Simultaneous CO2 and H2O Activation via Integrated Cu Single Atom and N Vacancy Dual-Site for Enhanced CO Photo-Production

Photocatalytic conversion of CO₂ into fuels using pure water as the proton source is of immense potential in simultaneously addressing the climate-change crisis and realizing a carbon-neutral economy. Single-atom photocatalysts with tunable local atomic configurations and unique electronic properties have exhibited outstanding catalytic performance in the past decade. However, given their single-site features they are usually only amenable to activations involving single molecules. For CO₂ photoreduction entailing complex activation and dissociation process, designing multiple active sites on a photocatalyst for both CO₂ reduction and H₂O dissociation simultaneously is still a daunting challenge. Herein, it is precisely construct Cu single-atom centers and two-coordinated N vacancies as dual active sites on CN (Cu₁/N_2CV-CN). Experimental and theoretical results show that Cu single-atom centers promote CO₂ chemisorption and activation via accumulating photogenerated electrons, and the N_2CV sites enhance the dissociation of H₂O, thereby facilitating the conversion from COO* to COOH*. Benefiting from the dual-functional sites, the Cu₁/N_2CV-CN exhibits a high selectivity (98.50%) and decent CO production rate of 11.12 µmol g⁻¹ h⁻¹. An ingenious atomic-level design provides a platform for precisely integrating the modified catalyst with the deterministic identification of the electronic property during CO₂ photoreduction process.     

A Hybrid Strategy-Based Ultra-Narrow Stretchable Microelectrodes with Cell-Level Resolution

Stretchable ultra-narrow (e.g., 10 µm in width) microelectrodes are crucial for the electrophysiological monitoring of single cells providing the fundamental understanding to the working mechanism of neuro network or other electrically functional cells. Current fabrication strategies either focus on the preparation of normal stretchable electrodes with hundreds of micrometers or millimeters in width by using inorganic conductive materials or develop conductive organic polymer gel for ultra-narrow electrodes which suffer from low stretchability and instability for long-term implantation, therefore, it is still highly desirable to explore bio-interfacial ultra-narrow stretchable inorganic electrodes. Herein, a hybrid strategy is reported to prepare ultra-narrow multi-channel stretchable microelectrodes without using photolithography or laser-assisting etching. A 10 µm × 10 µm monitoring window is fabricated with enhanced interfacial impedance by the special rough surface. The stretchability achieves to 120% for this 10 µm-width stretchable electrode. Supported by these superior properties, it is demonstrated that the stretchable microelectrodes can detect electrophysiological signals of single cells in vitro and collect electrophysiological signals more precisely in vivo. The reported strategy will open up the accessible preparation of the fine-size stretchable microelectrode. It will significantly improve the resolution of monitoring and stimulation of inorganic stretchable electrodes.     

Functional Materials for Memristor-Based Reservoir Computing: Dynamics and Applications

The booming development of artificial intelligence (AI) requires faster physical processing units as well as more efficient algorithms. Recently, reservoir computing (RC) has emerged as an alternative brain-inspired framework for fast learning with low training cost, since only the weights associated with the output layers should be trained. Physical RC becomes one of the leading paradigms for computation using high-dimensional, nonlinear, dynamic substrates. Among them, memristor appears to be a simple, adaptable, and efficient framework for constructing physical RC since they exhibit nonlinear features and memory behavior, while memristor-implemented artificial neural networks display increasing popularity towards neuromorphic computing. In this review, the memristor-implemented RC systems from the following aspects: architectures, materials, and applications are summarized. It starts with an introduction to the RC structures that can be simulated with memristor blocks. Specific interest then focuses on the dynamic memory behaviors of memristors based on various material systems, optimizing the understanding of the relationship between the relaxation behaviors and materials, which provides guidance and references for building RC systems coped with on-demand application scenarios. Furthermore, recent advances in the application of memristor-based physical RC systems are surveyed. In the end, the further prospects of memristor-implemented RC system in a material view are envisaged.     

基于改进免疫粒子群优化算法的室内可见光通信三维定位方法

针对室内可见光通信中3维定位精度不高和定位时间较长的问题,该文提出基于改进免疫粒子群(IIMPSO)算法的室内可见光通信(VLC)3维定位方法.通过分析室内多径效应,选取合适的视场角(FOV)以减少反射影响,同时完善了倾斜状态下的定位模型,并采用卡尔曼滤波算法以降低环境干扰对接收功率的影响,在此基础上与改进的免疫粒子群算法相融合.仿真结果表明,在5 m×5 m×3 m的室内环境中,该文所提出的3维定位系统平均定位误差为0.031 m,定位时长为2.3 s.与现有的3维定位系统进行比较,其定位精度与收敛速度均得到明显改善.     

Face anti-spoofing based on multi-modal and multi-scale features fusion

Face anti-spoofing is used to assist face recognition system to judge whether the detected face is real face or fake face. In the traditional face anti-spoofing methods, features extracted by hand are used to describe the difference between living face and fraudulent face. But these handmade features do not apply to different variations in an unconstrained environment. The convolutional neural network (CNN) for face deceptions achieves considerable results. However, most existing neural network-based methods simply use neural networks to extract single-scale features from single-modal data, while ignoring multi-scale and multi-modal information. To address this problem, a novel face anti-spoofing method based on multi-modal and multi-scale features fusion ( MMFF) is proposed. Specifically, first residual network ( Resnet )-34 is adopted to extract features of different scales from each modality, then these features of different scales are fused by feature pyramid network (FPN), finally squeeze-and-excitation fusion ( SEF) module and self-attention network ( SAN) are combined to fuse features from different modalities for classification. Experiments on the CASIA-SURF dataset show that the new method based on MMFF achieves better performance compared with most existing methods.     

Editorial: Machine Learning and Intelligent Communications (MLICOM 2018)

Mobile Networks and Applications -     

Physical Violence Detection Based on Distributed Surveillance Cameras

Mobile Networks and Applications - In recent years, physical violence detection has become a research hotspot in the area of human activity recognition. With the improvement and full coverage of...     

In Situ Management of Ions Migration to Control Hysteresis Effect for Planar Heterojunction Perovskite Solar Cells

As one of the most promising photovoltaic materials, the efficiency of inorganic–organic hybrid halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has reached 25.5% in 2020. However, the stability and hysteresis remain primary challenges before it can become a commercial photovoltaic technology. Therefore, those issues have drawn significant attention for photovoltaic applications. In this work, a study of the PSCs hysteresis improvement is presented based on a combination of first-principles simulations, scanning electron microscopy images, and time-dependent photocurrent measurements. It indicates the hysteresis led by the ion migration and accumulation is mainly localized at the two interfaces: one is between electron transport layer and active layer, and the other is between active layer and hole transport layer. Considering the massive defects at the grain boundaries (GBs), they lower the potential barriers significantly. The defect density at GBs is therefore reduced via the in situ passivation of PbI₂ crystals. The hysteresis index is decreased from 22.43% down to 1.04%, and results in an improvement in efficiency from 17.12% up to 20.10%. Following the understanding of defect-induced hysteresis, an approach to improve the hysteresis is provided, which can be integrated into the fabrication process and widely applied to enhance the performance of PSCs.