A research team explores how tea plants absorb, transport, and tolerate fluoride, shedding light on the mechanisms behind fluoride accumulation.

Researchers at China University of Petroleum (East China) have explored the role of the spin state in catalyst supports using atomically dispersed transition metal catalysts. They designed a single-atom Ru-doped Co₃O₄ catalyst, which is rich in high-spin Co³⁺. The unpaired spin electrons in the d-orbital of Co³⁺ interact strongly with OH* species, achieving industrial-level bifunctional water splitting performance.

Thermoelectric materials are vital for energy conversion technologies, but their performance is often mispredicted due to the oversimplified parabolic band model. Researchers introduced a non-parabolicity factor to quantify deviations in band structure, significantly improving predictions for key transport properties like the Seebeck coefficient and Lorenz number. This refined framework corrects classical inaccuracies, offering new insights into thermoelectric mechanisms and paving the way for the design of high-performance materials essential to energy sustainability.