The reduction of 1,3-propane sultone (PS) on graphite and the performance of Li-ion batteries with PS as an additive in the electrolyte were studied by cyclic voltammetry, energy dispersive spectroscopy, quantum chemical calculation, and battery discharge experiments. The reduction of PS on graphite takes place at the potential 0.2 V more positive than that of other compositions of electrolytes, resulting in the formation of a stable solid electrolyte interphase film on graphite. With the application of PS in the electrolyte of battery, the discharge capacity of the battery is significantly improved even after the battery is stored at or at 80°.

Distributed sensing plays an important role in many industrial applications. Sensor arrays consisting of identical ultra-weak fiber Bragg gratings can be applied to such scenarios by monitoring the optical spectral response of the sensors. Yet, the spatial resolution, the sampling speed and the supported number of sensors in the array are mostly determined by the interrogation scheme. While dual optical frequency comb techniques had been successfully demonstrated as a high-resolution spectroscopic technique in metrology, it had been beyond the reach of industrial sensing applications because of its high complexity and costs. It is proposed and demonstrated here that, enabled by a simple fiber-optic, dual-comb spectroscopy setup consisting of a fiber laser without frequency stabilization, interrogation of an ultra-weak fiber sensor array can be realized. High spatial and spectral resolution as well as kHz interrogation speed is achieved in both static and dynamic measurements. It is expected that our depth-resolved dual-comb scheme can measure hundreds of sensors response in less than 1 ms. It is also flexible to deal with targets closely spaced or farther apart from each other. This shows the potential of applying dual-comb spectroscopy to more and more industrial application areas.

A novel sensor based on a D-type optical fiber coated with a specially designed dielectric multilayer forming a one-dimensional photonic bandgap structure is proposed. The characteristics of its propagation modes are numerically analyzed at a wavelength of 785 nm to evaluate the sensor's performance. The results show that its sensitivity can drastically exceed that of its metal-coated, surface plasmon resonance counterpart, due to the sharp resonance and low wave-propagation loss of its Bloch surface wave. The novel sensor can also be easily adapted for all kinds of aqueous analytes of different refractive indices by modifying the photonic bandgap structure. This could lead to the development of compact, ultra-sensitive biochemical sensing devices.