Highly oriented and ordered microstructures in block copolymer films

Block copolymer (BCP) films with long-range lateral ordering and orientation are crucial for many applications. Here, we report a simple, versatile strategy based on a solution casting procedure, to produce millimeter thick film of BCPs with highly oriented nanostructures. Transmission electron microscope (TEM), small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and Hansen solubility parameters were used to study the morphology and interactions of the system. A variety of BCP-solvent pairs were investigated. Factors including set-up geometry, BCP characteristics, solvent evaporation, surface tension, and interactions, such as solvent-BCP, solvent-substrate, and BCP-substrate were examined. A mechanism is proposed to describe the observed long-range lateral ordering and orientation in films up to 1 mm in thickness. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2018 , 56, 1369–1375     

Objective Bayesian analysis of the Frechet stress–strength model

Several reference priors and a general form of matching priors are derived for a stress–strength system, and it is concluded that none of the reference priors is a matching prior. The study shows that the matching prior performs better than Jeffreys prior and reference priors in meeting the target coverage probabilities.     

Super-thin cloaks mediated by spoof surface plasmons

We demonstrated the possibility of designing super-thin electromagnetic cloaks based on spoof surface plasmon (SSP). Using a metamaterial layer, incident waves can be coupled into SSP efficiently at the air/metamaterial interface. Due to the strong surface confinement of SSP, EM waves are squeezed into and propagate in deep sub-wavelength scales. Implementation of an 8.2 GHz cloak less than 1/50 the cloaking diameter was presented using split ring resonator (SRR). Excellent cloaking effect was verified by simulations. Rather than isolating objects from the background, such cloaks can drastically enhance the field intensity around the cloaked object. This is of particular importance in applications such as weak wave detection and near-field sensing.     

磁光平面波导的单向传播特性

表面磁等离子体(surfacemagnetoplasmons,SMPs)是一种在电介质和偏置磁场作用下磁光材料界面处传播的近场电磁波.其独特的非互易传播特性引起了大量科研工作的关注,但在具体的波导结构设计上仍存在很多问题.本文研究了一种银-硅-磁光材料的3层平面波导结构,SMPs在磁光材料和硅的界面处传播,发现在特定的频率范围内,SMPs的基模及高阶模式均具有正向或反向的单向传播特性.分别计算了旋磁与旋电材料平面波导的色散方程,研究了硅层厚度与外加磁场对能带结构及SMPs单向传播区域的影响,发现无论是旋磁或旋电材料的结构,硅层厚度的增加使高阶模式使高阶模式出现在更低的频率位置,使单向传输带宽变小甚至消失,外加磁场的变大使磁光材料的能带结构频率增大的同时带隙中也引入了高阶模式.计算了2种磁光材料平面波导的正向和反向的单向传播带宽宽度,发现旋磁材料YIG的单向SMPs模式出现在GHz波段,最大单向带宽可达到2.45 GHz;旋电材料InSb的单向SMPs模式出现在THz波段,最大单向带宽达到3.9 THz.     

A flexoelectric spherical microshell model incorporating the strain gradient effect

In this paper, a size-dependent flexoelectric spherical microshell model is proposed considering flexoelectric effect and strain gradient effect. By means of the variation principle, explicit expressions of the governing equations and the boundary conditions are deduced. Solving corresponding governing equations, analytical solutions of both direct and converse flexoelectric responses in static axisymmetric bending problem are obtained. Then, the flexoelectric responses in barium strontium titanate spherical microshells with and without a circular top opening are numerically investigated. Both the direct and converse flexoelectric responses are found to vary non-monotonically as the central angle increases. The converse flexoelectric bending is examined to exist even in clamped spherical microshells, which is different from the case of flat structures. In addition, for all cases, the strain gradient effect will highly reduce the flexoelectric responses, particularly when the thickness approaches the material internal scale constants.     

Energy-preserving algorithm for gyrocenter dynamics of charged particles

Numerical Algorithms - Gyrocenter dynamics of charged particles plays a fundamental and important role in plasma physics, which requires accuracy and conservation in a long-time simulation....     

Room temperature ionic liquid electrolytes for redox flow batteries

Redox flow batteries (RFBs) usually contain aqueous or organic electrolytes. The aim of this communication is to explore the suitability of room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) as solvents for RFBs containing metal complexes. Towards this aim, the electrochemistry of the metal acetylacetonate (acac) complexes Mn(acac)₃, Cr(acac)₃, and V(acac)₃ was studied in imidazolium-based RTILs. The V²⁺/V³⁺, V³⁺/V⁴⁺, and V⁴⁺/V⁵⁺ redox couples are quasi-reversible in 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide, [C₂C₁Im][N(Tf₂)]. The Mn(acac)₃ and Cr(acac)₃ voltammetry, on the other hand, is irreversible in [C₂C₁Im][N(Tf₂)] at glassy carbon (GC) but the rate of the Mn²⁺/Mn³⁺ reaction increases if Au electrodes are used. Charge–discharge measurements show that a coulombic efficiency of 72% is achievable using a V(acac)₃/[C₂C₁Im][N(Tf₂)]/GC cell.     

H2S gas sensor based on integrated resonant dual-microcantilevers with high sensitivity and identification capability

Detection of trace-level hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) gas is of great importance whether in industrial production or disease diagnosis. This research presents a novel H₂S gas sensor based on integrated resonant dual-microcantilevers which can identify and detect trace-level H₂S in real-time. The sensor consists of two integrated resonant microcantilever sensors with different functions. One cantilever sensor can identify H₂S by outputting positive frequency shift signals, while the other cantilever sensor will detect H₂S as a normally used cantilever sensor with negative frequency shifts. Combined the two cantilever sensors, the proposed gas sensor can distinguish H₂S from a variety of common gases, and the detection limit to H₂S of the sensor is as sensitive as below 1 ppb.     

无水坝抽水蓄能系统高压溶气问题研究

无水坝抽水蓄能系统利用封闭容器内的高压气体构建虚拟水坝,是兼具压缩空气储能和抽水蓄能优点的新型储能系统。但该系统的封闭容器内水和气在高压状态共存有可能造成水中溶气,从而对水轮机造成汽蚀等破坏。本文采用实际气体状态方程及分子动力学模拟方法,研究了宽广的压力、温度范围下气体在水中的溶解及扩散规律,揭示了水中气体溶解量随时间和水深的变化规律。研究结果表明释能结束后保证水-气共容舱内剩余水的高度大于0.5 m时,高压溶气不会对水轮机产生危害,该结论对系统的工程应用及推广具有指导意义。     

A combined approach of Kullback–Leibler divergence and background subtraction for moving object detection in thermal video

In this work, a robust method for moving object detection in thermal video frames has been proposed by including Kullback–Leibler divergence (KLD) based threshold and background subtraction (BGS) technique. A trimmed-mean based background model has been developed that is capable enough to reduce noise or dynamic component of the background. This work assumed that each pixel has normally distributed. The KLD has computed between background pixel and a current pixel with the help of Gaussian mixture model. The proposed threshold is useful enough to classify the state of each pixel. The post-processing step uses morphological tool for edge linking, and then the flood-fill algorithm has applied for hole-filling, and finally the silhouette of targeted object has generated. The proposed methods run faster and have validated over various real-time based problematic thermal video sequences. In the experimental results, the average value of F₁-score, area under the curve, the percentage of correct classification, Matthew’s correlation coefficient show higher values whereas total error and percentage of the wrong classification show minimum values. Moreover, the proposed-1 method achieved higher accuracy and execution speed with minimum false alarm rate that has been compared with proposed-2 as well as considered peer methods in the real-time thermal video.