On a fan community page on Chinese social media platform Weibo, hundreds of users have posted comments and pictures, some covered in little red hearts, to express their admiration for a star they affectionately call Kun Kun. “Kun Kun flies bravely, iKun will always follow him; Kun Kun never gets old, and will remain a blue-chip till the end,” some users wrote alongside the picture. “Kun Kun,” whose full name is Zhang Kun, is neither a pop star nor actor. Instead, he is one of China’s most prominent fund managers who oversees around 120 billion yuan ($18.6 billion) in assets at E Fund Management, an established Chinese asset management firm. Zhang’s followers, who label themselves “iKun,” (“i” is a homophone for the Chinese word love), have also created accounts on Weibo posing as his “global fan clubs.” “Kun Kun, I would like to accompany you for many, many years,” a follower wrote. “Let’s witness both the bull and bear markets, but still return with young hearts.”
PBS serves as an artificial solid-electrolyte interface. Although silicon anodes could greatly boost the capacity of Li-ion batteries, their performance rapidly degrades with use. Polymeric coatings can help solve this problem, but very few studies have explored the underlying mechanisms. In a recent study, scientists from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology investigate how a poly(borosiloxane) coating greatly stabilizes the capacity of silicon anodes, paving the way for better and more durable Li-ion batteries for electric cars and renewable energy harvesting. Since their conception, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been constantly improved and adapted so that they can become suitable for vastly different applications, from mobile devices and electric cars to storage units for renewable energy harvesters. In most larger-scale applications (such as the latter two), the focus of LIB research is placed on increasing their capacity and voltage limits without in