Nowadays, Li–S batteries are considered as one of the most promising alternatives to Li-ion technology in the near future, thanks to their high specific capacity and their significantly lower environmental impact and production costs. Consequently, many efforts have been directed to tackle with the inherent issues that affect Li–S batteries. One of the main problems is the so-called shuttle effect, which basically entails the unwanted migration of lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) from the cathode to the anode side, causing the degradation of the cell. Here, we report an effective strategy to restrain the shuttle effect and increase the kinetics at the cathode of the lithium–sulfur (Li–S) battery. A functional layer including high entropy oxides (HEO) coated onto the sulfur cathode allows to exploit the HEOs capability as promoter catalysts for the conversion of LiPSs. Pure HEO powders are synthesized by fast, highly efficient microwave irradiation, followed by heat treatment at 930 °C. The formation of highly crystalline HEO is confirmed by X-ray diffraction analysis. The LiPSs adsorption capability of HEO is evaluated by UV–vis and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses. The effect of the HEO-coated sulfur cathode on the electrochemical performance of the Li–S battery is studied by cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic charge/discharge. The cell with double-coated cathode delivers an initial discharge capacity of 1173 mAh/g at C/10 with 45% capacity retention over 500 cycles at C/5, approaching ~ 99% coulombic efficiency. Graphical abstract

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Double patterning is the best technique which allows 193nm immersion lithography to anticipate the 32 nm node, before EUV lithography. The final device pattern is formed by two independent patterning steps where the dense pitch is doubled. This allows printing each patterning step with higher k1 imaging factor.In this paper we present the overlay and CD budget applied to a double patterning (DP) technique for the definition of a 32nm technology node device, using an immersion scanner tool. A balance among different factors which affects the final CD of the device is necessary to optimize the imaging and the alignment performances of the exposure tool. A preliminary activity is also necessary to choose the most suitable mask splitting strategy. Adopting a single mask, which is exposed twice with the appropriate shift -the final pitch -, makes the overlay between the two exposures less critical than splitting the complementary layouts on two different masks. Finally, the CD uniformity of the pooled distributions from the two exposures is evaluated in order to define the requested tool performances in terms of overlay, CD control and metrology.