Provided are hard carbon beads, their preparation method, and an energy storage device comprising the same. Microwave heating is used to synthesize cross-linked phenolic formaldehyde for reducing energy consumption and controlling the crosslinking density of cured phenolic formaldehyde. The problems caused by high temperature heating and hydrothermal process for curing resin can be solved by the instant disclosure, which can increase the economic values of electrode and energy storage device comprising the hard carbon beads.

A positive electrode active material, method of making the same, and positive electrode and lithium secondary battery include the same are disclosed herein. In some embodiments, a positive electrode active material in a form of single particles, includes a lithium transition metal oxide having nickel (Ni) in an amount greater than 50 mol % based on a total number of moles of transition metals excluding lithium, wherein a single particle has a region of 50 nm or less from a surface of the single particle along a center direction, and wherein a structure belonging to space group FD3-M and a structure belonging to space group Fm3m are formed in the region, and wherein a generation rate of fine powder having an average particle diameter (D.sub.50) of 1 μm or less is in a range of 5% to 30% when the positive electrode active material is rolled at 650 kgf/cm.sup.2.

A negative electrode material includes silicon-based particles and graphite particles. In a case that a D.sub.n50/D.sub.v50 ratio of the graphite particles is A and a D.sub.n50/D.sub.v50 ratio of the silicon-based particles is B, the following conditional expressions (1) to (3) are satisfied: 0.1≤A≤0.65 (1); 0.3≤B≤0.85 (2); and B>A (3), where, D.sub.v50 is a particle diameter of particles measured when a cumulative volume fraction in a volume-based distribution reaches 50%, and D.sub.n50 is a particle diameter of particles measured when a cumulative number fraction in a number-based distribution reaches 50%. The present invention further provides a negative electrode plate, a lithium-ion secondary battery or electrochemical device containing the negative electrode plate, and an electronic device containing the lithium-ion secondary battery and/or electrochemical device.

The present invention relates to an oxide sintered material that can be used suitably as a sputtering target for forming an oxide semiconductor film using a sputtering method, a method of producing the oxide sintered material, a sputtering target including the oxide sintered material, and a method of producing a semiconductor device 10 including an oxide semiconductor film 14 formed using the oxide sintered material.

An aqueous ink jet ink composition contains pigment particles, inorganic oxide particles, and resin particles. The content of the inorganic oxide particles is 1.0% to 10.0% relative to the total mass of the ink composition. The ink composition satisfies the following relationship: D.sub.50 of the resin particles ≤D.sub.50 of the inorganic oxide particles ≤D.sub.50 of the pigment particles, wherein D.sub.50 represents the volume median diameter of the corresponding particles.

A SiC powder containing 70% by mass or more of a β-SiC, wherein in a volume-based cumulative particle size distribution measured by a laser diffraction method, a D50 is 8 to 35 μm and a D10 is 5 μm or more.

A solid electrolyte material includes a first crystal phase. The first crystal phase has a composition that is deficient in Li as compared with a composition represented by the following composition formula (1).
Li.sub.3Y.sub.1Cl.sub.6  formula (1)

A process for producing a surface-modified particulate lithium nickel metal oxide material is provided. The process comprises the addition of a controlled quantity of a coating liquid comprising a metal-containing compound and a lithium-containing compound to nickel metal precursor particles using an incipient wetness process followed by a calcination step.

A composite nanomaterial of ZnO impregnated by, e.g., a green copper phthalocyanine compound (CuPc) can be an efficient solar light photocatalyst for water remediation. The composite may include hollow shell microspheres and hollow nanospheres of CuPc-ZnO. CuPc may function as a templating and/or structure modifying agent, e.g., for forming hollow microspheres and/or nanospheres of ZnO particles. The composite can photocatalyze the degradation of organic pollutants such as crystal violet (CV) and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid as well as microbes in water under solar light irradiation. The ZnO—CuPc composite can be stable and recyclable under solar irradiation.

A cerium-zirconium oxide-based ionic conductor (CZOIC) material including zirconium oxide in an amount ranging from 5 wt. % up to 95 wt. %, cerium oxide in an amount ranging from 95 wt. % to 5 wt. %, and at least one oxide or a rare earth metal in an amount ranging from 30 wt. % or less, based on the overall mass of the CZOIC material. The CZOIC material exhibits a structure comprising one or more expanded unit cells and a plurality of crystallites having ordered nano-domains. The structure of the CZOIC material exhibits a crystal lattice defined by a d-value measured at multiple (hkl) locations using a SAED technique that exhibit distortions, such that the d-values for the same (hkl) location varies from about 2% to about 5% from the d-value measured for a reference cerium-zirconium material at the same (hkl) location.