the reversible deposition and ion adsorption in WO3//MnO2-based smart windows are decoupled using a hybrid electrolyte, realizing their independent and efficient VIS–NIR regulation. The Cu2+/Mn2+ ions in the hybrid electrolyte enhance proton adsorption on the WO3 surface while impeding proton insertion, imparting state-of-the-art NIR regulation to the WO3 electrode. Moreover, the synergy of protons and Cu2+/Mn2+ ions facilitates reversible MnO2 electrodeposition on the electrode, triggering independent tuning of VIS light with an optical modulation of 94%. The outdoor test and simulation reveal that the smart window achieves cooling at 5–10 °C, an energy savings of 73.2 MJ m−2 and a reduction of 14.4 kg of CO2 emissions per square meter of the building annually. This work would contribute to energy-saving and emission-reduction solutions in widespread applications.
Molecularly Engineered Rigid Ultra‐Micropore Membranes for Ultrahigh‐Power Osmotic Energy Harvesting from High‐Temperature Hypersaline Brine
The rigid ultra-micropores are constructed by confining the semi-rigid sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) molecules in graphene oxide nanochannels and fixing them with an amphiphilic molecule. The power density of the membrane can reach up to 371.65 W m−2 with high temperature (60 °C) hypersaline brine (5M/0.5M), which can be obtained from a solar stiller.
Abstract
Osmotic energy is a promising renewable energy source for its giant reserves and can be easily harvested with ion selective membranes. However, the output power density in membrane-scale applications is always below 10 W m−2 due to the high resistance from low salinity solution and the serious concentration polarization phenomenon. Here, this study shows that rigid ultra-micropores can greatly improve the output power density of the osmotic energy conversion process with high-temperature hypersaline brine. The membrane with rigid ultra-micropores is constructed by confining the high-content semi-rigid sulfonated poly(ether ether ketone) molecules in graphene oxide nanochannels and fixing them with amphiphilic molecules. The output power density of the membrane can be as high as 175.1 W m−2 with an energy conversion efficiency of 44.5% at the salinity gradient of 5 M/0.5 M, which can further increase to 371.65 W m−2 when the solution temperature is up to 60 °C. This study also demonstrates that the high-temperature hypersaline brine can be obtained from a passive solar stiller. The molecular engineering of ion selective membranes and the optimization strategy of the reverse electrodialysis process will inspire the development of a next-generation osmotic energy harvesting system.
Rational Regulation of Layer‐by‐Layer Processed Active Layer via Trimer‐Induced Pre‐Swelling Strategy for Efficient and Robust Thick‐Film Organic Solar Cells
Layer-by-layer deposition technology is combined with a trimer-induced pre-swelling (TIP) strategy by incorporating a 3D star-shaped trimer (BTT-Out) into the buried D18 donor layer to construct thick-film OSCs. A best performance of 20.3% (thin-film) and 18.8% (thick-film) with upgraded stability is achieved in TIP devices, among one of the highest performances reported of thick-film OSCs.
Abstract
Thick-film (>300 nm) organic solar cells (OSCs) have garnered intensifying attention due to their compatibility with commercial roll-to-roll printing technology for the large-scale continuous fabrication process. However, due to the uncontrollable donor/acceptor (D/A) arrangement in thick-film condition, the restricted exciton splitting and severe carrier traps significantly impede the photovoltaic performance and operability. Herein, combined with layer-by-layer deposition technology, a twisted 3D star-shaped trimer (BTT-Out) is synthesized to develop a trimer-induced pre-swelling (TIP) strategy, where the BTT-Out is incorporated into the buried D18 donor layer to enable the fabrication of thick-film OSCs. The integrated approach characterizations reveal that the exceptional configuration and spontaneous self-organization behavior of BTT-Out trimer could pre-swell the D18 network to facilitate the acceptor's infiltration and accelerate the formation of D/A interfaces. This enhancement triggers the elevated polarons formation with amplified hole-transfer kinetics, which is essential for the augmented exciton splitting efficiency. Furthermore, the regulated swelling process can initiate the favorable self-assembly of L8-BO acceptors, which would ameliorate carrier transport channels and mitigate carrier traps. As a result, the TIP-modified thin-film OSC devices achieve the champion performance of 20.3% (thin-film) and 18.8% (thick-film) with upgraded stability, among one of the highest performances reported of thick-film OSCs.
Halogen Anions Pre-homogenization of Sequential Deposited Wide Bandgap Perovskite for Commercial Textured Perovskite/Silicon Tandem Solar Cells
DOI: 10.1039/D5EE00563A, PaperBiao Shi, Pengfei Liu, Zetong Sunli, Wei Han, Cong Sun, Ying Liu, Yuan Luo, Jin Si, pengcheng Du, Fu Zhang, Miao Yang, Yongcai He, Bo He, Dekun Zhang, Xiaona Du, Xixiang Xu, Rui Xia, Xueling Zhang, Yifeng Chen, Jifan Gao, Ying Zhao, Xiaodan Zhang
The evaporation-solution sequential deposited wide bandgap perovskite has been widely applied to fabricate efficient, commercial textured perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells. However, current works generally widened the bandgap by incorporating more...
The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry
Wed 26 Nov 19:15: 100 years of educational trials – no significant difference?
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in education research have been carried out for over 100 years. Over the last 15 of these years their use has increased significantly. In this talk we examine the field of education research to address the key challenges faced by education trials today and possible solutions. Despite their growing use they have been subject to sustained and rather trenchant criticism from significant sections of the education research community. There are key areas in which RCTs require focus and improvement: in particular in recruitment and retention, implementation and outcome measures.
- Speaker: Riikka Hofmann, Faculty of Education
- Wednesday 26 November 2025, 19:15-21:00
- Venue: City House, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 1RY.
- Series: Cambridge Statistics Discussion Group (CSDG); organiser: Peter Watson.
Wed 04 Feb 14:30: Title to be confirmed
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Professor Thomas E. Markland, Stanford University
- Wednesday 04 February 2026, 14:30-15:30
- Venue: Unilever Lecture Theatre, Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry.
- Series: Theory - Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Lisa Masters.
Fri 07 Nov 16:00: Parton showers beyond leading colour
General purpose parton showers are based on classical branching algorithms. As a result, it is not possible to account for even the leading quantum interference effects in general scattering processes and this often limits the accuracy of these showers to the leading colour approximation. We have developed the CVolver Monte Carlo code, which is able to evolve a density matrix to a prescribed accuracy in colour. This means we are able to account for wide-angle, soft-gluon physics systematically in 1/N where N=3 is the number of colours. This is the first time such a systematic resummation has been performed for general processes and in this talk I will report on the latest results.
- Speaker: Jeffrey R. Forshaw (Manchester U.)
- Friday 07 November 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Ray Dolby Centre, Seminar Room - North (Floor: 0 A0.019).
- Series: HEP phenomenology joint Cavendish-DAMTP seminar; organiser: Terry Generet.
Heterogeneities across electrode|polymer electrolyte interfaces contribute to battery failure
Nature Nanotechnology, Published online: 08 May 2025; doi:10.1038/s41565-025-01886-4
The interfacial dynamics in high-potential lithium batteries with polymer electrolytes have been challenging to characterize. Now, X-ray synchrotron analyses reveal that the rearrangement of ion-conductive phases in polymer electrolytes at electrode|electrolyte interfaces disrupts ionically conductive paths and contributes to battery performance degradation.Tue 27 May 13:00: Computer Vision: Between Forensics and Biomedical Imaging
The seminar will be an interdisciplinary journey between applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Computer Vision based methods to the field of Forensics and Biomedical Imaging. I will first focus on AI applications for country recognition and city verification, presenting two works in which AI based models have been applied to such forensics task, with a final overview of other forensics applications such as visual sentiment analysis and detection of generated images through AI methods. Subsequently the seminar will focus on further applications of AI vision methods to the field of deep generative models for Biomedical Imaging, with a particular focus on a work on deep generative model for structural brain MRI reconstruction and interpretation.
- Speaker: Giovanna Maria Dimitri, University of Siena (Italy)
- Tuesday 27 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building.
- Series: Artificial Intelligence Research Group Talks (Computer Laboratory); organiser: Mateja Jamnik.
Wed 14 May 16:00: Profinite rigidity of Kähler groups
A classical problem in complex algebraic geometry is understanding the topology of closed complex submanifolds of complex projective space, so-called smooth complex projective varieties, and, more generally, of compact Kähler manifolds. Two natural topological invariants to consider are the fundamental group and its profinite completion; the latter is also known as the algebraic fundamental group. In this talk I will address the following questions: When is the fundamental group of a compact Kähler manifold uniquely determined by its profinite completion? And, when does the profinite completion even determine the homeomorphism type of the underlying manifold? In particular, I will explain positive answers to both questions in the case of a direct product of fundamental groups of closed hyperbolic Riemann surfaces. This talk is based on joint work with Hughes, Py, Spitler, Stover and Vidussi.
- Speaker: Claudio Llosa Isenrich (KIT)
- Wednesday 14 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: CMS, MR15.
- Series: Differential Geometry and Topology Seminar; organiser: Oscar Randal-Williams.
Tue 13 May 14:00: Harmonic maps to the circle with higher dimensional singular set
We consider the problem of finding harmonic maps to the circle with a prescribed singular set in an arbitrary Riemannian manifold and characterise their uniqueness in terms of the “one-dimensional topology” of the ambient space. We then show how these maps can be used to define new notions of (n-2)-volume, leading to a promising approximation scheme for classical codimension 2 minimal surfaces.
- Speaker: Marco Badran (ETH Zurich)
- Tuesday 13 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: MR13.
- Series: Partial Differential Equations seminar; organiser: Giacomo Ageno.
Wed 14 May 14:30: Nanoconfined Superionic Water is Molecular Superionic
Superionic ice, where water molecules dissociate into a lattice of oxygen ions and a rapidly diffusing “gas” of protons, represents an exotic state of matter with broad implications for planetary interiors and energy applications [1,2]. Recently, a nanoconfined superionic state of water has been predicted [3,4], which exists at far milder temperatures than conventional superionic ices and at pressures similar to those created naturally in Van der Waals materials [5]. Interestingly, in sharp contrast to bulk ice, this phase is comprised of intact water molecules. This molecular superionic behaviour has possible applications in a range of electrochemical and electrocatalytic applications. However, at present, we lack the design principles necessary to design other materials with these properties.
In this talk, I will use machine learning and electronic structure simulations to establish how nanoconfined water can be both molecular and superionic. We also explore what insights this material offers for superionic states in general. Similar to bulk superionic ice and other superionic materials [6], nanoconfined water conducts via concerted chain-like proton migrations, which cause the rapid propagation of defects [7]. However, unlike other molecular phases of water, its exceptional conductivity arises from: (i) low barriers to proton transfer; and (ii) a flexible hydrogen-bonded network. We propose that these are two key characteristics of fast ionic conduction in molecular superionics. The insights obtained here establish design principles for the discovery of other molecular superionic materials, with potential applications in energy storage and beyond.
References: 1. Matusalem F et al. (2022) Plastic deformation of superionic water ices. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA119 :e2203397119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2203397119 2. Cheng B et al. (2021) Phase behaviours of superionic water at planetary conditions. Nat Phys 17(11):1228–1232. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01334-9 3. Kapil V et al. (2022) The first-principles phase diagram of monolayer nanoconfined water. Nature 609(7927):512–516. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05036-x 4. Ravindra P et al. (2024) Nuclear quantum effects induce superionic proton transport in nanoconfined water. arXivpreprint arXiv:2410.03272. https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.03272 5. Algara-Siller G et al. (2015) Square ice in graphene nanocapillaries. Nature 519(7544):443–445. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14295 6. Morgan BJ (2021) Mechanistic origin of superionic lithium diffusion in anion-disordered Li₆PS₅X argyrodites. Chem Mater 33(6):2004–2018. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.0c03738 7. Catlow CRA (1990) Atomistic mechanisms of ionic transport in fast-ion conductors. J Chem Soc, Faraday Trans86(8):1167. https://doi.org/10.1039/FT9908601167
- Speaker: Dr Samuel Coles, University of Cambridge
- Wednesday 14 May 2025, 14:30-15:30
- Venue: Unilever Lecture Theatre, Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry.
- Series: Theory - Chemistry Research Interest Group; organiser: Lisa Masters.
Tue 13 May 14:00: BSU Seminar: "A Regression Tree Approach to Missing Data" This will be a free hybrid seminar. To register to attend virtually, please click here: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81415700586?pwd=7rhWD5jDWlkAq1nuMUPDJGDkhQsMCM.1
Analysis of data with missing values is arguably the hardest problem in statistics. Statistical methods are often designed for completely observed data and are inapplicable if some values are missing. Although there are many techniques for imputation of missing values, the statistical properties of the resulting fitted models are unknown, except in special situations that require unverifiable and likely unjustifiable assumptions, such as “missing at random” (MAR) and “no unobserved confounding”.
We use a large dataset of electronic health records of Covid-19 patients and a national consumer expenditure survey to show that (1) routine imputation of missing data is inadvisable and even illogical, as missingness itself can contain useful information that imputation destroys and (2) popular imputation algorithms such as MICE are impractical when the amount of missing data is large. We also show how the GUIDE classification and regression tree method easily overcomes these difficulties. GUIDE is unique among tree algorithms in many respects, including its ability to completely avoid imputation of missing data in predictor variables and to explicitly display the effects of missing values in its decision tree diagrams. Literature on GUIDE and its accompanying software may be obtained at https://pages.stat.wisc.edu/~loh/guide.html.
This will be a free hybrid seminar. To register to attend virtually, please click here: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81415700586?pwd=7rhWD5jDWlkAq1nuMUPDJGDkhQsMCM.1
- Speaker: Professor Wei-Yin Loh, Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA
- Tuesday 13 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
- Venue: Large Seminar Room, East Forvie Building, Forvie Site Robinson Way Cambridge CB2 0SR..
- Series: MRC Biostatistics Unit Seminars; organiser: Alison Quenault.
Thu 15 May 16:00: From nuclear swelling to chemoattractant production during tissue damage
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Dr Balázs Enyedi - Semmelweis University, Budapest
- Thursday 15 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Hodgkin Huxley Seminar Room, Physiology building, Downing Site CB2 3EG.
- Series: Foster Talks; organiser: foster.
Mon 09 Jun 13:00: Richard Relhan: can a portrait be reconstructed from the biographical bones?
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Chris Preston
- Monday 09 June 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
- Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: .
Thu 08 May 16:00: Potassium channel activators - a possible anti-seizure treatment.
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Prof Frederik Elinder - Linköping University, Sweden
- Thursday 08 May 2025, 16:00-17:00
- Venue: Hodgkin Huxley Seminar Room, Physiology building, Downing Site CB2 3EG.
- Series: Foster Talks; organiser: foster.
Mon 02 Jun 13:00: Planting crops, gathering knowledge: scientific objects, plantation economies and knowledge production in nineteenth-century Guatemala
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Christian Stenz (Heidelberg University)
- Monday 02 June 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
- Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: .
Mon 26 May 13:00: Cave science, bat guano and prehistory in the Malay Peninsula, c. 1900
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Katherine Enright (Faculty of History)
- Monday 26 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
- Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: .
Mon 19 May 13:00: Vere, Lady Lynch (1647–1682): women colonists as artists and scientists in early English Jamaica
Abstract not available
- Speaker: Eleanor Stephenson (Faculty of History)
- Monday 19 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
- Venue: Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.
- Series: Cabinet of Natural History; organiser: .