Wearable systems that monitor muscle activity, store data and deliver feedback therapy are the next frontier in personalized medicine and healthcare. However, technical challenges, such as the fabrication of high-performance, energy-efficient sensors and memory modules that are in intimate mechanical contact with soft tissues, in conjunction with controlled delivery of therapeutic agents, limit the wide-scale adoption of such systems. Here, we describe materials, mechanics and designs for multifunctional, wearable-on-the-skin systems that address these challenges via monolithic integration of nanomembranes fabricated with a top-down approach, nanoparticles assembled by bottom-up methods, and stretchable electronics on a tissue-like polymeric substrate. Representative examples of such systems include physiological sensors, non-volatile memory and drug-release actuators. Quantitative analyses of the electronics, mechanics, heat-transfer and drug-diffusion characteristics validate the operation of individual components, thereby enabling system-level multifunctionalities.

practical candidate for the wide application of the LIBs with respect to the reversible capacity, rate capability, and capital cost. [4][5][6][7] In terms of nickel contents, the nickel-rich cathodes with nickel content above 80% have advantages in gravimetric capacity, allowing high gravimetric energy density, compared with the nickel content less than 80%. Currently, the nickel-rich cathodes with the amount of nickel less than 60% are fully commercialized. However, the nickel-rich cathodes with nickel content of ≥80% still have many difficulties in the commercialization with respect to powder properties and electrode fabrication process.The unstable powder properties originate from residual lithium compounds such as LiOH and Li 2 CO 3 that formed by the spontaneous reduction of sensitive trivalent nickel ions during the synthesis process and storage in air. [8][9][10][11] The Li 2 CO 3 significantly promotes the gas evolution and increase the moisture of the cathode powder, which strongly related to the safety issue. [12][13][14] Furthermore, the LiOH on the cathode increases the powder pH value, causing the gelation of the slurry during the electrode fabrication process. The nickel-rich cathode with nickel content of ≤60% have acceptable amount of residual lithium compounds for the practical use. By contrast, the cathode with amount of nickel of ≥80% should be treated by additional process to reduce the residual lithium compounds ( Table 1). Furthermore, other powder properties, such as powder pH and moisture, should be carefully controlled when nickel contents were exceeded of ≥80%. Thus, for the practical application of these cathode materials, most battery companies have adapted the washing process, in which the cathode power was stirred in purified water for 20-40 min. [15,16] The washing process could greatly reduce the residual lithium compounds and powder pH value. [15] However, the washing process not only increases process time and capital cost but also make the nickel-rich cathode more chemically sensitive than nonwashed cathodes. [16] More seriously, the water washing deteriorates the thermal stability of the nickel-rich cathodes, indicating that the washing process should be substituted by other methods for the battery safety.Another important factor for the commercialization of the nickel-rich cathodes is the electrode density directly related to the energy density. In general, the nickel-rich cathodesThe layered nickel-rich cathode materials are considered as promising cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to their high reversible capacity and low cost. However, several significant challenges, such as the unstable powder properties and limited electrode density, hindered the practical application of the nickel-rich cathode materials with the nickel content over 80%. Herein, important stability issues and in-depth understanding of the nickel-rich cathode materials on the basis of the industrial electrode fabrication condition for the commercialization of the nickel-rich cathode m...

We take an Effective Field Theory (EFT) approach to unifying existing proposals for the origin of cosmic acceleration and its connection to cosmological observations. Building on earlier work where EFT methods were used with observations to constrain the background evolution, we extend this program to the level of the EFT of the cosmological perturbations -following the example from the EFT of Inflation. Within this framework, we construct the general theory around an assumed background which will typically be chosen to mimic ΛCDM, and identify the parameters of interest for constraining dark energy and modified gravity models with observations. We discuss the similarities to the EFT of Inflation, but we also identify a number of subtleties including the relationship between the scalar perturbations and the Goldstone boson of the spontaneously broken time translations. We present formulae that relate the parameters of the fundamental Lagrangian to the speed of sound, anisotropic shear stress, effective Newtonian constant, and Caldwell's parameter, emphasizing the connection to observations. It is anticipated that this framework will be of use in constraining individual models, as well as for placing model-independent constraints on dark energy and modified gravity model building. *

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