Low Potential Barrier Research Articles

One-Step Hydrothermal Reaction Induced Nitrogen-Doped MoS2/MXene Composites with Superior Lithium-Ion Storage

MoS2, a typical transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDs), inheriting high theoretical capacity, open framework and unique electrochemical properties, is regarded as a promising electrode material. However, the low electronic conductivity and slow chemical kinetics of two-dimensional (2D) MoS2 lamellars, along with the large volume expansion during cycling hinder their application in Li-ion batteries. MXene inherits the strengths of excellent metallic conductivity, a low lithium-ion diffusion potential barrier and superior mechanical stability; however, its low reversible capacity and self-stacking problems as anode still need to be solved. Herein, the MXene Ti3C2Tx compound with MoS2 through a simple one-step hydrothermal reaction is introduced. The introduction of nitrogen-doped Ti3C2Tx can effectively restrain the volume change of MoS2 and ameliorate the electronic conductivity of the whole electrode, while MoS2 can alleviate the self-stacking of Ti3C2Tx during cycling. The as-prepared MoS2/MXene electrode delivers an initial discharge capacity of 1087 mA h g−1 with an initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE) of 81.6% at 100 mA g−1, and a specific discharge capacity of 731 mA h g−1 can be retained after 100 cycles. The excellent electrochemical performance demonstrates that nitrogen-doped MoS2/MXene can be a potential electrode material for Li-ion batteries.

Heterostructured Bi2S3/MoS2 Nanoarrays for Efficient Electrocatalytic Nitrate Reduction to Ammonia Under Ambient Conditions.

Developing efficient electrocatalysts to realize the nitrate reduction reaction (eNO3-RR) for ammonia synthesis as an alternative to the traditional Haber-Bosch production process is of great significance. Herein, the heterostructured Bi2S3/MoS2 nanoarrays were successfully synthesized by Bi2S3 nanowires anchored on MoS2 nanosheets. Owing to the interfacial coupling effect, both particular surface area and exposure active sites increase. Density functional theory further uncovered that the excellent activity originates from charge transfer of the interface and a low potential barrier of 0.58 eV for hydrogenation of *NO to *NOH on Bi2S3/MoS2. Compared with pure Bi2S3 and MoS2 catalysts, the heterostructured Bi2S3/MoS2 nanoarrays exhibit a superior NH3 yield of 15.04 × 10-2 mmol·h-1·cm-2 and a Faraday efficiency of 88.4% at -0.8 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode. This work provides a new avenue to explore advanced electrocatalysts, which is expected to shorten the distance from the practical application of the eNO3-RR technology.

Reactive flux theory for finite potential barriers and memory friction

The reactive flux theory for finite barriers that we proposed in a previous work is generalized to memory friction. For an internal colored noise, the steady-state probability density dose not exist for some noise parameters, whose role can be replaced by an effective steady-state probability density. The theoretical method is illustrated by a Brownian particle moving in a metastable potential and subjected to an internal Ornstein–Uhlenbeck noise. The theoretical results agree well with the Langevin simulation results in the spatial diffusion regime until relatively low potential barrier heights. The Arrhenius law is examined at low barrier heights.

Theoretical and experimental studies on bistable vibration energy harvester with levitation magnet couple

To improve the efficiency of vibration energy harvesting, a levitation magnet couple is introduced to the bi-stable energy harvester (BEH) to create a desired potential energy, by which the harvester’s response and output can be increased greatly. Compared to the classical BEH, the novel harvester has a lower potential barrier and a flatter bottom of its potential well, which can help increase the response and outputs. The experimental results show that the introduction of levitation magnet couple effectively extends the working frequency bandwidth of the harvester. The inter-well jump can be executed easily under weak stochastic excitations and the amplitude is larger than the classical one, even in the case of executing the same kind of intra-well oscillation. The experiments prove that the output voltage of the novel harvester outperforms the classical BEH over the whole intensity range. This study may provide a good guidance to improving the performance of bistable energy harvester.

A Novel SiC MOSFET With a Fully Depleted P-Base MOS-Channel Diode for Enhanced Third Quadrant Performance

In this article, a novel silicon carbide double-trench MOSFET with an integrated fully depleted P-base MOS-channel diode is proposed and investigated by calibrated TCAD simulations. The proposed silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET features a fully depleted P-base region achieved by shrinking the source trench mesa in the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${z}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -direction. Due to the significantly reduced conduction band energy in the fully depleted P-base region, a low potential barrier for electrons to flow through the JFET region to the N <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">+</sup> source region is formed. As a result, the proposed SiC MOSFET not only exhibits more than three times lower diode cut-in voltage than the body p-i-n diode but also successfully eliminates the bipolar degradation issues. Besides, a compact model based on Poisson’s law is developed to understand the origin of the barrier lowering effect. Calibrated TCAD simulation results indicate that the enhanced third quadrant performance would not comprise the other electric characteristics, which makes the proposed SiC MOSFET a highly promising candidate for high-frequency power applications.

A neglected pathway for the accretion products formation in the atmosphere

Highly oxygenated organic molecules (HOM) formed by the autoxidation of α-pinene initiated by OH radicals play an important role in new particle formation. It is believed that the accretion products, ROOR´, formed by the self- and cross-reaction of peroxy radicals (RO2 + R'O2 reactions), have extremely low volatility and are more likely to participate in nucleation. However, the mechanism of ROOR´ formation has not been fully demonstrated by experiment or theoretical calculation. Herein, we propose a novel mechanism of RO2 reacting with α-pinene (RO2 + α-pinene reactions) that have much lower potential barriers and larger rate constants than the reaction of RO2 with R'O2, which explains the ROOR´ formation found in the mass spectrometry experiments. The ROOR´ resulting from the reaction of RO2 with α-pinene can produce HOM dimers and trimers with a higher oxygen-to‑carbon (O/C) ratio through a autoxidation chain. We also demonstrated that the presence of NOx and HO2 radical will reduce the RO2 concentration, but cannot completely inhibit the formation of HOM monomers and ROOR´. Even if one or both of RO2 radicals are acyl peroxy radicals (RC(O)O2), the potential barriers of the reactions between RC(O)O2 and α-pinene (RC(O)O2 + α-pinene reactions) are lower than that of RO2 reacting with RC(O)O2 (RO2 + RC(O)O2 reactions) or RC(O)O2 self-reactions (RC(O)O2 + RC(O)O2 reactions). The current work revealed, for the first time, a mechanism of RO2/RC(O)O2 reacting with α-pinene in the atmosphere, which provides new insight into the atmospheric chemistry of accretion products as SOA precursors.

Epitaxy of NiTe2 on WS2 for the p-Type Schottky Contact and Increased Photoresponse.

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) have great potential applications in the electronic and optoelectronic devices. Nevertheless, due to the difficulty in the efficient doping of atomic-thickness TMDCs or Fermi level pinning (FLP) effects at the metal/semiconductor interface, most TMDC devices exhibit the n-type conduction polarity, which significantly limits their functional applications based on the p-n junction. Here, 2D semi-metal NiTe2 nanosheets were epitaxially grown on the WS2 monolayer by a two-step chemical vapor deposition route. The microstructure and optical characterizations confirm that the vertically stacked NiTe2/WS2 heterostructures are formed by van der Waals epitaxy. Interestingly, p-type WS2 field-effect transistors can be obtained with the hole mobility of ∼4.22 cm2/V·s, when the epitaxial NiTe2 sheets act as the source/drain electrodes. This is attributed to the decreased FLP effect and hence the low potential barrier for holes at the van der Waals contacts. Furthermore, the photodetectors based on the heterostructures show a 2 orders of magnitude increase in the switch ratio, responsivity, and detectivity and a 1 order of magnitude increase in the rise and decay speeds relative to those based on pristine WS2. This work paves the way to realize the p-type contact for monolayer WS2 with significantly enhanced optoelectronic performance.

Characteristics of secondary electron emission from few layer graphene on silicon (111) surface

As a typical two-dimensional (2D) coating material, graphene has been utilized to effectively reduce secondary electron emission from the surface. Nevertheless, the microscopic mechanism and the dominant factor of secondary electron emission suppression remain controversial. Since traditional models rely on the data of experimental bulk properties which are scarcely appropriate to the 2D coating situation, this paper presents the first-principles-based numerical calculations of the electron interaction and emission process for monolayer and multilayer graphene on silicon (111) substrate. By using the anisotropic energy loss for the coating graphene, the electron transport process can be described more realistically. The real physical electron interactions, including the elastic scattering of electron–nucleus, inelastic scattering of the electron–extranuclear electron, and electron–phonon effect, are considered and calculated by using the Monte Carlo method. The energy level transition theory-based first-principles method and the full Penn algorithm are used to calculate the energy loss function during the inelastic scattering. Variations of the energy loss function and interface electron density differences for 1 to 4 layer graphene coating GoSi are calculated, and their inner electron distributions and secondary electron emissions are analyzed. Simulation results demonstrate that the dominant factor of the inhibiting of secondary electron yield (SEY) of GoSi is to induce the deeper electrons in the internal scattering process. In contrast, a low surface potential barrier due to the positive deviation of electron density difference at monolayer GoSi interface in turn weakens the suppression of secondary electron emission of the graphene layer. Only when the graphene layer number is 3, does the contribution of surface work function to the secondary electron emission suppression appear to be slightly positive.

SnTa2O6: A novel CO2 reduction photocatalyst with nearly 100% CO selectivity

Photocatalysis is a green and effective measure for CO2 utilization. Herein, we synthesized a novel SnTa2O6 nanosheet photocatalyst via a simple melting heat treatment and first applied it to CO2 photoreduction with water. Interestingly, as the heating time extended, the synthesized ternary oxides of SnII changed from Sn2Ta2O7 octahedrons to SnTa2O6 nanosheets, which effectively improved the separation efficiency of photogenerated charges and increased reactive active sites. Density functional theory calculations and temperature programmed desorption showed that CO2 is more easily adsorbed and activated on SnTa2O6 than on Sn2Ta2O7. Under full-spectrum illumination, the CO yield of Sn-25 (SnTa2O6) was 16.8 times that of Sn2Ta2O7 with good stability. The high CO selectivity and reaction stability of SnTa2O6 can be ascribed to the lower potential barrier of CO formation and weaker interaction between CO and SnTa2O6. This research will stimulate in-depth research on the use of new and efficient tantalates for CO2 photoreduction.

Applicability of the Thawed Gaussian Wavepacket Dynamics to the Calculation of Vibronic Spectra of Molecules with Double-Well Potential Energy Surfaces.

Simulating vibrationally resolved electronic spectra of anharmonic systems, especially those involving double-well potential energy surfaces, often requires expensive quantum dynamics methods. Here, we explore the applicability and limitations of the recently proposed single-Hessian thawed Gaussian approximation for the simulation of spectra of systems with double-well potentials, including 1,2,4,5-tetrafluorobenzene, ammonia, phosphine, and arsine. This semiclassical wavepacket approach is shown to be more robust and to provide more accurate spectra than the conventional harmonic approximation. Specifically, we identify two cases in which the Gaussian wavepacket method is especially useful due to the breakdown of the harmonic approximation: (i) when the nuclear wavepacket is initially at the top of the potential barrier but delocalized over both wells, e.g., along a low-frequency mode, and (ii) when the wavepacket has enough energy to classically go over the low potential energy barrier connecting the two wells. The method is efficient and requires only a single classical ab initio molecular dynamics trajectory, in addition to the data required to compute the harmonic spectra. We also present an improved algorithm for computing the wavepacket autocorrelation function, which guarantees that the evaluated correlation function is continuous for arbitrary size of the time step.

Computation of global reactivity descriptors along the proton transfer co-ordinate of 9-Hydroxy-phenalen-1-one and 6-Hydroxy-benzo[de]anthracen-7-one: a DFT-based comparative study

Potential energy (PE) curves along the proton transfer co-ordinate of ground and excited states of 9-Hydroxy-phenalen-1-one (9HPO) and 6-Hydroxy-benzo[de]anthracen-7-one (6HBAO) have been studied using DFT-CAM-B3LYP/6-311G(d,p) and TD-DFT-CAM-B3LYP/6-31G(d) level of theory, respectively. The choice of these two molecules is based on their symmetric and asymmetric nature for their intramolecular H-bonded six-membered ring systems. Ground and excited states of PE calculations show that due to lower potential energy barrier, 9-Hydroxy-phenalen-1-one (9HPO) and 6-Hydroxy-benzo[de]anthracen-7-one (6HBAO) can be in equilibrium with their enol and keto tautomeric forms. Computed values of global reactivity descriptors, that is, average polarisability (α av) and chemical hardness (η) along the proton transfer co-ordinate of both the molecules are very small although their variations conform with their respective optimum principles. Inspired by the significant variation of the first hyperpolarisabilty along the proton transfer co-ordinate of both the compounds, it is concluded that the first hyperpolarisability can serve as a better parameter to identify enol or keto tautomeric forms in enol keto equilibrium. The variation of average first hyper polarisability (β av) along the proton transfer co-ordinate follows the optical gap rule in both the molecules.

Enabling a stable and dendrite-suppressed Zn anode via facile surface roughness engineering

• Smoother zinc metal anode surface exhibits better hydrophilicity. • Smoother zinc metal anode surface exhibits lower potential barrier and faster reaction kinetics. • Monitoring anode surface electrochemical behaviors during charging. • Computational simulation of the relationship between surface roughness and battery performance. The safety and cycle lifespan of zinc metal-based aqueous batteries are greatly restricted by zinc anode. The poor cycling performance of zinc metal anode is often considered to be impacted by the dendrite growth, surface passivation, zinc metal corrosion and hydrogen evolution reaction, while surface roughness is a matter that has often been ignored in past studies. Herein, a roughness gradient is constructed on the zinc anode surface by a simple grinding and pasting method. It has been found the modified zinc anodes with lower surface roughness exhibit the smaller zinc deposition overpotential and longer cycle life. Further, in situ optical microscopy photographs indicate that the zinc anode with an optimized roughness enables more uniform distribution of zinc precipitation and corrosion sites, which will facilitate a stable cycling performance of aqueous zinc ion batteries. The Zn anode dendrite-suppressing mechanism via surface roughness engineering was revealed through finite element computational simulation. These results emphasize the effectiveness of roughness engineering for tuning the surface physics of Zn anode and provide a facile strategy to develop better and safer aqueous zinc ion batteries.

Single-atom tailoring of Li2S to Form Li2S2 for building better lithium-sulfur batteries

The Li2S-based cathodes to couple with Li-free anodes are regarded as a commercially available approach to overcome the safety risk of lithium metal anodes. However, the passivated Li2S instinct leads to a high activation potential in the initial charging process, and the notorious shuttle effect of polysulfide is inevitable upon cell cycling. Here we create a single atom tailoring strategy by comproportionation reactions (Li2S + 1/8S8 = Li2S2) to form the Li2S2 materials without any complex manufacturing process or additives, where the Li2S2 cell enables a lower potential barrier and allows for the 3.0 V activation voltage without any other material modification. Meanwhile, the polar conducting material TaB2 is introduced to restrain the migration of polysulfides, and provide fast redox reaction kinetics. With those ingenious tailoring of cell designs, the Li2S2-TaB2 cell (Li2S2: 88 wt%) exhibits high areal capacity (4.6 mAh/cm2 at 6.0 mg/cm2 Li2S2 loading), excellent cycling stability (500 cycles at 1.6 mA/cm2).

Modeling of the Point Defect Migration across the AlN/GaN Interfaces-Ab Initio Study.

The formation and diffusion of point defects have a detrimental impact on the functionality of devices in which a high quality AlN/GaN heterointerface is required. The present paper demonstrated the heights of the migration energy barriers of native point defects throughout the AlN/GaN heterointerface, as well as the corresponding profiles of energy bands calculated by means of density functional theory. Both neutral and charged nitrogen, gallium, and aluminium vacancies were studied, as well as their complexes with a substitutional III-group element. Three diffusion mechanisms, that is, the vacancy mediated, direct interstitial, and indirect ones, in bulk AlN and GaN crystals, as well at the AlN/GaN heterointerface, were taken into account. We showed that metal vacancies migrated across the AlN/GaN interface, overcoming a lower potential barrier than that of the nitrogen vacancy. Additionally, we demonstrated the effect of the inversion of the electric field in the presence of charged point defects and at the AlN/GaN heterointerface, not reported so far. Our findings contributed to the issues of structure design, quality control, and improvement of the interfacial abruptness of the AlN/GaN heterostructures.

Role of front and back contacts in the performance of TiO2/CuO heterojunction solar cells

In this work, the effects of front and back contact work functions on the performance of a TiO2/CuO heterojunction solar cell were studied using numerical simulations. Our findings revealed a high device efficiency of ∼ 18 %, and VOC ∼ 0.83 V can be obtained when the work function values of the front transparent conducting oxide (TCO) electrode are below 4.6 eV, provided the metal at the back contact has a work function above 5.1 eV. The underlying cause of this observation can be explained by the carrier concentration profiles across the device, which indicate the formation of a higher potential barrier for the majority carriers at front contact/emitter interface, for front contact work functions (ϕFC) above 4.6 eV, due to which relatively lesser electrons are collected at the electrode. Compared to this, a lower potential barrier for the majority carriers develops when ϕFC < 4.6 eV, implying higher electron collection at the front electrode. At the absorber/back contact interface, formation of a higher potential barrier for the holes impedes their collection when the metal back contact with work function values below 5.1 eV.

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry analysis of the p-NiO/n-Si heterostructure system grown by pulsed laser deposition

• Band offset values of NiO/Si has been done by using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). • Energy band diagram is constructed by using the results obtained from XPS. • Optical properties of NiO/Si have been done by using Spectroscopic ellipsometry. • These findings will pave the way to design NiO/Si based optoelectronic devices. We report on the optical properties and the electronic structure of the p -NiO/ n -Si heterostructure system, established for optoelectronic applications in the UV spectral region. Pulsed laser deposition was used to deposit p- NiO onto n -Si to form the p -NiO/ n -Si heterojunction system. The optical constants (n, k) and the morphological properties were obtained by using a spectroscopic ellipsometry performed in the energy range of 1-5 eV, while the band-offset measurements of the p -NiO/ n -Si heterostructure were performed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis. Our results show valence and conduction band offsets values between NiO and Si of about 0.34 ± 0.2 eV and 1.68 ± 0.2 eV, respectively. Valence and conduction band offset values assume that a type I band alignment is formed at the p -NiO/ n -Si interface, with the conduction band offset being higher than valence band offset. Based on these findings, an energy-band diagram of the heterojunction is constructed to predict the charge transport properties of the p -NiO/ n -Si system. We infer that photogenerated holes should experience a lower potential barrier for their transfer across the p -NiO/ n -Si interface than photoelectrons, which should experience a larger barrier. Our results pave the way towards the development of these p -NiO/ n -Si heterojunctions for UV detectors, solar cells, and self-biased device applications.

An Unbound Proline-Rich Signaling Peptide Frequently Samples Cis Conformations in Gaussian Accelerated Molecular Dynamics Simulations.

Disordered proline-rich motifs are common across the proteomes of many species and are often involved in protein-protein interactions. Proline is a unique amino acid due to the covalent bond between the backbone nitrogen and the proline side chain. The resulting five-membered ring allows proline to sample the cis state about its peptide bond, which other residues cannot do as readily. Because proline-rich disordered sequences exist as ensembles that likely include structures with the proline peptide bond in cis, a robust methodology to accurately account for these conformations in the overall ensemble is crucial. Observing the cis conformations of proline in a disordered sequence is challenging both experimentally and computationally. Nitrogen-hydrogen NMR spectroscopy cannot directly observe proline residues, which lack an amide bond, and computational methods struggle to overcome the large kinetic barrier between the cis and trans states, since isomerization usually occurs on the order of seconds. In the current work, Gaussian accelerated molecular dynamics was used to overcome this free energy barrier and simulate proline isomerization in a tetrapeptide (KPTP) and in the 12-residue proline-rich SH3 binding peptide, ArkA. We found that Gaussian accelerated molecular dynamics, when combined with a lowered peptide bond dihedral angle potential energy barrier (15 kcal/mol), allowed sufficient sampling of the proline cis and trans states on a microsecond timescale. All ArkA prolines spend a significant fraction of time in cis, leading to a more compact ensemble with less polyproline II helix structure than an ArkA ensemble with all peptide bonds in trans. The ensemble containing cis prolines also matches more closely to in vitro circular dichroism data than the all-trans ensemble. The ability of the ArkA prolines to isomerize likely affects the peptide’s ability to bind its partner SH3 domain, and should be studied further. This is the first molecular dynamics simulation study of proline isomerization in a biologically relevant proline-rich sequence that we know of, and a similar protocol could be applied to study multi-proline isomerization in other proline-containing proteins to improve conformational diversity and agreement with in vitro data.

Role of interlayer thickness on interdiffusion in Ti/TiN multilayers

In pursuit of a systematized interdiffusion study in Ti|TiN multilayers at low temperature (300 - 973K), x-ray reflectivity measurement aided with soft x-ray absorption and secondary ion mass spectroscopy were employed in the present scope of findings. Despite of TiN interfaced with Ti being a well-known diffusion blocking unit, modulation of individual stacking thickness in nm regime in two set of samples: SET – A : [TiN (10 nm) | Ti (5 nm)]10, SET – B : [TiN (5 nm) | Ti (10 nm)]10, out turns higher interfacial mixing for SET – B samples at elevated temperatures as expected due to lower N repository and eventually lesser Ti-N covalent bonds and higher Ti-Ti metal bonds, leading to plausible lower potential barrier for migration of the diffusion species. In turn, interdiffusion across interfaces promotes two distinct distribution profiles — (i) For SET – A samples, as opposed to discrete multilayer stacks, interdiffusion led to uniformly distributed single volume matrix transformation at 973K, and (ii) For SET – B samples, such transformation is pronounced even at 773K due to faster migration of N and at 973K, surprisingly N diffuses out, with some kind of residual interstitial TiN compound residing in the system.

Protein-Protein Connections-Oligomer, Amyloid and Protein Complex-By Wide Line 1H NMR.

The amount of bonds between constituting parts of a protein aggregate were determined in wild type (WT) and A53T α-synuclein (αS) oligomers, amyloids and in the complex of thymosin-β4–cytoplasmic domain of stabilin-2 (Tβ4-stabilin CTD). A53T αS aggregates have more extensive βsheet contents reflected by constant regions at low potential barriers in difference (to monomers) melting diagrams (MDs). Energies of the intermolecular interactions and of secondary structures bonds, formed during polymerization, fall into the 5.41 kJ mol−1 ≤ Ea ≤ 5.77 kJ mol−1 range for αS aggregates. Monomers lose more mobile hydration water while forming amyloids than oligomers. Part of the strong mobile hydration water–protein bonds break off and these bonding sites of the protein form intermolecular bonds in the aggregates. The new bonds connect the constituting proteins into aggregates. Amyloid–oligomer difference MD showed an overall more homogeneous solvent accessible surface of A53T αS amyloids. From the comparison of the nominal sum of the MDs of the constituting proteins to the measured MD of the Tβ4-stabilin CTD complex, the number of intermolecular bonds connecting constituent proteins into complex is 20(1) H2O/complex. The energies of these bonds are in the 5.40(3) kJ mol−1 ≤ Ea ≤ 5.70(5) kJ mol−1 range.

Improved bistable mechanism for wave energy harvesting

As one of the renewable and clean energy sources, wave energy has high density and all-day availability characteristics. However, the development of wave energy converters has been hampered, mainly because of the low efficiency induced high levelized energy costs. The present study introduces an improved bistable mechanism composed of three linear springs, aiming to enhance the performance of a point absorber employed as a wave energy converter. The improved bistable mechanism features an asymmetric configuration of three linear stiffness springs: one horizontal and two obliques on a vertical plane. Numerical simulations based on Cummins equations in the time domain describe the point absorber dynamic behavior in regular and irregular waves. The improved bistable wave energy converter featured a wider low equivalent stiffness range than linear and conventional bistable counterparts, improving its ability to frequency shifting. Its lower potential barrier greatly improves the capture width ratio and frequency bandwidth at low excitations. Such characteristics facilitate the improved bistable wave energy converter to achieve higher efficiency than its linear and conventional bistable counterparts at low frequencies, and enhance its robustness against power-take-off damping detuning and sea state changes. These features altogether make the improved bistable mechanism an efficient alternative to explore the benefits of the bistable dynamics applied to wave energy converters.