Original Article in 2014

A micro-sized (75 ml) MFC with graphene anode and air cathode fueled by human saliva producing higher current densities (1190 A m⁻³) than any previous air-cathode micro-sized MFCs and generated 40 times more power than that possible with a carbon cloth anode.

The p-type bismuth telluride-based polycrystalline materials suiting for low-temperature power generations (near 380 K) have been obtained through Sb-alloying and HD, which suppresses the detrimental effect of intrinsic conduction at elevated temperature via increasing the hole concentration and band gap. The hot-deformed Bi_0.3Sb_1.7Te₃ alloy, not usual composition Bi_0.5Sb_1.5Te₃, shows a maximum ZT of 1.3 at 380 K, indicating a bright application potential in low-temperature power generations.

A stretchable wrinkled organic memory has been successfully demonstrated. The stretchable organic memory with a graphene bottom electrode possesses rippled structures. The stretchable organic memory exhibits excellent electrical switching behaviors and memory effects even under repetitive stretching. It is believed that this stretchable organic memory may be beneficial for digital information storage in future stretchable electronic systems.

Flexible and transparent electronics, such as interactive digital products and human-friendly health-care monitors, are expected to fundamentally change the way of our daily life. Inorganic semiconductors, as a class of important functional materials, are key components of electronic devices. However, their applications in soft electronics are severely confined due to the brittleness. We demonstrate that by structural design of a nanobelt network, extraordinary mechanical flexibility and high optical transparency can be achieved in conventionally fragile ceramics. High-performance photodetectors based on this inorganic nanobelt network are demonstrated on multiple flexible substrates, which strongly indicates its great potential in soft electronics.

Nonpolar resistive switching reproducibly occurs in arrays of nanoscale cells composed of multilayered NiO/Pt nanowires with significantly reduced switching voltages, narrow switching voltage distributions and a robust multilevel memory effect. A high resistance ratio (∼10⁵) between the high- and low-resistance states in nanoscale cells enables stable multilevels to be induced easily by a series of pulsed voltages. The existence of intermediate resistance states in NiO/Pt nanowire arrays can be well explained by the binary-resistor model combined with energy perturbations induced by the pulse voltage. Our bottom-up approach and proposed mechanism explain the controllable multilevel memory effect.

Scanning a La-doped BiFeO₃ epitaxial thin film with a biased AFM tip, we produce straight stripe one-dimensional nanostructures in which two competing polymorphic ferroelectric phases appear alternately at the interval of ∼100 nm showing the enhancement of electronic conduction at the phase boundaries. We can create, switch and erase the eight-variant stripe nanostructures in a reversible and deterministic way by controlling the tip scanning direction and tip biased voltage. The findings provide a new pathway into one-dimensional nanostructures and versatile patterns of ferroelectric domains and interfaces.