Density functional study of TaSin (n = 1-3, 12) clusters adsorbed to graphene surface

A plane-wave density functional theory (DFT) calculations have been performed to investigate structural and electronic properties of TaSi_n (n = 1-3, 12) clusters supported by graphene surface. The resulting adsorption structures are described and discussed in terms of stability, bonding, and electron transfer between the cluster and the graphene. The TaSi_n clusters on graphene surface favor their free-standing ground-state structures. Especially in the cases of the linear TaSi₂ and the planar TaSi₃, the graphene surface may catalyze the transition of the TaSi_n clusters from an isomer of lower dimensionality into the ground-state structure. The adsorption site and configuration of TaSi_n on graphene surface are dominated by the interaction between Ta atom and graphene. Ta atom prefers to adsorb on the hollow site of graphene, and Si atoms tend to locate on the bridge site. Further, the electron transfer is found to proceed from the cluster to the surface for n = 1 and 2, while its direction reverses as n > 2. For the case of TaSi, chemisorption is shown to prevail over physisorption as the dominant mode of surface-adsorbate interaction by charge density analysis.     

Enhancement of chloroform degradation by the combination of hydrodynamic and acoustic cavitation

The decomposition of chloroform by the combination of hydrodynamic and acoustic cavitation (Hydrodynamic-Acoustic-Cavitation/HAC) has been investigated. The flow rate and the hole diameter of the orifice plate remarkably affect the conversion of chloroform in the combined system. The conversion increases with increasing fluid velocity without any restriction. With a 2.8mm orifice plate the conversion reaches an optimal value. A synergistic effect has been obtained by the hybrid method of acoustic and hydrodynamic cavitation. The total synergistic effect achieves 17% and 73% per pass, respectively. The analysis of the energy efficiencies shows different results. Due to high optimization potential, this hybrid method can be visualized as a new step for wastewater treatment.     

Sonochemical synthesis of hierarchical ZnO nanostructures

This work is about fabrication of ZnO nanostructures (ZnO-NS) via a simple sonochemical method. The chemicals used for the synthesis of various shaped ZnO are Zn salt, sodium hydroxide and ammonia solution without other structure directing agent or surfactant needed. This method is feasible and green, as it does not require high temperature and/or highly toxic chemicals. The shape of the ZnO-NS can be tuned by adjusting the ultrasound energy dissipated via varying the ultrasonication time from 5 to 60 min. It was found that uniform ZnO nanorods with diameter around 50 nm were formed after 15 min of ultrasonication while flowerlike ZnO-NS was formed after 30 min. This method produces high quality ZnO-NS with controllable shapes, uniformity, and purity.     

Imaging and quantifying transverse flow velocity with the Doppler bandwidth in a phase-resolved functional optical coherence tomography

The Doppler bandwidth extracted from the standard deviation of the frequency shift in phase-resolved functional optical coherence tomography (F-OCT) was used to image the velocity component that is transverse to the optical probing beam. It was found that above a certain threshold level the Doppler bandwidth is a linear function of flow velocity and that the effective numerical aperture of the optical objective in the sample arm determines the slope of this dependence. The Doppler bandwidth permits accurate measurement of flow velocity without the need for precise determination of flow direction when the Doppler flow angle is within +/-15 degrees perpendicular to the probing beam. Such an approach extends the dynamic range of flow velocity measurements obtained with the phase-resolved F-OCT.     

Refined holographic entanglement entropy for the AdS solitons and AdS black holes

We consider the refinement of the holographic entanglement entropy for the holographic dual theories to the AdS solitons and AdS black holes, including the corrected ones by the Gauss–Bonnet term. The refinement is obtained by extracting the UV-independent piece of the holographic entanglement entropy, the so-called renormalized entanglement entropy which is independent of the choices of UV cutoff. Our main results are: (i) the renormalized entanglement entropies of the _AdSd+1${\mathrm{AdS}}_{d+1}$ soliton for d=4,5$d=4,5$ are neither monotonically decreasing along the RG flow nor positive-definite, especially around the deconfinement/confinement phase transition; (ii) there is no topological entanglement entropy for AdS₅ soliton even with Gauss–Bonnet correction; (iii) for the AdS black holes, the renormalized entanglement entropy obeys an expected volume law at IR regime, and the transition between UV and IR regimes is a smooth crossover even with Gauss–Bonnet correction; (iv) based on AdS/MERA conjecture, we postulate that the IR fixed-point state for the non-extremal AdS soliton is a trivial product state.     

新型有机空穴传输材料氟代四苯基联苯二胺的合成与表征

设计和合成了一种新型的有机空穴传输材料N,N'-二苯基-N,N'-双(2-氟苯基)-[1.1'-联苯]-4,4'-二胺(FTPB),通过熔点测试、元素分析、FTIR光谱和1H NMR谱等手段对其分子结构进行了表征.采用循环伏安法(CV)结合UV-Vis吸收光谱测试了其能级结构.结果表明,其HOMO能级为-5.36eV,带隙为3.20eV,有望成为优良的空穴传输材料.     

The detection of HBV DNA with gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticle gene probes

Gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticle Hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA probes were prepared, and their application for HBV DNA measurement was studied. Gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticles were prepared by the citrate reduction of tetra-chloroauric acid in the presence of iron oxide nanoparticles which were added as seeds. With a fluorescence-based method, the maximal surface coverage of hexaethiol 30-mer oligonucleotides and the maximal percentage of hybridization strands on gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticles were (120 ± 8) oligonucleotides per nanoparticle, and (14 ± 2%), respectively, which were comparable with those of (132 ± 10) and (22 ± 3%) in Au nanoparticle groups. Large network aggregates were formed when gold-coated iron oxide nanoparticle HBV DNA gene probe was applied to detect HBV DNA molecules as evidenced by transmission electron microscopy and the high specificity was verified by blot hybridization. Our results further suggested that detecting DNA with iron oxide nanoparticles and magnetic separator was feasible and might be an alternative effective method.     

Pulsed laser deposition of high-quality ZnO films using a high temperature deposited ZnO buffer layer

High-quality ZnO film growth on sapphire was achieved by pulsed laser deposition using a high temperature deposited ZnO buffer layer. This high temperature deposited buffer layer remarkably improves crystallinity of subsequent films. In particular, the full width at half-maximum of X-ray diffraction ω-rocking curves for ZnO films grown with the buffer layer is 0.0076° (27.36 arcsec) and 0.1242° (447.12 arcsec) for the out-of-plane (002) and in-plane (102) reflections, respectively. In addition, ZnO films grown with this buffer layer showed a carrier mobility of 88 cm²/V s, which is three times higher than that realized for ZnO films grown without the buffer layer. The room temperature photoluminescence spectra showed strong band edge emission with little or no defect-related visible emission. PACS 78.55.Et; 81.05.Dz     

Fabrication of silicon microwire arrays for?photovoltaic?applications

A?novel method of combining photolithography, wet chemical etching and oxidation process was proposed to fabricate large area of silicon microwire (SiMW) arrays. The dimensions of the SiMWs can be easily controlled by photomask and etching conditions. Solar cells based on the heterojunction between SiMW and double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWNTs) were constructed. The initial test on the DWNT/SiMW shows efficiency (??) of?0.59%. By adding a few drops of HBr/B₂ electrolyte, the efficiency was improved to 1.96% with J _sc=19.2?mA/cm² and V _oc=0.35?V, FF=29.2%, showing the potential of SiMWs in photovoltaic applications.     

Surface adhesion properties of graphene and graphene oxide studied by colloid-probe atomic force microscopy

Surface adhesion properties are important to various applications of graphene-based materials. Atomic force microscopy is powerful to study the adhesion properties of samples by measuring the forces on the colloidal sphere tip as it approaches and retracts from the surface. In this paper we have measured the adhesion force between the colloid probe and the surface of graphene (graphene oxide) nanosheet. The results revealed that the adhesion force on graphene and graphene oxide surface were 66.3 and 170.6 nN, respectively. It was found the adhesion force was mainly determined by the water meniscus, which was related to the surface contact angle of samples.