Applied Technology

Cathode Materials for Li-O2 Batteries

High over-potential and short cycle life-times represent two major challenges to the development of Li-O2 batteries. To address these issues, Prof. Cui Guanglei and his colleagues at the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, CAS, have designed various nanostructured cathode materials based on transition metal nitrides. These cathode materials, such as MoN and Co3Mo3N, can lower the voltage gap between discharge and charge process, which improves the round-trip efficiency and cycle life of Li-O2 cell (J. Phys. Chem, 2013, 117, 858-865). Recently, Cui et al. reviewed the progress on transition metal nitrides for electrochemical energy storage and conversion (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ccr.2012.12.012). In this review, the promise and challenges for the application of transition metal nitrides in Li-O2 batteries have been highlighted.

KD-90 with Home-grown Processor Successfully Developed

After more than one year's development, a team, from the Institute of Computing Technology, led by Prof. Chen Guoliang, Member of CAS, successfully released KD-90, a domestic trillion operations per second (TeraFLOPS) high-performance computer integrating Loongson3B 8-core processor, on Dec. 26, 2012. KD-90 uses a single chassis, which integrates 10 Loongson 3B processors, and has a theoretical peak performance of 1 trillion operations per second. The system hardware consists of a front end server, five computing nodes, 2 Gigabit Ethernet switches and the monitoring unit. The front end server and computing nodes both employ China-designed Loongson 3B 8-core processors, and the main interconnect components employ China-developed multi-port Gigabit Ethernet switch chip, which is oriented for high-performance computing. The system mainly utilizes open-source software, which includes GotoBLAS 2 math library optimized for Loongson 3B processor architecture, and a China-developed graphical monitoring software KD-90 Monitor 1.0, which has high compatibility, good maintainability, easy upgradability, and easy usability. KD-90 is China's first TeraFLOPS high-performance computer integrating China-designed Loongson 3B 8-core processor and ultra-multi-port Gigabit Ethernet switching chip. It is successfully developed by the University of Science and Technology of China and Shenzhen University, and is an important breakthrough in the localization of high-performance computers in China.