Tungsten is a heavy metal exhibits the highest melting point among all the refractory metals. The pure tungsten has a yield strength of 750 MPa and excellent tensile strength of 900 MPa. Due to its amazing strength and hardness, tungsten was widely applied in various fields include defense industry, aerospace industry, and nuclear industry. The conventional alloying method by combining tungsten with other metals is a proven efficient route to enhance its properties to extend its applications.

The emergence of quaternary-compound tungsten electrode, which also called WX4, marks a new area of tungsten electrode material, as well as a revolutionary development of the relevant technology, making the reliability and stability of the electrodes further improved. In 2017, based on the Tri-mix composite rare earth technology, China’s researchers continued to break through the technical barriers and are the first one to add four kinds of different rare earths to tungsten, e.g. lanthanum, cerium, zirconium, and yttrium.  

Tungsten copper composite material is widely used to produce electrical contact.

Vanadium dioxide (VO2) is widely applied in the fields of intelligent energy windows coating, optical switching devices, optical data storage medium, electrodes for electrochromic, lithium batteries and supercapacitors. VO2is a reversible first-order metal-insulator transition (MIT) at a critical temperature (Tc). VO2 is a monoclinic structure (M), and presents semiconductive and relatively infrared transparent below Tc, whereas it transforms into tetragonal structure (R), and presents metallic and infrared reflection above Tc. However, the high critical transition temperature of VO2 material (about 68 °C) limits its application.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have played an important role as the main source of power for various industries such as electric vehicles (EV) and solar energy storage tanks. LIBs have many advantages such as long cycle life, high power density and relatively low discharge speed. As the electric vehicles (EV) is growing massively in China and USA, however, the storage capacity has limited the driving range greatly.

As global warming and climate change caused by fossil fuel grew to be a public concern, find a clean and sustainable substitute energy had become a scientific hotspot. Urea is a hydrogen carrier which makes it a feasible energy source. The urea-rich wastewater or urine which normally contains 0.33 M urea were used as fuels, which can generate electricity while processing wastewater to reduce water pollution and others. Moreover, It is considered to have a great application in aerospace to recycle the urine produced by astronauts.