ABSTRACT
The salinity difference between seawater and river water is a renewable source of enormous entropic energy, but extracting it efficiently as a form of useful energy remains a challenge. Here we demonstrate a device called "mixing entropy battery", which can extract and store it as useful electrochemical energy. The battery, containing a Na(2-x)Mn(5)O(10) nanorod electrode, was shown to extract energy from real seawater and river water and can be applied to a variety of salt waters. We demonstrated energy extraction efficiencies of up to 74%. Considering the flow rate of river water into oceans as the limiting factor, the renewable energy production could potentially reach 2 TW, or â¼13% of the current world energy consumption. The mixing entropy battery is simple to fabricate and could contribute significantly to renewable energy in the future.
Subject(s)
Electric Power Supplies , Electrochemistry/instrumentation , Electrodes , Nanotechnology/instrumentation , Sodium Chloride/chemistry , Water/chemistry , Energy Transfer , Equipment Design , Equipment Failure AnalysisABSTRACT
Recently there is strong interest in lightweight, flexible, and wearable electronics to meet the technological demands of modern society. Integrated energy storage devices of this type are a key area that is still significantly underdeveloped. Here, we describe wearable power devices using everyday textiles as the platform. With an extremely simple "dipping and drying" process using single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) ink, we produced highly conductive textiles with conductivity of 125 S cm(-1) and sheet resistance less than 1 Omega/sq. Such conductive textiles show outstanding flexibility and stretchability and demonstrate strong adhesion between the SWNTs and the textiles of interest. Supercapacitors made from these conductive textiles show high areal capacitance, up to 0.48F/cm(2), and high specific energy. We demonstrate the loading of pseudocapacitor materials into these conductive textiles that leads to a 24-fold increase of the areal capacitance of the device. These highly conductive textiles can provide new design opportunities for wearable electronics and energy storage applications.
Subject(s)
Electronics/instrumentation , Nanotechnology/methods , Nanotubes, Carbon/chemistry , Textiles , Electrodes , Equipment Design , Humans , Materials Testing , Monitoring, Ambulatory/instrumentation , PorosityABSTRACT
Numerous studies have contributed to the development of natural and synthetic antimicrobial peptides as a prospective source of antibiotic agents. Based on the concept that cationic charge, bulk, and lipophilicity are major factors determining antibacterial activity in these peptides, we designed and screened several combinatorial libraries based on 1,3,5-triazine as a template. A set of compounds were identified to show potent antimicrobial activity together with low hemolytic activity.
Subject(s)
Anti-Bacterial Agents/chemical synthesis , Anti-Bacterial Agents/pharmacology , Triazines/chemical synthesis , Triazines/pharmacology , Acinetobacter baumannii/drug effects , Bacillus anthracis/drug effects , Escherichia coli/drug effects , Microbial Sensitivity Tests , Staphylococcus aureus/drug effectsABSTRACT
We report an application of the principle of multivalency to create new antimicrobial agents using the reactive polymaleic anhydride (PMA) chain to link antimicrobial tetrapeptides to afford multivalent variants containing approximately 40 monomer units. Relative to the free peptides, the product shows a 10-fold improvement in IC(50) without provoking more severe hemolysis of red blood cells. Thus, multivalency or polyvalency may offer a route to enhance the activity of antimicrobial peptides.
