Microtextures Induced by Nanosecond Laser on Ni–Co Alloy Coatings

Ni–Co alloys have a wide range of applications in various fields owning to their excellent physical, chemical, and mechanical properties. In this paper, we prepare Ni–Co alloy coatings on 316L stain steel surfaces by electroplating. We present a novel approach utilizing a nanosecond laser to induce microtextures on Ni–Co alloy coatings. We study experimentally the effects of laser power and scanning rate on the surface morphologies of Ni–Co alloy coatings. The results indicate that the shape and size of induced microtextures can be controlled by the laser power and scanning rate. The size of grains increases with increase in the work current of the laser (WCL) at a certain scanning rate. With the WCL constant, the size of grains decreases with increase in scanning rate while their average height increases. It is a simple and easily-controlled method for the fabrication of microstructures on Ni–Co alloy coatings, which has promising applications in investigations of the properties of microtextured surfaces, such as friction, adhesion, and wetting.     

Scheduling with a due-window for acceptable lead-times

Due-dates are often determined during sales negotiations in two stages: (i) in the pre-sale stage, the customer provides a time interval (due-window) of his acceptable due-dates, (ii) in the second stage, the parties agree on the delivery penalties. Thus, the contract reflects penalties of both parts of the sales negotiations: earliness/tardiness penalties of the due-dates (as a function of the deviation from the agreed upon due-window), and earliness/tardiness penalties of the actual delivery times (as a function of the deviation from the due-dates). We model this setting of a two-stage negotiation on a single machine, and reduce the problem to a well-known setting of minimizing the weighted earliness/tardiness with a given (fixed) due-window. We adopt (and correct) a pseudo-polynomial dynamic programming algorithm for this NP-hard problem. The algorithm is extended to a setting of parallel identical machines, verifying that this case remains NP-hard in the ordinary sense. Moreover, an efficient greedy heuristic and a tight lower bound are introduced and tested. Extremely small optimality gaps are obtained in our numerical tests.     

A concise route to 4-aminomethylpyrazoles and 4-aminomethylisoxazoles from acetylacetone-derived hexahydropyrimidines under mild conditions

Acetylacetone was successfully used as a precursor of 4-aminomethylpyrazoles and 4-aminomethylisoxazoles in a two step process at ambient temperature. In the first step, acetylacetone was transformed to the corresponding hexahydropyrimidines (1,3-diazinanes) via two consecutive one-pot Mannich aminomethylations. Hexahydropyrimidines were then treated with hydrazine, phenylhydrazine, and hydroxylamine, respectively, to obtain the corresponding 4-aminomethylpyrazoles and 4-aminomethylisoxazoles in good yields. The hexahydropyrimidine ring decomposed providing the title compounds and a reasonable mechanism has been proposed.     

Schauder estimates for higher-order parabolic systems with time irregular coefficients

We prove Schauder estimates for solutions to both divergence and non-divergence type higher-order parabolic systems in the whole space and a half space. We also provide an existence result for the divergence type systems in a cylindrical domain. All coefficients are assumed to be only measurable in the time variable and Hölder continuous in the spatial variables.     

A low-temperature electrolyte for lithium-ion batteries

In this paper, the electrochemical performance of a new low-temperature electrolyte, 0.9 mol L^?1 lithium oxalyldifluoroborate (LiODFB)/LiBF₄ (5.365:1, by mass) mixed salts in the ethylene carbonate (EC)/dimethyl sulfite (DMS)/ethyl methyl carbonate (EMC) mixed solvent (1:1:3, by volume, the same below), is studied to seek the promising candidate for advanced low-temperature lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). The results show that LIBs using this new electrolyte can be operable well at temperature below ?20 °C. This is useful to expand the application range of LIBs, especially at specific low-temperature environments, such as military and aerospace applications.