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Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) encompass complex bioelectrocatalytic reactions that converting chemical energy of organic compounds to electrical energy. Improving the anode configuration is thought to be a critical step for enhancing MFCs performance. In present study, a hierarchically structured textile polypyrrole/poly(vinyl alcohol-co-polyethylene) nanofibers/poly(ethylene terephthalate) (referred to PPy/NFs/PET) is shown to be excellent anode for MFCs. This hierarchical PPy/NFs/PET anode affords an open porous and three-dimensional interconnecting conductive scaffold with larger surface roughness, facilitating microbial colonization and electron transfer from exoelectrogens to the anode. The mediator-less MFC equipped with PPy/NFs/PET anode achieves a remarkable maximum power density of 2420 mW m(-2) with Escherichia coli as the microbial catalyst at the current density of 5500 mA m(-2), which is approximately 17 times higher compared to a reference anode PPy/PET (144 mW m(-2)). Considering the low cost, low weight, facile fabrication, and good winding, this PPy/NFs/PET textile anode promises a great potential for high-performance and cost-effective MFCs in a large scale.

Far-infrared radiation (FIR) possesses various promising properties that are beneficial to an individuals’ health. Exploring the interaction between fiber shapes and FIR performance is thought to be a significant means to develop highly-efficient FIR textile products. In this study, a non-additive triangular polyamide (PA) fiber showed excellent FIR properties in both theoretical simulation and experimental verification aspects. The triangular PA fiber affords a higher probability to facilitate large optical path difference, improving both FIR absorption and emission. Textiles woven with the specific triangular PA fiber achieved a remarkable emissivity of 91.85% and temperature difference of 2.11 Celsius, which is obviously superior to the reference circular fiber (86.72%, 1.52 Celsius). Considering the low cost, environmental stability, facile fabrication, as well as being environmentally friendly, this non-additive triangular PA fiber has great potential for high-performance and cost-effective FIR textiles in the future.

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Abstract:We have investigated the scattering properties of an individual core-shell nanoparticle using the Mie theory, which can be tuned to support both electric and magnetic modes simultaneously. In general, the suppression of forward scattering can be realized by the second Kerker condition. Here, a novel mechanism has to be adopted to explain zero-forward scattering, which originates from the complex interactions between dipolar and quadrupolar modes. However, for lossy and lossless coreshell spherical nanoparticles, zero-forward scattering can never be achieved because the real parts of Mie expansion coefficients are always positive. By adding proper gain in dielectric shell, zero-forward scattering can be found at certain incident wavelengths, which means that all electric and magnetic responses in Mie scattering can be counteracted totally in the forward direction. In addition, if the absolute values of dipolar and quadrupolar terms are in the same order of magnitude, the local scattering minimum and maximum can be produced away from the forward and backward directions due to the interacting effect between the dipolar and quadrupolar terms. Furthermore, by adding suitable gain in shell, super-forward scattering can also be realized at certain incident wavelengths. We also demonstrated that anomalously weak scattering or superscattering could be obtained for the core-shell nanoparticles with suitable gain in shell. In particular, for such a choice of suitable gain in shell, we can obtain zero-forward scattering and anomalously weak scattering at the same wavelength as well as super-forward scattering at another wavelength. These features may provide new opportunities for cloaking, plasmonic lasers, optical antennas, and so on.