A simple shear cell for the direct visualization of step-stress deformation in soft materials

We introduce a custom-built stress-controlled shear cell coupled to a confocal microscope for direct visualization of constant-stress shear deformation in soft materials. The torque generator is a cylindrical Taylor–Couette system with a Newtonian fluid between a rotating inner bob and a free-to-move outer cup. A spindle/cone assembly is coaxially coupled to the cup and transfers the torque exerted by the fluid to the sample of interest in a cone-and-plate geometry. We demonstrate the performance of our device in both steady-state and transient experiments with different viscoelastic materials. Our apparatus can conduct unidirectional constant-stress experiments as accurately as most commercial rheometers, with the capability to directly visualize the flow field using tracer particles. Further, our step-stress experiments on viscoelastic materials are devoid of creep ringing, which is an advantageous aspect of our torque generation mechanism. We believe that the device presented here could serve as a powerful and cost-effective tool to investigate the microstructural determinants of nonlinear rheology in complex fluids.     

Onset of Buoyancy-Driven Convection in a Fluid-Saturated Porous Medium Bounded by a Long Cylinder

A theoretical analysis of convective instability driven by buoyancy forces under the transient concentration fields is conducted in an initially quiescent, liquid-saturated, cylindrical porous column. Darcy’s law and Boussinesq approximation are used to explain the characteristics of fluid motion and linear stability theory is employed to predict the onset of buoyancy-driven motion. Under the principle of exchange of stabilities, the stability equations are derived in self-similar boundary-layer coordinate. The present predictions suggest the critical $R_D$ , and the onset time and corresponding wavenumber for a given $R_D$ . The onset time becomes smaller with increasing $R_D$ and follows the asymptotic relation derived in the infinite horizontal porous layer.     

Large area impingement spray cooling from multiple normal and inclined spray nozzles

An inclined spray chamber with four multiple nozzles to cool a 1 kW 6U electronic test card has been designed and tested in this study. The multiple inclined sprays can cover the same heated surface area as that with the multiple normal sprays but halve the volume of the spray chamber. The spray cooling system used R134a as a working fluid in a modified refrigeration cycle. It is observed that increasing mass flow rate and pressure drop across the nozzles improved the heat transfer coefficient with a maximum enhancement of 117 %, and reduced the maximum temperature difference at the heated surface from 13.8 to 8.4 °C in the inclined spray chamber with a heat flux of 5.25 W/cm², while the heat transfer coefficient of the normal spray increased with a maximum enhancement of 215 % and the maximum temperature difference decreased from 10.8 to 5.4 °C under similar operating conditions. We conclude that the multiple inclined sprays could produce a higher heat transfer coefficient but with an increase in non-uniformity of the surface temperature compared with the multiple normal sprays.     

Thermodynamic performance of a hybrid air cycle refrigeration system using a desiccant rotor

Due to the concern on global warming, the demand for a system using natural refrigerant is increasing and many researches have been devoted to develop systems with natural refrigerants. Among natural refrigerant systems, an air cycle system has emerged as one of alternatives of Freon gas system due to environmentally friendly feature in spite of the inherent low efficiency. To overcome the technical barrier, this study proposed combination of multiple systems as a hybrid cycle to achieve higher efficiency of an air cycle system. The hybrid air cycle adopts a humidity control units such as an adsorber and a desorber to obtain the cooling effect from latent heat as well as sensible heat. To investigate the efficacy of the hybrid air cycle, the cooling performance of a hybrid air cycle is investigated analytically and experimentally. From the simulation result, it is found that COP of the hybrid air cycle is two times higher than that of the conventional air cycle. The experiments are conducted on the performance of the desiccant system according to the rotation speed in the system and displayed the feasibility of the key element in the hybrid air cycle system. From the results, it is shown that the system efficiency can be enhanced by utilization of the exhausted heat through the ambient heat exchanger with advantage of controlling the humidity by the desiccant rotor.     

Multipeak-structured photoluminescence mechanisms of as-prepared and oxidized Si nanoporous pillar arrays

Silicon dominates the electronic industry, but its poor optical properties mean that it is not preferred for photonic applications. Visible photoluminescence (PL) was observed from porous Si at room temperature in 1990, but the origin of these light emissions is still not fully understood. This paper reports that an Si nanocrystal, silicon nanoporous pillar array (Si-NPA) with strong visible PL has been prepared on a Si wafer substrate by the hydrothermal etching method. After annealing in O₂ atmosphere, the hydride coverage of the Si pillar internal surface is replaced by an oxide layer, which comprises of a great quantity of Si nanocrystal (nc-Si) particles and each of them are encapsulated by an Si oxide layer. Meanwhile a transition from efficient triple-peak PL bands from blue to red before annealing to strong double-peak blue PL bands after annealing is observed. Comparison of the structural, absorption and luminescence characteristics of the as-prepared and oxidized samples provides evidence for two competitive transition processes, the band-to-band recombination of the quantum confinement effect of nc-Si and the radiative recombination of excitons from the luminescent centres located at the surface of nc-Si units or in the Si oxide layers that cover the nc-Si units because of the different oxidation degrees. The sizes of nc-Si and the quality of the Si oxide surface are two major factors affecting two competitive processes. The smaller the size of nc-Si is and the stronger the oxidation degree of Si oxide layer is, the more beneficial for the luminescent centre recombination process to surpass the quantum confinement process is. The clarification on the origin of the photons may be important for the Si nanoporous pillar array to control both the PL band positions and the relative intensities according to future device requirements and further fabrication of optoelectronic nanodevices.     

多维漫透射光谱提高复杂混合溶液分析能力

多维漫透射光谱技术利用传统的近红外透射测量方式,增加一维扫描装置,获得透射方向上的径向光谱,并利用多点漫透射光谱对复杂混合溶液进行成分分析。实验设计了基于氙灯光源、精密电控平移台和光谱仪的检测装置,选用Intralipid-20%,India Ink和C₆H₁₂O₆共配制225种成分含量不同的混合溶液,分别测量距其透射中心点0～5 mm(间隔0.25 mm)范围内的20点漫透射光谱信号,以偏最小二乘回归算法对单点和多点漫透射光谱信号进行建模分析。实验得到India Ink含量和Intralipid-20%含量随漫透射光位置点的增加建模及预测的精度提高,C₆H₁₂O₆含量随漫透射光位置点的增加建模及预测精度没有明显变化。结果表明,增加不同位置信息的漫透射光谱信号,能够提高复杂混合溶液中强吸收物质和强散射物质的信噪比,对于弱吸收弱散射物质有望在提升系统精度的前提下提高其预测能力。     

Surface voltammetric dealloying investigation on PdCu/C electrocatalysts toward ethanol oxidation in alkaline media

Voltammetric dealloying is employed here to investigate the correlations between catalytic performance and surface composition and structure, taking ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR) on Pd-Cu alloy surface as a case study. First, home-made PdCu/C with a mean particle size of ca. 3.11?±?0.6 nm is dealloyed by repetitive potential cycling in 0.5 M H₂SO₄. With dealloying cycles rising, the Cu component is gradually leached out and the corresponding Pd/Cu atomic ratio gradually increases from ca. 2.1 to 4.0; meanwhile, SEM images display that Pd-rich porous shell is formed due to dealloying-induced surface structural rearrangement, being verified by the appearance of ear-like peaks at ??0.015 V (vs. SCE) in CVs collected in 0.5 M H₂SO₄; furthermore, XPS spectra indicate that core-level binding energies of Pd 3d_5/2 first positively shift to 336.1 eV and then oppositively move down to 334.9 eV, indicating that the d-band center of Pd composition is modulated by the dealloying treatment. Moreover, the voltammetric peak current densities for EOR follow the order of PdCu/C-DA15?>?as-prepared PdCu/C ??>?PdCu/C-DA30 ? commercial Pd/C ? PdCu/C-DA75, due to the modest downshift of Pd d-band center resulted by charge transfer and surface atomic rearrangement. In addition, the EOR durability gradually decays with the continuous loss of Cu, indicating that electro-oxidation of surface species also follows the so-called bi-functional mechanism. This work might provide some new insights into the catalysis enhancement by tuning the surface/interfacial structure of catalysts.

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Graphical abstract The voltammetric peak current densities for ethanol oxidation on home-made PdCu/C catalysts gradually decrease with the dealloying cycles rising, suggesting that the surface voltammetric dealloyment could effectively modulate the surface composition and structure, so as to tune the catalytic performance.

     

Blind quantum computation with identity authentication

Blind quantum computation (BQC) allows a client with relatively few quantum resources or poor quantum technologies to delegate his computational problem to a quantum server such that the client's input, output, and algorithm are kept private. However, all existing BQC protocols focus on correctness verification of quantum computation but neglect authentication of participants' identity which probably leads to man-in-the-middle attacks or denial-of-service attacks. In this work, we use quantum identification to overcome such two kinds of attack for BQC, which will be called QI-BQC. We propose two QI-BQC protocols based on a typical single-server BQC protocol and a double-server BQC protocol. The two protocols can ensure both data integrity and mutual identification between participants with the help of a third trusted party (TTP). In addition, an unjammable public channel between a client and a server which is indispensable in previous BQC protocols is unnecessary, although it is required between TTP and each participant at some instant. Furthermore, the method to achieve identity verification in the presented protocols is general and it can be applied to other similar BQC protocols.     

Downward self‐polarization of lead‐free (K0.5Na0.5)(Mn0.005Nb0.995)O3 ferroelectric thin films on Nb:SrTiO3 substrate

Spontaneously appearing macroscopic polarization (self‐polarization) in ferroelectrics without an electrode or an external electric field would enable the freedom to design many ferroelectric heterostructures and devices. The (K_0.5Na_0.5)(Mn_0.005Nb_0.995)O₃ (KNMN) thin film was grown on Nb:SrTiO₃ single‐crystal substrate and the resultant self‐polarization behavior due to strain relaxation was investigated. The lattice mismatch and difference in TEC between the KNMN thin film and the Nb:SrTiO₃ substrate creates a compressive strain. The compressive strain gradient may be the main cause for the observed downward self‐polarization. The downward self‐polarization of the KNMN thin film can be explained by the strong inhomogeneous compressive strain caused by strain relaxation. (© 2016 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH &Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Adaptive Mixed GMsFEM for Flows in Heterogeneous Media

In this paper, we present two adaptive methods for the basis enrichment of the mixed Generalized Multiscale Finite Element Method (GMsFEM) for solving the flow problem in heterogeneous media. We develop an a-posteriori error indicator which depends on the norm of a local residual operator. Based on this indicator, we construct an offline adaptive method to increase the number of basis functions locally in coarse regions with large local residuals. We also develop an online adaptive method which iteratively enriches the function space by adding new functions computed based on the residual of the previous solution and special minimum energy snapshots. We show theoretically and numerically the convergence of the two methods. The online method is, in general, better than the offline method as the online method is able to capture distant effects (at a cost of online computations), and both methods have faster convergence than a uniform enrichment. Analysis shows that the online method should start with a certain number of initial basis functions in order to have the best performance. The numerical results confirm this and show further that with correct selection of initial basis functions, the convergence of the online method can be independent of the contrast of the medium. We consider cases with both very high and very low conducting inclusions and channels in our numerical experiments.