Tech
Dual-salt electrolyte enables aqueous zinc batteries to retain 93% capacity after 900 charging cycles
A team of University of Adelaide researchers are exploring ways to create a safer and more sustainable battery for electric mobility and power grids. While lithium-ion batteries are currently the favored option by industry, the limitations associated with supply of the resource and environmental drawbacks are driving the search for more resilient alternatives.
Led by Professor Zaiping Guo, School of Chemical Engineering, the research group has been exploring the possibilities of rechargeable aqueous zinc batteries (AZB).
“An AZB will use water-based liquid, usually water with dissolved zinc salts as the electrolyte and zinc metal as the anode,” says Professor Guo.
“The liquid is water-based so it is not flammable, which makes it much safer than other batteries. They are also a promising alternative because of the abundance of zinc as a resource, its low environmental impact and the battery’s high volumetric capacity.”
However, AZBs have limited life cycles due to their narrow working temperature range, which has slowed down their practical use. The reactions between the zinc and electrolytes in AZBs are uncontrollable, which can cause hydrogen gas release and corrosion within the battery.
Professor Guo’s team has developed a decoupled dual-salt electrolyte (DDSE)—a battery electrolyte that uses two different zinc salts to enhance the performance of a liquid to control the behavior of ions. The research is published in the journal Nature Sustainability.
“One type of salt helps the battery work well in different temperatures and improves how fast the battery can charge, while the other type helps protect the zinc metal inside the battery, so it lasts much longer,” says first author Guanjie Li from School of Chemical Engineering.
“Together, they give the battery very good performance. It can charge quickly and work for many cycles, over a wide range of temperatures, and with very little energy loss when sitting unused.
“In our DDSE, the first salt-like zinc perchlorate, Zn(ClO4)2 stays mostly in the liquid and controls how the battery handles freezing and how fast ions move.
“The second salt-like zinc sulfate, ZnSO4 sticks to the zinc metal surface and protects it from damage. Because each salt stays in its own area and does its own job, the battery works much better overall. We used lots of advanced tools to see this special distribution and to understand the deeper science behind how it works.”
Senior Research Fellow and co-author Dr. Shilin Zhang says the cells kept 93% of their capacity even after 900 charge-discharge cycles and worked from temperatures as cold as -40°C to as warm as +40°C.
“This is the first time such a well-balanced performance has been achieved in our field,” says Dr. Zhang.
“Unlike conventional ‘lean-water’ designs by high-concentration or organic-aqueous hybrid electrolytes, our decoupling strategy results in a non-flammable, affordable, and sustainable electrolyte formula, retaining the intrinsic merits of aqueous systems.
“This approach provides a clear path toward the practical deployment of AZBs in smart grids and electric vehicles, which, in turn, offers nations safer and more sustainable energy.
“Our next step is to try this electrolyte in more practical battery systems. We want to fine-tune the recipe and also improve other battery parts, so we can build a real battery prototype that has a long-life, high-energy density, and low cost.”
More information:
Guanjie Li et al, Decoupled dual-salt electrolyte for practical aqueous zinc batteries, Nature Sustainability (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41893-025-01646-1
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ISC2, the non-profit cyber professional membership association, has joined the UK government’s recently launched Software Security Ambassador Scheme as an expert adviser.
Set up at the beginning of the year by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the scheme forms part of a wider £210m commitment by Westminster to remodel approaches to public sector cyber resilience from the ground up, acknowledging that previous approaches to the issue have basically gone nowhere and that previously set targets for resilience are unachievable.
It is designed to incentivise organisations to pay more attention to the security of software products, and supports the wider adoption of the Software Security Code of Practice, a set of voluntary principles defining what secure software looks like.
ISC2 joins a number of tech suppliers, including Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and Sage; consultancies and service providers including Accenture and NCC Group; and financial services firms including Lloyds Banking Group and Santander. Fellow cyber association ISACA is also involved.
“Promoting secure software practices that strengthen the resilience of systems underpinning the economy, public services and national infrastructure is central to ISC2’s mission,” said ISC2’s executive vice-president for advocacy and strategic engagement, Tara Wisniewski.
“The code moves software security beyond narrow compliance and elevates it to a board-level resilience priority. As supply chain attacks continue to grow in scale and impact, a shared baseline is essential and through our global community and expertise, ISC2 is committed to helping professionals build the skills needed to put secure-by-design principles into practice,” she said.
Software vulns a huge barrier to resilience
A study of wider supply chain risks conducted last year by ISC2 found that a little over half of organisations worldwide reported that vulnerabilities in their software suppliers’ products represented the most disruptive cyber security threat to their overall supply chain.
And the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) Global Cybersecurity Outlook report, published on 12 January, revealed that third-party and supply chain vulnerabilities were seen as a huge barrier to building cyber resilience by C-suite executives.
A total of 65% of respondents to the WEF’s annual poll flagged such flaws as the greatest challenge their organisation faced on its pathway to resilience, compared to 54% at the beginning of 2025. This outpaced factors such as the evolving threat landscape and emerging AI technology, use of legacy IT systems, regulatory compliance and governance, and cyber skills shortages.
Pressed on the top supply chain cyber risks, respondents were most concerned about their ability to assure the integrity of software and other IT services, ahead of a lack of visibility into their supplier’s supply chains and overdependence on critical third-party suppliers.
The UK’s Code of Practice seeks to answer this challenge by establishing expectations and best practices for tech providers and any other organisations that either develop, sell or buy software products. It covers aspects such as secure design and development, the security of build environments, deployment and ongoing upkeep, and transparent communication with customers and users.
As part of its role as an ambassador, ISC2 will assist in developing and improving the Code of Practice, while championing it by embedding its guiding principles into its own cyber education and professional development services – the organisation boasts 10,000 UK members and associates.
It will also help to drive adoption of the Code of Practice through various awareness campaigns, incorporating it into its certifications, training and guidance, engaging with industry stakeholders and members to encourage implementation, and incorporating its provisions into its work with its own commercial suppliers.
The wheel on the left side has options to adjust actuation distance, rapid-trigger sensitivity, and RGB brightness. You can also adjust volume and media playback, and turn it into a scroll wheel. The LED matrix below it is designed to display adjustments to actuation distance but feels a bit awkward: Each 0.1 mm of adjustment fills its own bar, and it only uses the bottom nine bars, so the screen will roll over four times when adjusting (the top three bars, with dots next to them, illuminate to show how many times the screen has rolled over during the adjustment). The saving grace of this is that, when adjusting the actuation distance, you can press down any switch to see a visualization of how far you’re pressing it, then tweak the actuation distance to match.
Alongside all of this, the Falcata (and, by extension, the Falchion) now has an aftermarket switch option: TTC Gold magnetic switches. While this is still only two switches, it’s an improvement over the singular switch option of most Hall effect keyboards.
Split Apart
Photograph: Henri Robbins
The internal assembly of this keyboard is straightforward yet interesting. Instead of a standard tray mount, where the PCB and plate bolt directly into the bottom half of the shell, the Falcata is more comparable to a bottom-mount. The PCB screws into the plate from underneath, and the plate is screwed onto the bottom half of the case along the edges. While the difference between the two mounting methods is minimal, it does improve typing experience by eliminating the “dead zones” caused by a post in the middle of the keyboard, along with slightly isolating typing from the case (which creates fewer vibrations when typing).
The top and bottom halves can easily be split apart by removing the screws on the plate (no breakable plastic clips here!), but on the left half, four cables connect the top and bottom halves of the keyboard, all of which need to be disconnected before fully separating the two sections. Once this is done, the internal silicone sound-dampening can easily be removed. The foam dampening, however, was adhered strongly enough that removing it left chunks of foam stuck to the PCB, making it impossible to readhere without using new adhesive. This wasn’t a huge issue, since the foam could simply be placed into the keyboard, but it is still frustrating to see when most manufacturers have figured this out.
Don’t call them hearing aids. They’re hearpieces, intended as a blurring of the lines between hearing aid and earbuds—or “earpieces” in the parlance of Lizn, a Danish operation.
The company was founded in 2015, and it haltingly developed its launch product through the 2010s, only to scrap it in 2020 when, according to Lizn’s history page, the hearing aid/earbud combo idea didn’t work out. But the company is seemingly nothing if not persistent, and four years later, a new Lizn was born. The revamped Hearpieces finally made it to US shores in the last couple of weeks.
Half Domes
Photograph: Chris Null
Lizn Hearpieces are the company’s only product, and their inspiration from the pro audio world is instantly palpable. Out of the box, these look nothing like any other hearing aids on the market, with a bulbous design that, while self-contained within the ear, is far from unobtrusive—particularly if you opt for the graphite or ruby red color scheme. (I received the relatively innocuous sand-hued devices.)
At 4.58 grams per bud, they’re as heavy as they look; within the in-the-ear space, few other models are more weighty, including the Kingwell Melodia and Apple AirPods Pro 3. The units come with four sets of ear tips in different sizes; the default mediums worked well for me.
The bigger issue isn’t how the tip of the device fits into your ear, though; it’s how the rest of the unit does. Lizn Hearpieces need to be delicately twisted into the ear canal so that one edge of the unit fits snugly behind the tragus, filling the concha. My ears may be tighter than others, but I found this no easy feat, as the device is so large that I really had to work at it to wedge it into place. As you might have guessed, over time, this became rather painful, especially because the unit has no hardware controls. All functions are performed by various combinations of taps on the outside of either of the Hearpieces, and the more I smacked the side of my head, the more uncomfortable things got.
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