We report an advanced lithium-ion battery based on a graphene ink anode and a lithium iron phosphate cathode. By carefully balancing the cell composition and suppressing the initial irreversible capacity of the anode in the round of few cycles, we demonstrate an optimal battery performance in terms of specific capacity, that is, 165 mAhg(-1), of an estimated energy density of about 190 Wh kg(-1) and a stable operation for over 80 charge-discharge cycles. The components of the battery are low cost and potentially scalable. To the best of our knowledge, complete, graphene-based, lithium ion batteries having performances comparable with those offered by the present technology are rarely reported; hence, we believe that the results disclosed in this work may open up new opportunities for exploiting graphene in the lithium-ion battery science and development.

The PTOLEMY project aims to develop a scalable design for a Cosmic Neutrino Background (CNB) detector, the first of its kind and the only one conceived that can look directly at the image of the Universe encoded in neutrino background produced in the first second after the Big Bang. The scope of the work for the next three years is to complete the conceptual design of this detector and to validate with direct measurements that the nonneutrino backgrounds are below the expected cosmological signal. In this paper we discuss in details the theoretical aspects of the experiment and its physics goals. In particular, we mainly address three issues. First we discuss the sensitivity of PTOLEMY to the standard neutrino mass scale. We then study the perspectives of the experiment to detect the CNB via neutrino capture on tritium as a function of the neutrino mass scale and the energy resolution of the apparatus. Finally, we consider an extra sterile neutrino with mass in the eV range, coupled to the active states via oscillations, which has been advocated in view of neutrino oscillation anomalies. This extra state would contribute to the tritium decay spectrum, and its properties, mass and mixing angle, could be studied by analyzing the features in the beta decay electron spectrum.

Iron and cobalt phthalocyanines assemble on the Au(110) surface lying parallel to the surface, as deduced by near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS) taken with linearly polarized radiation at the C and N K edges. The molecular chains, firmly anchored to the underlying metal surface, arrange into long-range ordered rows with a (5 × 3) symmetry along the [001] azimuthal direction at completion of the first single layer. The interaction process is mainly determined by the d orbitals associated with the central Fe and Co atoms, as observed by valence band photoemission and NEXAFS at the Fe and Co L 2,3 edges. The spin and orbital configuration of the FePc and CoPc molecules is strongly influenced by the interface with a charge transfer from the underlying metal to the out-of-plane empty states located at the Fe and Co centers of the molecules. This interaction process induces electronic states located at the interface, localized on the central metal atoms and close to the Fermi level (0.2 eV binding energy for FePc and 0.7 eV for CoPc) without energy dispersion, as deduced by angular-resolved photoemission. On the contrary, a delocalized state has been observed with dispersion along the molecular chains, mainly due to the overlapping of the π charge of the macrocycles ligands mediated by the Au substrate.

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