A new way to apply ultrasound in cross-flow ultrafiltration: Application to colloidal suspensions

A new coupling of ultrasound device with membrane process has been developed in order to enhance cross-flow ultrafiltration of colloidal suspensions usually involved in several industrial applications included bio and agro industries, water and sludge treatment. In order to reduce mass transfer resistances induced by fouling and concentration polarization, which both are main limitations in membrane separation process continuous ultrasound is applied with the help of a vibrating blade (20 kHz) located in the feed channel all over the membrane surface (8 mm between membrane surface and the blade). Hydrodynamic aspects were also taking into account by the control of the rectangular geometry of the feed channel.Three colloidal suspensions with different kinds of colloidal interaction (attractive, repulsive) were chosen to evaluate the effect of their physico-chemical properties on the filtration.For a 90 W power (20.5 W cm⁻²) and a continuous flow rate, permeation fluxes are increased for each studied colloidal suspension, without damaging the membrane. The results show that the flux increase depends on the initial structural properties of filtered dispersion in terms of colloidal interaction and spatial organizations.For instance, a Montmorillonite Wyoming–Na clay suspension was filtered at 1.5 × 10⁵ Pa transmembrane pressure. Its permeation flux is increased by a factor 7.1, from 13.6 L m⁻² h⁻¹ without ultrasound to 97 L m⁻² h⁻¹ with ultrasound.     

Maxwell–Wagner polarization in grain boundary segregated NiCuZn ferrite

The present work investigates the polarization response in polycrystalline Ni_0.9−yCu_yZn_0.1Fe_1.98O_4−δ (y = 0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5) ferrite synthesized by solid–state reaction method. X-ray diffraction analysis confirmed cubic spinel phase formation in the calcined samples. Sintered samples contain a continuous network of CuO-rich segregation along the grain boundaries for y ≥ 0.2. Dielectric spectra showed a relaxation peak for y ≥ 0.2 in the frequency range of 1 kHz–1 MHz. This relaxation has been explained based on Maxwell–Wagner polarization considering two-layer model in connection with two heterogeneous dielectric media.     

Stereodynamics in reaction O（1D） ＋ CH4 〉OH ＋ CH3

A theoretical study of the stereodynamics for reaction O(1D) + CH4→OH + CH3 has been carried out using the quasiclassical trajectory method(QCT) on a potential energy surface structured by Gonzalez et al. The integral cross sections(ICSs), differential cross sections(DCSs) and product rotational angular momentum polarization have been calculated. With the collision energy increasing, the ICS decreases. There is no threshold energy, because no barrier is found on the minimum energy path. The DCS results show that the backward and forward scatterings exist at the same time. With the collision energy increasing, the dominant rotation of the product changes from the right-handed direction to the left-handed direction in planes parallel to the scattering plane. In the isotopic effect study, the decrease of the mass factor weakens the polarization degree of the rotational angular momentum vectors of the products.     

A tunable infrared plasmonic polarization filter with asymmetrical cross resonator

A tunable infrared plasmonic polarization filter is proposed and investigated in this paper. The filter is based on the sandwich absorption structure which consists of three layers. The top layer is an array of asymmetrical cross resonator.The middle and bottom layers are dielectric spacer and metal film respectively. By absorbing specific wavelength of the incident light perfectly, the reflection spectrum of the structure shows filter performance. The calculated results show that the absorption wavelength is strongly dependent on the length of branch of the asymmetrical cross resonator which is parallel to the light polarization and independent of the length of the vertical one. Therefore, the asymmetrical cross resonator filter structure opens the way for freely tuning the filtering wavelength for a different light polarization. We can fix a resonant wavelength(absorption wavelength) corresponding to one polarization and change the resonant wavelength for the other polarization by adjusting the corresponding branch length of the asymmetrical cross resonator, or change the two resonant wavelengths of both two polarizations at the same time.     

Effects of oblique incidence on terahertz responses of planar split-ring resonators

Effects of oblique incidence of terahertz waves on the response of planar split-ring resonators are investigated, both experimentally and by simulation. It is found that the incident angle dependent phase delay and coupling conditions of neighboring split-ring resonator(SRR) units play important roles and greatly change both the transmission and reflection spectra for the resonant feature of linear charge oscillations. Our results show that the SRR structure-supported magnetoelectric couplings at oblique excitation are trivial and can be ignored. A highly symmetric response is found in the cross-polarization effects, which may manifest the bianisotropic properties of the SRR system but this needs further study.     

Effects of polarization and p-type GaN resistivity on the spectral response of InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well solar cells

Effects of polarization and p-type GaN resistivity on the spectral response of InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well(MQW) solar cells are investigated. It is found that due to the reduction of piezoelectric polarization and the enhancement of tunneling transport of photo-generated carriers in MQWs, the external quantum efficiency(EQE) of the solar cells increases in a low energy spectral range(λ 370 nm) when the barrier thickness value decreases from 15 nm to 7.5 nm. But the EQE decreases abruptly when the barrier thickness value decreases down to 3.75 nm. The reasons for these experimental results are analyzed. We are aware that the reduction of depletion width in MQW region, caused by the high resistivity of the p-type GaN layer may be the main reason for the abnormally low EQE value at long wavelengths(λ 370 nm).     

Systematically investigating the polarization gradient cooling in an optical molasses of ultracold cesium atoms

We systematically investigate the polarization gradient cooling （PGC） process in an optical molasses of ultracold cesium atoms. The SR mode for changing the cooling laser, which means that the cooling laser frequency is stepped to the setting value while its intensity is ramped, is found to be the best for the PGC, compared with other modes studied. We verify that the heating effect of the cold atoms, which appears when the cooling laser intensity is lower than the saturation intensity, arises from insufficient polarization gradient cooling. Finally, an exponential decay function with a statistical explanation is introduced to explain the dependence of the cold atom temperature on the PGC interaction time.     

Designing of a polarization beam splitter for the wavelength of 1310 nm on dual-core photonic crystal fiber with high birefringence and double-zero dispersion

We have proposed a novel kind of photonic crystal fiber which contains two asymmetric cores. The bireti＇ingence and the dispersion are numerically analyzed based on finite element method when the size of the air holes and the pitch of two adjacent air holes are changed. It is shown that the proposed photonic crystal fiber has high birefringence up to the order of 10-2 and double-zero dispersion points are at the wavelengths of 1310 nm and 800 rim, simultaneously. At the same time, the normalized power and the extinction ratios of the proposed photonic crystal fiber have been simulated. It is demonstrated that, at the wavelength of 1310 rim, the x-polarized mode and the y-polarized mode are separated when the propagation distance is 2.481 ram.