Xuzhou University of Technology

Abstract The ever‐growing demands for electrical energy storage have stimulated the pursuit of alternative advanced batteries. Zn‐ion batteries (ZIBs) are receiving increased attentions due to the low cost, high safety, and high eco‐efficiency. However, it is still a big challenge to develop suitable cathode materials for intercalation of Zn ions. This review provides a timely access for researchers to the recent activities regarding ZIBs. First, cathode materials including various manganese oxides, vanadium compounds, and Prussian blue analogs are summarized with details in crystal structures and Zn ion storage mechanisms. Then, the electrolytes and their influences on the electrochemical processes are discussed. Finally, opinions on the current challenge of ZIBs and perspective to future research directions are provided.

Abstract Zinc‐ion batteries are under current research focus because of their uniqueness in low cost and high safety. However, it is still desirable to improve the rate performance by improving the Zn 2+ (de)intercalation kinetics and long‐cycle stability by eliminating the dendrite formation problem. Herein, the first paradigm of a high‐rate and ultrastable flexible quasi‐solid‐state zinc‐ion battery is constructed from a novel 2D ultrathin layered zinc orthovanadate array cathode, a Zn array anode supported by a conductive porous graphene foam, and a gel electrolyte. The nanoarray structure for both electrodes assures the high rate capability and alleviates the dendrite growth. The flexible Zn‐ion battery has a depth of discharge of ≈100% for the cathode and 66% for the anode, and delivers an impressive high‐rate of 50 C (discharge in 60 s), long‐term durability of 2000 cycles at 20 C, and unprecedented energy density ≈115 Wh kg −1 , together with a peak power density ≈5.1 kW kg −1 (calculation includes masses of cathode, anode, and current collectors). First principles calculations and quantitative kinetics analysis show that the high‐rate and stable properties are correlated with the 2D fast ion‐migration pathways and the introduced intercalation pseudocapacitance.

Abstract Amid rising environmental concerns, Industry 4.0 and blockchain technology (BCT) are transforming circular economy (CE) practices and prevailing business models. Recognize the same; this study examines the role of blockchain technology in circular CE practices and their impact on eco‐environmental performance, which influences organizational performance. The study collects data from 404 enterprises located in Chinese and Pakistani territories, involved in cross‐border supply chain operations. Both countries' sample has great relevance due to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which possesses several positive fallouts in terms of technology spillovers across firms. Using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS‐SEM) modeling framework, this study provides three key findings. First, BCT significantly improves the circular economy practices (circular procurement, circular design, recycling, and remanufacturing). Second, CE practices help improve firms' environmental performance and stimulate their financial performance. Third, higher eco‐environmental performance significantly boosts organizational performance. This study sets out the foundations for participating countries/firms that simultaneously achieve financial and sustainable goals by integrating blockchain technology in circular economy practices.

Abstract The objective of this research is to examine the role of economic growth, technology innovation, and renewable energy in reducing transport sector CO 2 emission in China by using the annual data of 1990–2018. An application of the QARDL approach discloses that economic growth, technology innovation, and renewable energy significantly influence CO 2 emission in the transportation sector in China. Both renewable energy consumption and innovation show a negative impact on emissions of CO 2 related to transport. It depicts that due to the increase in renewable energy and innovation, the CO 2 emission in the transport sector is likely to decrease; however, an increase in the GDP of a country will upsurge the emission of CO 2 in the transportation sector. However, China should make new policies to introduce innovation in the transportation sector to minimize the emission of CO 2 .

Abstract Policymakers face a daunting task when it comes to achieving sustainable environmental development and avoiding additional environmental degradation. This study examines the significance of green technology innovation and green financing in creating a more sustainable environment. The impact of green technology innovation and green investment on carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions has yet to be empirically and theoretically examined in the literature, especially in conjunction with a moderating component, particularly social globalisation. Accordingly, this research examines the role of green technological innovation and green financing in reducing CO 2 emissions in the G7 countries. Our study uses empirical research data from a panel of the G7 countries covering the period 1995 to 2019. We employ advanced panel approaches to address panel data analysis concerns, such as cross‐sectional dependence, structural break, and slope heterogeneity (the Banerjee and Carrion‐i‐Silvestre unit root and cointegration test and cross‐sectional augmented ARDL). This study shows that green technology innovation (GINV) as well as green financing (GFIN) have a negative but significant impact on CO 2 emissions. Whilst economic growth has shown a positive and significant impact on CO 2 emissions in the G7 countries, social globalisation positively moderates the relationship between CO 2 emissions and GDP, but negatively and significantly causes GFIN and GINV with CO 2 emissions amongst the G7 countries. According to our study, countries would be able to meet the United Nations' SDG‐7 and SDG‐13 targets if they implemented green financing and green technology policies.

Electrochemical water splitting is promising for producing high-density and green hydrogen, however, the sluggish H₂O dissociation process, due to the low H₂O adsorption on the catalyst surface, greatly hinders industrial electrochemical water splitting on a large scale.

This paper aims to examine the role of blockchain technology for the circular economy to enhance organisational performance in the context of China–Pakistan-Economic-Corridor (CPEC). A close-ended questionnaire-based survey of manufacturing firms was administered to collect cross-sectional data from 290 respondents, which has been analysed through structural equation modelling. The circular economy approach in supply chain management offers environmental as well as economic benefits to the organisations. With the beginning of the Industry 4.0 era, there is an emphasis on technology in every field. A relatively recent phenomenon of blockchain technology promises lots of potential improvement in business operations. According to our results, with features such as visibility, transparency, relationship management, and smart contracting, blockchain technology was found to play a positive role in the circular economy. Furthermore, green practices were found to have a positive nexus with environmental and economic pathways to the firms' performance, whereas environmental performance was also found to have a positive nexus with the economic health of the firm. Last but not the least, both environmental and economic performances were found to be the cause of a boost in organisational performance.

The first catalytic asymmetric inverse-electron-demand (IED) oxa-Diels-Alder reaction of ortho-quinone methides, generated in situ from ortho-hydroxybenzyl alcohols, has been established. By selecting 3-methyl-2-vinylindoles as a class of competent dienophiles, this approach provides an efficient strategy to construct an enantioenriched chroman framework with three adjacent stereogenic centers in high yields and excellent stereoselectivities (up to 99 % yield, >95:5 d.r., 99.5:0.5 e.r.). The utilization of ortho-hydroxybenzyl alcohols as precursors of dienes and 3-methyl-2-vinylindoles as dienophiles, as well as the hydrogen-bonding activation mode of the substrates met the challenges of a catalytic asymmetric IED oxa-Diels-Alder reaction.

Currently, medical institutes generally use EMR to record patient's condition, including diagnostic information, procedures performed, and treatment results. EMR has been recognized as a valuable resource for large-scale analysis. However, EMR has the characteristics of diversity, incompleteness, redundancy, and privacy, which make it difficult to carry out data mining and analysis directly. Therefore, it is necessary to preprocess the source data in order to improve data quality and improve the data mining results. Different types of data require different processing technologies. Most structured data commonly needs classic preprocessing technologies, including data cleansing, data integration, data transformation, and data reduction. For semistructured or unstructured data, such as medical text, containing more health information, it requires more complex and challenging processing methods. The task of information extraction for medical texts mainly includes NER (named-entity recognition) and RE (relation extraction). This paper focuses on the process of EMR processing and emphatically analyzes the key techniques. In addition, we make an in-depth study on the applications developed based on text mining together with the open challenges and research issues for future work.

) reduced R-CDs with orange emission suggested that surface states on the R-CD surfaces and nitrogen-derived structures in the R-CD cores synergistically caused their intense red luminescence. The low-cost and eco-friendly synthesis method and favorable optical properties of R-CDs make these carbon dots promising for further applications, such as bioimaging and light-emitting diodes.

The research works of graphene-reinforced metal matrix composites will be summarised in this paper. Comparatively, much less research works have been undertaken in this field. Graphene has been thought to be an ideal reinforcement material for composites due to its unique two-dimensional structure and outstanding physical and mechanical properties. It is expected to yield structural materials with high specific strength or functional materials with exciting thermal and electrical characteristics. This paper will introduce all kinds of graphene-reinforced metal matrix composites that have been studied. The microstructure and mechanical properties, processing techniques, graphene dispersion, strengthening mechanisms, interfacial reactions between graphene and the metal matrix and future research works in this field will be discussed.

In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of recent progress in this rapidly growing field by summarizing the 1,6-conjugate addition and annulation reactions of <italic>p</italic>-QMs with consideration of their mechanisms and applications.

With the rapid development of wireless communication technology, various indoor location‐based services (ILBSs) have gradually penetrated into daily life. Although many other methods have been proposed to be applied to ILBS in the past decade, WiFi‐based positioning techniques with a wide range of infrastructure have attracted attention in the field of wireless transmission. In this survey, the authors divide WiFi‐based indoor positioning techniques into the active positioning technique and the passive positioning technique based on whether the target carries certain devices. After reviewing a large number of excellent papers in the related field, the authors make a detailed summary of these two types of positioning techniques. In addition, they also analyse the challenges and future development trends in the current technological environment.

The proliferation of Internet-of-Things has promoted a wide variety of emerging applications that require compact, lightweight, and low-cost optical spectrometers. While substantial progresses have been made in the miniaturization of spectrometers, most of them are with a major focus on the technical side but tend to feature a lower technology readiness level for manufacturability. More importantly, in spite of the advancement in miniaturized spectrometers, their performance and the metrics of real-life applications have seldomly been connected but are highly important. This review paper shows the market trend for chip-scale spectrometers and analyzes the key metrics that are required to adopt miniaturized spectrometers in real-life applications. Recent progress addressing the challenges of miniaturization of spectrometers is summarized, paying a special attention to the CMOS-compatible fabrication platform that shows a clear pathway to massive production. Insights for ways forward are also presented.

Abstract Despite the vast literature on green purchasing practices and sustainability, the role of an organization's green capabilities in defining green purchasing practices for triple‐bottom‐line performance has received limited attention. This research intends to empirically evaluate the impact of green capabilities on green purchasing practices to boost the triple‐bottom‐line performance of manufacturing organizations. We analyzed 386 manufacturing organizations' responses using the covariance‐based structural equation modeling approach. The results indicate a positive correlation between green capabilities and purchasing habits; however, green innovation capabilities did not establish a statistically meaningful correlation. Additionally, green buying strategies have significant favorable associations with the triple bottom line of performance. The results contributed to the advancement of the resource‐based‐view theory by empirically examining the impact of green capabilities and green purchasing practices in influencing the triple‐bottom‐line performance of manufacturing firms.

Abstract The fourth industrial revolution (IR4.0) toward automation and digitalization is the new trend among automobile production systems. Indubitably, the automobile industry has been scurrying in this revolution due to investment and governmental support availability. The current study examines the role of industry 4.0 on circular economy practices and supply chain capability to improve firm performance. Cross‐sectional data were collected from 286 respondents through a closed‐ended questionnaire. The adoption of circular economy practices improves the economic and operational performance of the firm. Also, industry 4.0 has the potential to make significant improvements in business operations. The empirical results confirm that industry 4.0 plays a positive role in implementation of circular economy practices and supply chain capability. Furthermore, circular economy practices provide evidence to have positive nexus with operational and economic performance. On the other hand, supply chain capability has a positive relationship with operational performance and has an insignificant association with economic performance, whereas operational performance improves economic health. Thus, the current research work provides the guidelines for the participating enterprises that can achieve sustainable goals by assimilating industry 4.0 in manufacturing systems.

The intercalation of potassium ions into graphitic carbon materials has been demonstrated to be feasible while the electrochemical performance of the potassium-ion battery (PIB) is still unsatisfactory.

This paper addresses the numerical solution of nonlinear time-fractional Fisher equations via local meshless method combined with explicit difference scheme. This procedure uses radial basis functions to compute space derivatives while Caputo derivative scheme utilizes for time-fractional integration to semi-discretize the model equations. To assess the accuracy, maximum error norm is used. In order to validate the proposed method, some non-rectangular domains are also considered.

Abstract Suffering from the laborious synthesis and undesirable tumor microenvironment response, the exploitation of novel NIR‐II absorbing organic photothermal agents is of importance to promote phototherapeutic efficacy. Herein, two kinds of charge‐transfer complex nanoparticles (TMB‐F4TCNQ and TMB‐TCNQ) are prepared by supramolecular assembly. Because of the larger energy gap between donor and acceptor, TMB‐F4TCNQ presents higher charge‐transfer degree (72 %) than that of TMB‐TCNQ (48 %) in nanoaggregates. Therefore, TMB‐F4TCNQ exhibits stronger NIR‐II absorption ability with a mass extinction coefficient of 15.4 Lg −1 cm −1 at 1300 nm and excellent photothermal effect. Impressively, the specific cysteine response can make the TMB‐F4TCNQ effectively inhibit the intracellular biosynthesis of GSH, leading to redox dsyhomeostasis and ROS‐mediated ferroptosis. TMB‐F4TCNQ can serve as a contrast agent for NIR‐II photoacoustic imaging to guide precise and efficient photothermal therapy in vivo.

Abstract Two‐dimensional (2D) semiconductors have recently become attractive candidate substrates for surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy, exhibiting good semiconductor‐based SERS sensing for a wider variety of application scenarios. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Herein, we propose that surface defects play a vital role in the magnification of the SERS performances of 2D semiconductors. As a prototype material, ultrathin WO 3 nanosheets is used to demonstrate that surface defect sites and the resulting increased charge‐carrier density can induce strong charge‐transfer interactions at the substrate‐molecule interface, thereby improving the sensitivity of the SERS substrate by 100 times with high reproducibility. Further work with other metal oxides suggests the reduced dimension of 2D materials can be advantageous in promoting SERS sensing for multiple probe molecules.