There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Alloying has long been used to confer desirable properties to materials. Typically, it involves the addition of relatively small amounts of secondary elements to a primary element. For the past decade and a half, however, a new alloying strategy that involves the combination of multiple principal elements in high concentrations to create new materials called high-entropy alloys has been in vogue. The multi-dimensional compositional space that can be tackled with this approach is practically limitless, and only tiny regions have been investigated so far. Nevertheless, a few high-entropy alloys have already been shown to possess exceptional properties, exceeding those of conventional alloys, and other outstanding high-entropy alloys are likely to be discovered in the future. Here, we review recent progress in understanding the salient features of high-entropy alloys. Model alloys whose behaviour has been carefully investigated are highlighted and their fundamental properties and underlying elementary mechanisms discussed. We also address the vast compositional space that remains to be explored and outline fruitful ways to identify regions within this space where high-entropy alloys with potentially interesting properties may be lurking. High-entropy alloys have greatly expanded the compositional space for alloy design. In this Review, the authors discuss model high-entropy alloys with interesting properties, the physical mechanisms responsible for their behaviour and fruitful ways to probe and discover new materials in the vast compositional space that remains to be explored.

High-entropy alloys

Owing to high specific energy, low cost, and environmental friendliness, lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries hold great promise to meet the increasing demand for advanced energy storage beyond portable electronics, and to mitigate environmental problems. However, the application of Li–S batteries is challenged by several obstacles, including their short life and low sulfur utilization, which become more serious when sulfur loading is increased to the practically accepted level above 3–5 mg cm−2. More and more efforts have been made recently to overcome the barriers toward commercially viable Li–S batteries with a high sulfur loading. This review highlights the recent progress in high-sulfur-loading Li–S batteries enabled by hierarchical design principles at multiscale. Particularly, basic insights into the interfacial reactions, strategies for mesoscale assembly, unique architectures, and configurational innovation in the cathode, anode, and separator are under specific concerns. Hierarchy in the multiscale design is proposed to guide the future development of high-sulfur-loading Li–S batteries.

Review on High-Loading and High-Energy Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries have attracted tremendous interest because of their high theoretical energy density and cost effectiveness. The target of Li-S battery research is to produce batteries with a high useful energy density that at least outperforms state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries. However, due to an intrinsic gap between fundamental research and practical applications, the outstanding electrochemical results obtained in most Li-S battery studies indeed correspond to low useful energy densities and are not really suitable for practical requirements. The Li-S battery is a complex device and its useful energy density is determined by a number of design parameters, most of which are often ignored, leading to the failure to meet commercial requirements. The purpose of this review is to discuss how to pave the way for reliable Li-S batteries. First, the current research status of Li-S batteries is briefly reviewed based on statistical information obtained from literature. This includes an analysis of how the various parameters influence the useful energy density and a summary of existing problems in the current Li-S battery research. Possible solutions and some concerns regarding the construction of reliable Li-S batteries are comprehensively discussed. Finally, insights are offered on the future directions and prospects in Li-S battery field.

More Reliable Lithium-Sulfur Batteries: Status, Solutions and Prospects.

Disordered multicomponent systems, occupying the mostly uncharted centres of phase diagrams, were proposed in 2004 as innovative materials with promising applications. The idea was to maximize the configurational entropy to stabilize (near) equimolar mixtures and achieve more robust systems, which became known as high-entropy materials. Initial research focused mainly on metal alloys and nitride films. In 2015, entropy stabilization was demonstrated in a mixture of oxides. Other high-entropy disordered ceramics rapidly followed, stimulating the addition of more components to obtain materials expressing a blend of properties, often highly enhanced. The systems were soon proven to be useful in wide-ranging technologies, including thermal barrier coatings, thermoelectrics, catalysts, batteries and wear-resistant and corrosion-resistant coatings. In this Review, we discuss the current state of the disordered ceramics field by examining the applications and the high-entropy features fuelling them, covering both theoretical predictions and experimental results. The influence of entropy is unavoidable and can no longer be ignored. In the space of ceramics, it leads to new materials that, both as bulk and thin films, will play important roles in technology in the decades to come. The valuable combination of disorder and non-metallic bonding gives rise to high-entropy ceramics. This Review explores the structures and chemistries of these versatile materials, and their applications in catalysis, water splitting, energy storage, thermoelectricity and thermal, environmental and wear protection.

High-entropy ceramics

Synthesis of Single-Phase High-Entropy Carbide Powders

The lithium sulfur (Li–S) battery has attracted much attention due to its high energy density and the low cost of sulfur, but practical applications are still impeded by its short cycle life and low practical energy density due to polysulfide shuttle and low sulfur-loading. Here, we report a novel electrode design to achieve high energy density and long-cycling Li–S batteries, which rely on a cost-effective and well-performed carbon nanofiber-porous carbon paper (CNFPC) electrode. In this design, the CNF substrate with a high electrical conductivity (420 S cm–1) and an extremely low density (∼0.2 g cm–3) is used as a current collector and as a host for high sulfur-loading (∼6.7 mg cm–2), while the carbon black nanoparticles which are well-distributed within the CNF substrate function as electrical bridges for nonconductive sulfur and highly conductive CNF framework. In addition, the densely packed (∼6.6 g cm–3) porous carbon layer (∼5 μm) on the top of CNF acts as a protective layer to inhibit polysulfide...

High-Performance Lithium–Sulfur Batteries with a Cost-Effective Carbon Paper Electrode and High Sulfur-Loading

Densification, microstructure, and mechanical properties of ZrC–SiC ceramics

Ruddlesden-Popper (R-P) phase materials have been investigated widely as cathode candidates for IT-SOFCs. However, widespread application of R-P phase cathodes demands further improvement in electrode activity whose progress is hindered by the limited information in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). The ORR mechanism for the R-P phase is therefore investigated in this paper using (LaSr)2NiO(4±δ) as an example. Accurate characterization of the surface oxygen exchange process is realized by developing thin and dense polycrystalline LSNO layers via a versatile spray-modified pressing method we invented before to avoid perceptible bulk diffusion contribution, surface enrichment and geometry complication. The governing factors of the ORR are identified as oxygen adsorption and incorporation based on the findings in reaction orders from electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), stoichiometry-related chemical capacitance and intrinsic anisotropic properties. The incorporation rate is proven to drastically depend on the amount of interstitial oxygen (O(i)"). Since the unfilled interstitial sites(V(i)(×)) in the R-P phase serve to accommodate the adsorbed oxygen during incorporation, like vacancies in the perovskite structure (V(O)(••)), more O(i)" would seem to suppress the kinetics of this process. In regards to this, for the first time, a physical model is proposed to reconcile the discrepancy between the experimental results and intuitive reasoning. Based on supporting evidence, this model illustrates a possibility of how O(i)" works to regulate the exchange rate, and how the contradiction between V(O)(••) and O(i)" is harmonized so that the latter in the R-P structure also positively promotes the incorporation rate in the ORR.

Yue Zhou

Papers

Synthesis of Single-Phase High-Entropy Carbide Powders

High-Performance Lithium–Sulfur Batteries with a Cost-Effective Carbon Paper Electrode and High Sulfur-Loading

Densification, microstructure, and mechanical properties of ZrC–SiC ceramics

New mechanistic insight into the oxygen reduction reaction on Ruddlesden–Popper cathodes for intermediate-temperature solid oxide fuel cells

From thermal conductive to thermal insulating: Effect of carbon vacancy content on lattice thermal conductivity of ZrCx