Electron-assisted etching of poly-Si and SiO2 is performed via a grid system in inductively coupled CF(4 )plasma. The feasibility of electron-assisted etching is discussed with a focus on the low-surface damage of the etching. The etch rate increases with electron beam energy, which indicates that the electrons assist the surface etching process. To verify this, etching of poly-Si and SiO2 is performed in several plasma conditions, which leads to differences in etch rate that depend on the presence or absence of radicals and electron beams. Poly-Si and SiO2 are not etched without radicals of CF(4 )plasma, but they are etched when such radicals are present. When the electron beam and radicals exist simultaneously, the etch rate increases more dramatically than in the case of a CF4 plasma without an electron beam, demonstrating that the electron beam assists the etching process. Optical emission spectroscopy is employed to verify the F radical does not affect the etch rate increase. The surface roughness is measured after electron-assisted etching and compared with the surface roughness after ion-assisted etching.

Neural radiance fields (NeRF) has attracted considerable attention for their exceptional ability in synthesizing novel views with high fidelity. However, the presence of motion blur, resulting from slight camera movements during extended shutter exposures, poses a significant challenge, potentially compromising the quality of the reconstructed 3D scenes. While recent studies have addressed this issue, they do not consider the continuous dynamics of camera movements during image acquisition, leading to inaccurate scene reconstruction. Additionally, these methods are plagued by slow training and rendering speed. To effectively handle these issues, we propose sequential motion understanding radiance fields (SMURF), a novel approach that employs neural ordinary differential equation (Neural-ODE) to model continuous camera motion and leverages the explicit volumetric representation method for faster training and robustness to motion-blurred input images. The core idea of the SMURF is continuous motion blurring kernel (CMBK), a unique module designed to model a continuous camera movements for processing blurry inputs. Our model, rigorously evaluated against benchmark datasets, demonstrates state-of-the-art performance both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Zinc-air battery (ZAB) technology is considered one of the promising candidates to complement the existing lithium-ion batteries for future large-scale high-energy-storage demands. The scientific literature reveals many efforts for the ZAB chemistries, materials design, and limited accounts for cell design principles with apparently superior performances for liquid and solid-state electrolytes. However, along with the difficulty of forming robust solid-electrolyte interphases, the discrepancy in testing methods and assessment metrics severely challenges the realistic evaluation/comparison and commercialization of ZABs. Here, strategies to formulate reversible zinc anodes are proposed and specific cell-level energy metrics (100-500 Wh kg-1 ) and realistic long-cycling operations are realized. Stabilizing anode/electrolyte interfaces results in a cumulative capacity of 25 Ah cm-2 and Coulomb efficiency of >99.9% for 5000 plating/stripping cycles. Using 1-10 Ah scale (≈500 Wh kg-1 at cell level) solid-state zinc-air pouch cells, scale-up insights for Ah-level ZABs that can progress from lab-scale research to practical production are also offered.

The rational design of wide-temperature operating Zn-air batteries is crucial for their practical applications. However, the fundamental challenges remain; the limitation of the sluggish oxygen redox kinetics, insufficient active sites, and poor efficiency/cycle lifespan. Here we present heterointerface-promoted sulfur-deficient cobalt-tin-sulfur (CoS1-δ/SnS2-δ) trifunctional electrocatalysts by a facile solvothermal solution-phase approach. The CoS1-δ/SnS2-δ displays superb trifunctional activities, precisely a record-level oxygen bifunctional activity of 0.57 V (E1/2 = 0.90 V and Ej=10 = 1.47 V) and a hydrogen evolution overpotential (41 mV), outperforming those of Pt/C and RuO2. Theoretical calculations reveal the modulation of the electronic structures and d-band centers that endorse fast electron/proton transport for the hetero-interface and avoid the strong adsorption of intermediate species. The alkaline Zn-air batteries with CoS1-δ/SnS2-δ manifest record-high power density of 249 mW cm-2 and long-cycle life for >1000 cycles under harsh operations of 20 mA cm-2, surpassing those of Pt/C + RuO2 and previous state-of-the-art catalysts. Furthermore, the solid-state flexible Zn-air battery also displays remarkable performance with an energy density of 1077 Wh kg-1, >690 cycles for 50 mA cm-2, and a wide operating temperature from +80 to -40 °C with 85% capacity retention, which provides insights for practical Zn-air batteries.

Shared autonomy imitation learning, in which robots share workspace with humans for learning, enables correct actions in unvisited states and the effective resolution of compounding errors through expert's corrections. However, it demands continuous human attention and supervision to lead the demonstrations, without considering the risks associated with human judgment errors and delayed interventions. This can potentially lead to high levels of fatigue for the demonstrator and the additional errors. In this work, we propose an uncertainty-aware shared autonomy system that enables the robot to infer conservative task skills considering environmental uncertainties and learning from expert demonstrations and corrections. To enhance generalization and scalability, we introduce a hierarchical structure-based skill uncertainty inference framework operating at more abstract levels. We apply this to robot motion to promote a more stable interaction. Although shared autonomy systems have demonstrated high-level results in recent research and play a critical role, specific system design details have remained elusive. This paper provides a detailed design proposal for a shared autonomy system considering various robot configurations. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate the system's capability to learn operational skills, even in dynamic environments with interference, through pouring and pick-and-place tasks. Our code will be released soon.

We propose a bottom-up approach for the instance segmentation of cables (commonly referred in the literature as deformable linear objects). While the state of the art instance segmentation techniques propose a bounding box and perform foreground segmentation within each proposed bounding box, we adopt a bottom-up approach as cables can span a considerable part of the image or even the entire image, and therefore, cannot be well localized in a bounding box. In this paper, we show that several operations in the top-down instance segmentation approaches are only applicable for certain classes (i.e., compact objects) such as cars but they are a poor approximation for objects with highly overlapping bounding boxes such as cables. In particular, the non-maximum suppression and RoIPool/RoIAlign operations limit the generalizability of proposal-based instance segmentation methods to such datasets. Furthermore, we introduce a synthetic data generation technique that can also be applied to other popular public datasets such as COCO, Pascal VOC, and Cityscapes.

Abstract Rational construction of flexible free-standing electrocatalysts featuring long-lasting durability, high efficiency, and wide temperature tolerance under harsh practical operations are fundamentally significant for commercial zinc–air batteries. Here, 3D flexible free-standing bifunctional membrane electrocatalysts composed of covalently cross-linked supramolecular polymer networks with nitrogen-deficient carbon nitride nanotubes are fabricated (referred to as PEMAC@NDCN) by a facile self-templated approach. PEMAC@NDCN demonstrates the lowest reversible oxygen bifunctional activity of 0.61 V with exceptional long-lasting durability, which outperforms those of commercial Pt/C and RuO2. Theoretical calculations and control experiments reveal the boosted electron transfer, electrolyte mass/ion transports, and abundant active surface site preferences. Moreover, the constructed alkaline Zn–air battery with PEMAC@NDCN air–cathode reveals superb power density, capacity, and discharge–charge cycling stability (over 2160 cycles) compared to the reference Pt/C + RuO2. Solid-state Zn–air batteries enable a high power density of 211 mW cm−2, energy density of 1056 Wh kg−1, stable charge–discharge cycling of 2580 cycles for 50 mA cm−2, and wide temperature tolerance from − 40 to 70 °C with retention of 86% capacity compared to room-temperature counterparts, illustrating prospects over harsh operations.

The development of acid-stable oxygen evolution reaction electrocatalysts is essential for high-performance water splitting. Here, we report an electrocatalyst with Ru-atom-array patches supported on α-MnO 2 (Ru/MnO 2 ) for the oxygen evolution reaction following a mechanism that involves only *O and *OH species as intermediates. This mechanism allows direct O–O radical coupling for O 2 evolution. Ru/MnO 2 shows high activity (161 mV at 10 mA cm −2 ) and outstanding stability with small degradation after 200 h operation, making it one of the best-performing acid-stable oxygen evolution reaction catalysts. Operando vibrational and mass spectroscopy measurements were performed to probe the reaction intermediates and gaseous products for validating the oxygen evolution reaction pathway. First-principles calculations confirmed the cooperative catalysis mechanism with a reduced energy barrier. Time-dependent elemental analysis demonstrated the occurrence of the in-situ dynamic cation exchange reaction during the oxygen evolution reaction, which is the key for triggering the reconstruction of Ru atoms into the ordered array with high durability.

Rechargeable aqueous zinc-air cells (ZACs) promise an extremely safe and high energy technology. However, they are still significantly limited by sluggish electrochemical kinetics and irreversibility originating from the parasitic reactions of the bifunctional catalysts and electrolytes. Here, we report the preferential in situ building of interfacial structures featuring the edge sites constituted by FeCo single/dual atoms with the integration of Co sites in the nitrogenized graphitic carbon frameworks (FeCo SAs@Co/N-GC) by electronic structure modulation approach. Compared to commercial Pt/C and RuO2, FeCo SAs@Co/N-GC reveals exceptional electrochemical performance, reversible redox kinetics, and durability toward oxygen reduction and evolution reactions under universal pH environments, i.e., alkaline, neutral, and acidic, due to synergistic effect at interfaces and preferred charge/mass transfer. The aqueous (alkaline, nonalkaline, and acidic electrolytes) ZACs constructed with a FeCo SAs@Co/N-GC cathode tolerate stable operations, have significant reversibility, and have the highest energy densities, outperforming those of noble metal counterparts and state-of-the-art ZACs in the ambient atmosphere. Additionally, flexible solid-state ZACs demonstrate excellent mechanical and electrochemical performances with a highest power density of 186 mW cm-2, specific capacity of 817 mAh gZn-1, energy density of 1017 Wh kgZn-1, and cycle life >680 cycles with extremely harsh operating conditions, which illustrates the great potential of triphasic catalyst for green energy storage technologies.

All-solid-state zinc–air pouch cells promise high energy-to-cost ratios with inherent safety; however, finding earth-abundant high power/energy cathodes and super-ionic electrolytes remains a fundamental challenge. Here we present realistic zinc–air pouch cells designed by the (101)-facet copper phosphosulfide [CPS(101)] as a cathode as well as anti-freezing chitosan-biocellulosics as super-ionic conductor electrolytes. The proposed CPS(101) exhibits trifunctional activity and stability (>30,000 cycles) towards reversible oxygen reactions and hydrogen evolution reactions, outperforming commercial Pt/C and RuO 2 . Furthermore, hydroxide super-ion conductors utilizing polymerized chitosan-biocellulosics reveal exceptional conductivity (86.7 mS cm −1 at 25 °C) with high mechanical/chemical robustness. High cell-level energy densities of 460 Wh kg cell –1 /1,389 Wh l −1 are normally measured in pouch cells (1 Ah) with a cycle lifespan of 6,000/1,100 cycles at 25 mA cm −2 for 20/70% depths of discharge, and the highest densities we could achieve were 523 Wh kg cell –1 /1,609 Wh l −1 . Flexible pouch cells operate well at rates of 5–200 mA cm −2 over a broad temperature range of −20 to 80 °C.

Heterojunction photocatalysts are very promising for solar hydrogen production due to their high efficiency in photo-driven charge generation and separation. A C3N4/ZnO heterostructure nanocomposite harvests a wide range of solar light from the UV and visible regions and retains a high redox potential due to its Z-scheme band structure. However, since both C3N4 and ZnO have sufficiently high conduction band energies to drive hydrogen photoreduction, a type II heterojunction is more beneficial for enhancing the hydrogen production efficiency in the current system. In this study, we first demonstrated the charge transfer mechanism switching from the Z-scheme to type II by simple boron (B) doping of C3N4/ZnO. The doping of C3N4 with low-electronegativity boron increases its Fermi level by 0.4 V, making it even higher than that of ZnO. As a result, the Fermi level alignment of B-doped C3N4 with ZnO causes a reversed band bending direction at the C3N4/ZnO junction. The resultant charge transfer switching from the Z-scheme (C3N4/ZnO) to type II (B-doped C3N4/ZnO) was confirmed by UPS and ESR analysis. Type II B-doped C3N4/ZnO shows a stable, drastic increase in the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution rate, approximately 2.9 times higher than that of undoped C3N4/ZnO. The decreased bandgap energy of B-doped C3N4/ZnO also contributes to an additional improvement in efficiency through enhanced light harvesting. Our work presents a simple but effective strategy to design highly capable heterojunction photocatalysts via charge transfer switching with a doping method.

Asymmetric-electrolyte metal-air batteries (AMABs) deliver high operating voltage and energy density. However, the demand for ion-selective transport separator and precious metal electrocatalysts hampers their applications. To address this issue, we develop a polyacrylonitrile (PAN) separator that can selectively transport Zn2+ ions and an atomically dispersed Co electrocatalyst that can catalyze oxygen evolution reactions (OERs) and oxygen reduction reactions (ORRs) in the challenging acidic medium. The selective ion transport behavior was associated with the Zn2+ ions' bonded ladder structure of PAN, which raises the ion migration energy barrier for the crossover of H+ and OH- In terms of electrocatalysts, extensive ex situ and in situ characterizations suggest that Co single-atom sites stably catalyze the OER and ORR Several types of AMABs (metals Zn, Si, Sn) were tested. The assembled asymmetric metal-air Zn-, Si-, and Sn-air batteries delivered enhanced battery performance that surpassed those of recently reported Zn-, Si-, and Sn-air batteries, respectively.

Photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells, which represent a promising technology for the production of hydrogen fuel through water splitting reactions, must meet two criteria to achieve high-performance operation: (i) a high thermodynamic open-circuit potential and (ii) a low kinetic overpotential. Herein, we achieved these criteria in both an oxygen-evolving n-Si photoanode and hydrogen-evolving p-Si photocathode by simple electrodeposition of a nanocrystalline thin film of Ru. The bifunctional electrocatalytic activity of the nanocrystalline Ru led to low overpotentials in both the acidic oxygen evolution reaction (0.27 V) and alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction (0.04 V). In addition, the nanocrystalline Ru/Si junctions influenced the interface energetics via the induction of an extrinsic electrochemical potential on the surface of the Ru nanocrystals through a redox reaction rather than the chemical potential of the electrons (work function) of bulk Ru. The nanocrystalline Ru film exhibited bipolar applicability, enabling both Ru/n-Si and Ru/p-Si junctions with high V-oc values of 0.63 and 0.5 V, respectively. As a result, the n-Si photoanode in the acidic electrolyte and the p-Si photocathode in the alkaline electrolyte generated a photocurrent of 10 mA/cm(2) at record values of 0.87 and 0.42 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode, respectively. These results provide insight into the development of high-performance PEC cells based on a nanocrystalline electrocatalyst.

A synthetic strategy utilizing a predesigned organic framework is demonstrated to construct high-density single-atom catalysts for long-lasting zinc–air flow batteries.

This paper presents an algorithm for robot path planning for unstructured depalletizing tasks. Parcel depalletization is a multi-start single-goal path planning problem that involves placing multiple parcels in the same location. To solve this problem, we propose a new path planning algorithm called the multi-start single-goal RRT (Rapidly-exploring Random Tree), which is an extended version of the bidirectional RRT. The multi-start single-goal RRT is based on multi-RRT and uses multiple trees to find a path that connects multiple parcels to a single placing position. We verified the performance of the proposed algorithm by solving the three-dimensional path planning problem with a simulation before applying it to articulated robot arms.

The rational design of earth-abundant, highly efficient, and robust bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts remains a contemporary challenge toward the widespread implementation of reversible metal-air batteries and fuel cells. Here, we report a universal strategy for the fabrication of single-atom (Cu, Co, and Fe) incorporated hollow nano-spheroids of nitrogen-deficient carbon nitride frameworks (CuSA@HNCNx. The interconnected three-dimensional 3D porous and hollow robust single-atom spheroid frameworks display a high surface area of 1286 m(2) g(-1), favorable electronic structure, local chemical coordination, effective density of active sites (Cu-N-x pyridinic, graphitic C-N etc.), and mass transport pathways. The obtained CuSA@HNCNx exhibited outstanding bifunctional reversible electrocatalytic activity and robustness for oxygen reduction and evolution reactions (ORR half-wave potential of 0.91 V, OER overpotential of 1.55 V at 10 mA cm(-2), Delta E = 0.64 V, 5000 cycles), outperforming benchmarked Pt/C and RuO2. Electrocatalytic activity towards ORR/OER was analyzed by n-band center correlation using density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Moreover, reversible alkaline Zn-air batteries with the designed CuSA@HNCNx cathode illustrated a high power 212 mW cm(-2), high energy density 1031 Wh kg(zn)(-1), and excellent discharge-charge cycle life of 1800 cycles for 300 h @10 mA cm(-2) with voltaic efficiency of 64.51 %. Notably, all-solid-state flexible ZABs showed long cycle life of 250 h with 1500 cycles at 25 mA cm(-2) with efficiency of 66.31 %. This unique strategy offers controlled design of entangled single-atom frameworks as advanced cathodes for next-generation energy storage technology.