High‐Resolution Electrochemical Mapping of the Hydrogen Evolution Reaction on Transition‐Metal Dichalcogenide Nanosheets

High‐resolution scanning electrochemical cell microscopy (SECCM) is used to image and quantitatively analyze the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalytically active sites of 1H‐MoS₂ nanosheets, MoS₂, and WS₂ heteronanosheets. Using a 20 nm radius nanopipette and hopping mode scanning, the resolution of SECCM was beyond the optical microscopy limit and visualized a small triangular MoS₂ nanosheet with a side length of ca. 130 nm. The electrochemical cell provides local cyclic voltammograms with a nanoscale spatial resolution for visualizing HER active sites as electrochemical images. The HER activity difference of edge, terrace, and heterojunction of MoS₂ and WS₂ were revealed. The SECCM imaging directly visualized the relationship of HER activity and number of MoS₂ nanosheet layers and unveiled the heterogeneous aging state of MoS₂ nanosheets. SECCM can be used for improving local HER activities by producing sulfur vacancies using electrochemical reaction at the selected region.     

Robust particle image velocimetry using gradient method with upstream difference and downstream difference

In the first part of this paper, sub-pixel displacement detection methods in particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements were discussed. Some schemes for calculating the spatial gradient in a gradient method, which is one of sub-pixel displacement detection methods, were evaluated. It was found that the second order central finite difference scheme tends to underestimate the gradient of the tracer-particle’s intensity. Consequently it leads to an overestimation of sub-pixel displacements. A first-frame upstream and second-frame downstream finite difference scheme was then proposed and evaluated for one-dimensional flow measurements. Furthermore, the proposed difference scheme was extended to apply to two-dimensional flows. It was shown that taking the direction of the sub-pixel correction into account and using fewer adjacent pixels are important for PIV images consisting of small tracer particle images. Finally, a robust procedure for the execution of the gradient method was proposed, which can eliminate the effect of noises. It was found that the proposed scheme is not only highly accurate but is highly robust to noise.