Abstract: As a size- and shape-selective catalyst, zeolites are widely used in petroleum and fine-chemicals processing. However, their small micropores severely hinder molecular diffusion and are sensitive to coke formation. Hierarchically porous zeolite single crystals with fully interconnected, ordered, and tunable multimodal porosity at macro-, meso-, and microlength scale, like in leaves, offer the ideal solution. However, their synthesis remains highly challenging. Here, we report a versatile confined zeolite crystallization process to achieve these superior properties. Such zeolite single crystals lead to significantly improved mass transport properties by shortening the diffusion length while maintaining shape-selective properties, endowing them with a high efficiency of zeolite crystals, enhanced catalytic activities and lifetime, highly reduced coke formation, and reduced deactivation rate in bulky-molecule reactions and methanol-to-olefins process. Their industrial utilization can lead to the design of innovative and intensified reactors and processes with highly enhanced efficiency and minimum energy consumption.

Abstract: Improving the efficiency and longevity of energy storage systems based on Li- and Na-ion rechargeable batteries presents a major challenge. The main problems are essentially capacity loss and limited cyclability. These effects are due to a hierarchy of factors spanning various length and time scales, interconnected in a complex manner. As a consequence, and in spite of several decades of research, a proper understanding of the ageing process has remained somewhat elusive. In recent years, however, combinations of advanced spectroscopy techniques and first-principles simulations have been applied with success to tackle this problem. In this Special Issue, we are pleased to present a selection of articles that, by precisely applying these methods, unravel key aspects of the reduction-oxidation reaction and intercalation processes. Furthermore, the approaches presented provide improvements to standard diagnostic and characterisation techniques, enabling the detection of possible Li-ion flow bottlenecks causing the degradation of capacity and cyclability.

Abstract: Superfluidity has been predicted and now observed in a number of different electron-hole double-layer semiconductor heterostructures. In some of the heterostructures, such as GaAs and Ge-Si electron-hole double quantum wells, there is a strong mismatch between the electron and hole effective masses. We systematically investigate the sensitivity to unequal masses of the superfluid properties and the self-consistent screening of the electron-hole pairing interaction. We find that the superfluid properties are insensitive to mass imbalance in the low density BEC regime of strongly-coupled boson-like electron-hole pairs. At higher densities, in the BEC-BCS crossover regime of fermionic pairs, we find that mass imbalance between electrons and holes weakens the superfluidity and expands the density range for the BEC-BCS crossover regime. This permits screening to kill the superfluid at a lower density than for equal masses.

Abstract: High-performance rechargeable batteries are becoming very important for high-end technologies with their ever increasing application areas. Hence, improving the performance of such batteries has become the main bottleneck to transferring high-end technologies to end users. In this study, we propose an argon intercalation strategy to enhance battery performance via engineering the interlayer spacing of honeycomb structures such as graphite, a common electrode material in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Herein, we systematically investigated the LIB performance of graphite and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) when argon atoms were sent into between their layers by using first-principles density-functional-theory calculations. Our results showed enhanced lithium binding for graphite and h-BN structures when argon atoms were intercalated. The increased interlayer space doubles the gravimetric lithium capacity for graphite, while the volumetric capacity also increased by around 20% even though the volume was also increased. The ab initio molecular dynamics simulations indicate the thermal stability of such graphite structures against any structural transformation and Li release. The nudged-elastic-band calculations showed that the migration energy barriers were drastically lowered, which promises fast charging capability for batteries containing graphite electrodes. Although a similar level of battery promise was not achieved for h-BN material, its enhanced battery capabilities by argon intercalation also support that the argon intercalation strategy can be a viable route to enhance such honeycomb battery electrodes.

Abstract: We determine the energy of an interface between a multiband superconducting and a normal half-space, in presence of an applied magnetic field, based on a multiband Ginzburg-Landau (GL) approach. We obtain that the multiband surface energy is fully determined by the critical temperature, electronic densities of states, and superconducting gap functions associated with the different band condensates. This furthermore yields an expression for the thermodynamic critical magnetic field, in presence of an arbitrary number of contributing bands. Subsequently, we investigate the sign of the surface energy as a function of material parameters, through numerical solution of the GL equations. Here, we consider two distinct cases: (i) standard multiband superconductors with attractive interactions, and (ii) a three-band superconductor with a chiral ground state with phase frustration, arising from repulsive interband interactions. Furthermore, we apply this approach to several prime examples of multiband superconductors, such as metallic hydrogen and MgB2, based on microscopic parameters obtained from first-principles calculations.