Preferred Orientation Deposition via Multifunctional Gel Electrolyte with Molecular Anchor Enabling Highly Reversible Zn Anode

The high activity of water molecules results in a series of awful parasitic reaction, which seriously impede the development of aqueous zinc batteries. Herein, a new gel electrolyte with multiple molecular anchors is designed by employing natural biomaterials from chitosan and chlorophyll derivative. The gel electrolyte firmly anchors water molecules by ternary hydrogen bonding to reduce the activity of water molecules and inhibit hydrogen evolution reaction. Meanwhile, the multipolar charged functional groups realize the gradient induction and redistribution of Zn2+ , which drives oriented Zn (002) plane deposition of Zn2+ and then achieves uniform Zn deposition and dendrite-free anode. As a result, it endows the Zn||Zn cell with over 1700 h stripping/plating processes and a high efficiency of 99.4% for the Zn||Cu cell. In addition, the Zn||V2 O5 full cells also exhibit capacity retention of 81.7% after 600 cycles at 0.5 A g-1 and excellent long-term stability over 1600 cycles at 2 A g-1 , and the flexible pouch cells can provide stable power for light-emitting diodes even after repeated bending. The gel electrolyte strategy provides a reference for reversible zinc anode and flexible wearable devices.

Remodeling Zinc Deposition via Multisite Zincophilic Chlorophyll for Powerful Aprotic Zinc Batteries

The organic electrolyte can resolve the hurdle of hydrogen evolution in aqueous electrolytes but suffers from sluggish electrochemical reaction kinetics due to a compromised mass transfer process. Herein, we introduce a chlorophyll, zinc methyl 3-devinyl-3-hydroxymethyl-pyropheophorbide-a (Chl), as a multifunctional electrolyte additive for aprotic zinc batteries to address the related dynamic problems in organic electrolyte systems. The Chl exhibits multisite zincophilicity, which significantly reduces the nucleation potential, increases the nucleation sites, and induces uniform nucleation of Zn metal with a nucleation overpotential close to zero. Furthermore, the lower LUMO of Chl contributes to a Zn-N-bond-containing SEI layer and inhibits the decomposition of the electrolyte. Therefore, the electrolyte enables repeated zinc stripping/plating up to 2000 h (2 Ah cm^-2 cumulative capacity) with an overpotential of only 32 mV and a high Coulomb efficiency of 99.4%. This work is expected to enlighten the practical application of organic electrolyte systems.

cDNA-AFLP transcriptional profiling reveals genes expressed during flower development in Oncidium Milliongolds

The flower developmental process, which is crucial to the whole lifecycle of higher plants, is influenced by both environmental and endogenous factors. The genus Oncidium is commercially important for cut flower and houseplant industry and is ideal for flower development studies. Using cDNA-amplified restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, we profiled transcripts that are differentially expressed during flower development of Oncidium Milliongolds. A total of 15,960 transcript-derived fragments were generated, with 114 primer sets. Of these, 1248 were sequenced, producing 993 readable sequences. BLASTX/N analysis showed that 833 of the 993 transcripts showed homology to genes in the NCBI databases, exhibiting functions involved in various processes, such as signal transduction, energy conversion, metabolism, and gene expression regulation. The full-length mRNAs of SUCROSE SYNTHASE 1 (SUS1) and LEAFY (LFY) were cloned, and their expression patterns were characterized. The results showed that the expression levels of SUS1 and LFY were similar during flower development. To confirm the function of SUS1 in flower buds, carbohydrate content and sucrose synthase activity were determined. The results showed that changes in sucrose content and sucrose synthase activity reflected SUS1 expression levels. Collectively, these results indicate that SUS1 influences flower development by regulating LFY expression levels through changing the sucrose content of flower buds.