Electrocatalytic Activity of a 2D Phosphorene‐Based Heteroelectrocatalyst for Photoelectrochemical Cells

Research into efficient synthesis, fundamental properties, and potential applications of phosphorene is currently the subject of intense investigation. Herein, solution‐processed phosphorene or few‐layer black phosphorus (FL‐BP) sheets are prepared using a microwave exfoliation method and used in photoelectrochemical cells. Based on experimental and theoretical (DFT) studies, the FL‐BP sheets are found to act as catalytically active sites and show excellent electrocatalytic activity for triiodide reduction in dye‐sensitized solar cells. Importantly, the device fabricated based on the newly designed cobalt sulfide (CoS_x) decorated nitrogen and sulfur co‐doped carbon nanotube heteroelectrocatalyst coated with FL‐BP (FL‐BP@N,S‐doped CNTs‐CoS_x) displayed an impressive photovoltaic efficiency of 8.31 %, outperforming expensive platinum based cells. This work paves the way for using phosphorene‐based electrocatalysts for next‐generation energy‐storage systems.     

Influence of the Nature of A Cation on Dynamics of Charge Transfer Processes in Perovskite Solar Cells

The electronic processes occurring within the perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are strongly influenced by the nature of the organic A cations present within the inorganic framework. In this study, the impact of FA (CH(NH₂)₂⁺) and Cs⁺ cations on the intrinsic and interfacial properties in the FAPbBr₃ and CsPbBr₃ PSCs is investigated. The analysis of current density ( J _SC) and photovoltage ( V _OC) as a function of illumination intensity establishes that the interfacial charge transport is more rapid in FAPbBr₃ devices. Small perturbation measurements including intensity modulated photocurrent and photovoltage spectroscopy are applied to explore the resistive and capacitive elements. Furthermore, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements are found to correlate well with the photovoltaic characteristics of FAPbBr₃ and CsPbBr₃ PSCs. Overall, the in‐depth analysis of various phenomena occurring within the bromide PSCs allows to underline the working principle, which provides a key to optimize the device performance. The present protocol is not only valid for PSCs but can also be extended to devices based on alternative light harvesters.     

All Slot-Die Coated Non-Fullerene Organic Solar Cells with PCE 11%

Slot-die (SD) coating is used to fabricate fully solution processed organic solar cells (OSCs) based on a blend of high performance donor polymer (PTB7-Th) and a non-fullerene acceptor (IEICO-4F) for stable devices over extended periods of operation. The optimization of a sequential deposition process of transport and active layers, under ambient conditions, enable high efficiency slot-die coated solar cells with remarkable power conversion efficiencies (PCE) > 11.0% to bridge the gap between lab-to-fab. Fully slot-die coated inverted OSCs are demonstrated with efficiencies reaching 11% along with 1 cm² devices, proving the scalability and reproducibility of the proposed technique. Further, replacing the evaporated Ag electrode with solution processed Ag nanowire (AgNW) electrodes shows the highest light utilization efficiency of 5.26% for semi-transparent OSC with a PCE of 9.07% and average visible transmission of 58%.     

A proactive defense method for the stealthy EDoS attacks in a cloud environment

Cloud computing technology provides flexibility to Cloud Service Provider (CSP) for providing the cloud resources based on the users' requirements. In on‐demand pricing model, the attackers exploit this feature and cause unwanted scaling‐up of the cloud resources without any intent to pay for them. The associated cost for the unpaid malicious usage burdens the CSP, and over a long period, economic losses occur at the CSP end. Thus, the resources and services offered by the CSP become unsustainable, and the attack is termed as Economic Denial‐of‐Sustainability (EDoS) attack. The existing defense approaches for EDoS attacks are reactive. Thus, the associated attack detection/mitigation cost is high; consequently, the approaches are not suitable for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The aim of this paper is to detect and mitigate, internal and external, stealthy EDoS attacks proactively. The attack is detected using average CPU utilization threshold and utility function (in terms of cost for the utilized cloud computing resources) and mitigated using virtual firewalls. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is used to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The proposed approach accurately detects the EDoS attack and mitigates its effect as well with reduced cost. It is observed that the approach provides competitive response time, victim service downtime, and attack reporting time. Thus, the overall performance is improved.     

Detection of Low-Rate Cloud DDoS Attacks in Frequency Domain Using Fast Hartley Transform

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack has been a serious threat to the availability feature of cloud computing. As traditional DDoS attacks are implemented using a huge volume of malicious traffic, the detection of such attacks becomes a naive task. To evade this detection, attackers are moving towards the Low-Rate DDoS (LRDDoS) attacks. The stealthy behavior of LRDDoS attack makes it difficult to get detected due to its low volume traffic. The existing frequency-domain approaches for LRDDoS detection are not feasible in terms of computational and storage requirements. This paper aims to propose a lightweight, accurate, and adaptive approach for the detection of LRDDoS attacks in frequency-domain. In this paper, the LRDDoS attack is detected by analyzing the power spectral distribution. The novelty of the proposed approach is to calculate the power spectral density using Fast Hartley Transform (FHT). The FHT processes real-valued input data, and has low computational and storage complexities. The approach is implemented on OpenStack cloud platform, and the aggregate network traffic (external and internal) is captured and analyzed. Experimental results show that the computational and storage complexities involved in FHT are lower than other transformation algorithms’ complexities. Thus, the approach provides faster response with an average detection time of 60.16 s. The average true negative and true positive rates obtained by the proposed approach are 99.83% and 99.46% respectively, which are competitive.

     

C—H...O hydrogen‐bonding and C—H...π interactions in 3‐(4‐fluorophenyl)‐1,5,7‐trimethyl‐1,2,3,4‐tetrahydropyrido[2,3‐d]pyrimidine‐2,4‐dione

In the title compound, C₁₆H₁₄FN₃O₂, a diverse set of weak intermolecular C—H...π, π–π and C—H...O interactions link the molecules into sheets. The C—H...O interactions generate centrosymmetric rings with a graph‐set motif of R₂²(14) and chains with a C(8) motif.     

A Remark on Pl Type Interpolation on Non-Uniformly Distributed Nodes on the Unit Circle

In this paper we study the problem of explicit representation and convergence of P′al type(0;1) interpolation and its converse, with some additional conditions,on the non-uniformly distributed nodes on the unit circle obtained by projecting the interlaced zeros of Pn(x) and P′n(x) on the unit circle. The motivation to this problem can be traced to the recent studies on the regularity of Birkhoff interpolation and P′al type interpolations on non-uniformly distributed zeros on the unit circle.