Absorption enhancement of ultrathin crystalline silicon solar cells with frequency upconversion nanosphere arrays

A design of ultrathin crystalline silicon solar cells patterned with α-NaEr_(0.2)Y_(0.8)F_4 upconversion nanosphere(NSs) arrays on the surface was proposed. The light trapping performance ofα-NaEr_(0.2)Y_(0.8)F_4 NSs with different ratios of sphere diameter to sphere pitch was systematically studied by COMSOL Multiphysics. The influence of different NS diameters and ratio to the average optical absorption of ultrathin crystalline silicon solar cell was calculated, as well as the short circuit current densities. The results show that the average optical absorption of solar cells with 2.33 μm silicon covered by α-NaEr_(0.2)Y_(0.8)F_4 NSs of 100 nm in diameter and 5.2 in ratio has improved by 8.5% compared to planar silicon solar cells with the same thickness of silicon. The light trapping performance of different thicknesses of silicon solar cells with the optimized configuration of NSs was also discussed. The results indicate that our structure enhances the light absorption. The presented model will be the basis for further simulations concerning frequency upconversion of α-NaEr_(0.2)Y_(0.8)F_4 materials.     

Faster Sickling Kinetics and Sickle Cell Shape Evolution during Repeated Deoxygenation and Oxygenation Cycles

Experimental Mechanics - Kinetics of cell sickling and morphological change have been recognized as important parameters that are correlated closely with altered blood rheology and vasoocclusion in...     

硬脂酸镉和山嵛酸镉混合LB膜的微结构

X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to investigate the microstructure and phase separation of mixed multilayers of cadmium stearate (SA) and behenate (BA) deposited onto hydrophilic glass by the Langmuir-Blodgett technique. No unitary fatty acid diffraction peaks in the XRD spectra of the mixed LB films, which reveals that domains in these samples are small and uniform. The interplanar spacing of the mixed LB films changes with the ratio of BA to SA in a step-shaped curve, which suggests that with the changing of the ratio between BA and SA, only three kinds of ordered structure form in the mixed system, and each microstructure, in particular, the short chains against long chains meshed microstructure can be maintained in a certain ratio range . In addition, for the meshed microstructure, the alkyl chains of both SA and BA stand straight or may have exactly the same small tilted angle from the substrate normal, as is indicated by the symmetric and asymmetric stretching vibration of methylene (CH2) peaks which are at 2847.80 and 2914.37 cm-1respectively in the Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) transmission spectra. The mixed system always goes through a longitudinal regularity decreasing process when BA/SA is out of the intermediate ratio range (BA/SA: 1/5-1/1), which is illustrated by the relative XRD intensity changing with the ratio of BA/ SA in a \W" shape. These results for the mixed LB films of BA/SA provide meaningful data for choosing the mixture ratio when fabricating composite films with special structure.     

Heat‐Free Biomimetic Metal Molding on Soft Substrates

Fabrication of bio‐templated metallic structures is limited by differences in properties, processing conditions, packing, and material state(s). Herein, by using undercooled metal particles, differences in modulus and processing temperatures can be overcome. Adoption of autonomous processes such as self‐filtration, capillary pressure, and evaporative concentration leads to enhanced packing, stabilization (jamming) and point sintering with phase change to create solid metal replicas of complex bio‐based features. Differentiation of subtle differences between cultivars of the rose flower with reproduction over large areas shows that this biomimetic metal patterning (BIOMAP) is a versatile method to replicate biological features either as positive or negative reliefs irrespective of the substrate. Using rose petal patterns, we illustrate the versatility of bio‐templated mapping with undercooled metal particles at ambient conditions, and with unprecedented efficiency for metal structures.     

Copper‐Catalyzed Aerobic Oxidative Reaction of Sulfonyl Hydrazides with Alcohols: An Easy Access to Sulfinates

A Cu‐catalyzed aerobic oxidative reaction between sulfonyl hydrazides and alcohols has been developed. In this reaction, sulfonyl hydrazides act as the sulfinic acid precursors to react with alcohols, resulting in sulfinic esters with up to 72 % yield. This catalytic system tolerates a wide range of sulfonyl hydrazide substrates, and represents a new strategy for the transformation of readily available sulfonyl hydrazides.     

The hydration properties of carboxybetaine zwitterion brushes

Combined quantum mechanical calculations and classical molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to investigate the hydration properties of carboxybetaine zwitterion brushes with varying separation distances between the quaternary ammonium cation and carboxylic anion. The brushes consist of zwitterion trimers and are investigated to mimic interacting zwitterion chains grafted on a substrate as well as polymers with interacting zwitterion side chains. Our results show that the values of both positive and negative charges, their separation distances as well as chain interactions appear to play a critical role in the hydration properties of the zwitterions. The overall hydration property of these zwitterions is dictated by the competition between the strong hydration of the charged groups and the dehydration of the hydrocarbon chains. The strongest hydration occurs when the ? CH₂? unit in the hydrocarbon chain reaches 6–8 for these trimers. Further increase in the hydrocarbon chain length to 10–14 leads to significant and sudden dehydration of the trimers. The water structure and the water residence time surrounding the zwitterions also demonstrate substantial alteration at this length scale. This hydrophilic‐to‐hydrophobic transition is induced by the hydrophobic interactions of the trimer chains. Our hydration results could explain the observed trend of the superiority of the methylated carbohydrates and poly(ethylene glycol) as antifouling materials compared to corresponding hydroxyl‐terminated compounds. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

偶氮四唑叠氮基甲脒AFZT高压物性的第一性原理计算

偶氮四唑叠氮基甲脒AFZT的爆轰性能表现优异,在高能炸药领域中具有广阔的应用前景.本文采用基于密度泛函理论的第一性原理方法计算了AFZT在0～50 GPa压力下的晶体结构、电子性质以及氢键相互作用,并分析了这些性质在压力下的变化规律.在压力的作用下,AFZT晶体在5 GPa下发生了结构转变并伴随着电子结构中带隙值的突变,其带隙先减小后增大再减小,总态密度的峰值随着压力的增加而减小.结构中叠氮甲脒阳离子上的N8-N9与N9-N10键在压力下表现得最稳定,N-H^…N类型的氢键在所有相互作用中占据主导地位.此外,AFZT结构沿不同晶轴压缩的难易程度与此方向上氢键相互作用分布的疏密有关,并且其氢键主要沿xz平面分布而在y轴上分布极少,这导致了它沿y轴方向最易被压缩.     

CT and MRI Medical Image Fusion Using Noise-Removal and Contrast Enhancement Scheme with Convolutional Neural Network

Medical image fusion (MIF) has received painstaking attention due to its diverse medical applications in response to accurately diagnosing clinical images. Numerous MIF methods have been proposed to date, but the fused image suffers from poor contrast, non-uniform illumination, noise presence, and improper fusion strategies, resulting in an inadequate sparse representation of significant features. This paper proposes the morphological preprocessing method to address the non-uniform illumination and noise by the bottom-hat–top-hat strategy. Then, grey-principal component analysis (grey-PCA) is used to transform RGB images into gray images that can preserve detailed features. After that, the local shift-invariant shearlet transform (LSIST) method decomposes the images into the low-pass (LP) and high-pass (HP) sub-bands, efficiently restoring all significant characteristics in various scales and directions. The HP sub-bands are fed to two branches of the Siamese convolutional neural network (CNN) by process of feature detection, initial segmentation, and consistency verification to effectively capture smooth edges, and textures. While the LP sub-bands are fused by employing local energy fusion using the averaging and selection mode to restore the energy information. The proposed method is validated by subjective and objective quality assessments. The subjective evaluation is conducted by a user case study in which twelve field specialists verified the superiority of the proposed method based on precise details, image contrast, noise in the fused image, and no loss of information. The supremacy of the proposed method is further justified by obtaining 0.6836 to 0.8794, 0.5234 to 0.6710, and 3.8501 to 8.7937 gain for QFAB, CRR, and AG and noise reduction from 0.3397 to 0.1209 over other methods for objective parameters.