Polymer 4D printing: Advanced shape-change and beyond

4D printing is an exciting branch of additive manufacturing. It relies on established 3D printing techniques to fabricate objects in much the same way. However, structures which fall into the 4D printed category have the ability to change with time, hence the “extra dimension.” The common perception of 4D printed objects is that of macroscopic single-material structures limited to point-to-point shape change only, in response to either heat or water. However, in the area of polymer 4D printing, recent advancements challenge this understanding. A host of new polymeric materials have been designed which display a variety of wonderful effects brought about by unconventional stimuli, and advanced additive manufacturing techniques have been developed to accommodate them. As a result, the horizons of polymer 4D printing have been broadened beyond what was initially thought possible. In this review, we showcase the many studies which evolve the very definition of polymer 4D printing, and reveal emerging areas of research integral to its advancement.     

Insights into MWCNTs/polyimide nanocomposites: from synthesis to application as free-standing flexible electrodes in low-cost micro-supercapacitors

In the pursuit to enlarge the library of polyimide materials for energy applications, new polyimide/MWCNTs composite films have been developed by MWCNTs-assisted polycondensation reaction of a hydroxyl and triphenylmethane-containing diamine with benzophenone tetracarboxylic dianhydride targeting to highlight their electrical storage capability as flexible electrodes in micro-supercapacitors (mSCs). The Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, proton nuclear magnetic resonance, UV–vis, fluorescence, and Raman spectroscopies were used to demonstrate the evolution of interfacial interactions between MWCNTs and the precursors (diamine monomer and intermediate polyamidic acid) and polyimide matrix that proved to be the origin of MWCNTs homogeneous dispersion. Thus, composite films incorporating 1, 3, 5, and 10 w.t.% MWCNTs were obtained and thoroughly investigated with regard to their morphology, mechanical behavior, thermal stability, and electrical conductivity. The electrochemical performance of these composites was first analyzed in a classical three-electrode cell by cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic charge-discharge in both aqueous and organic electrolyte systems. By far, the best electrical storage capacity was obtained with the composite polyimide film containing 10% MWCNTs that was further used as both active material and current collector in a flexible symmetric mSC realized by a straightforward and low-cost procedure. In the attempt to better exploit the advantages of this composite film, it was layered with a graphite-containing paint and tested as an electrode in a flexible mSC, which provided satisfactory results. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the electrical charge storage capability of a polyimide/MWCNTs free-standing film as a flexible electrode in mSCs, which do not require time- and resource-consuming processing steps.     

Revealing the Effect of Surface Composition on Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes Supported Pt-Fe Alloy Electrocatalysts for Methanol Oxidation Performance

The designs of efficient and inexpensive Pt-based catalysts for methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) are essential to boost the commercialization of direct methanol fuel cells. Here, the highly catalytic performance PtFe alloys supported on multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) decorating nitrogen-doped carbon (NC) have been successfully prepared via co-engineering of the surface composition and electronic structure. The Pt₁Fe₃@NC/MWCNTs catalyst with moderate Fe³⁺ feeding content (0.86 mA/mg_Pt) exhibits 2.26-fold enhancement in MOR mass activity compared to pristine Pt/C catalyst (0.38 mA/mg_Pt). Furthermore, the CO oxidation initial potential of Pt₁Fe₃@NC/MWCNTs catalyst is lower relative to Pt/C catalyst (0.71 V and 0.80 V). Benefited from the optimal surface compositions, the anti-corrosion ability of MWCNT, strong electron interaction between PtFe alloys and MWCNTs and the N-doped carbon (NC) layer, the Pt₁Fe₃@NC/MWCNTs catalyst presents an improved MOR performance and anti-CO poisoning ability. This study would open up new perspective for designing efficient electrocatalysts for the DMFCs field.     

基于多材质复合管柱的裸眼井壁支撑工艺及应用

已完钻超深裸眼水平井侧钻技术是经济、高效开发油藏剩余油的主要手段之一，传统的磨铣钢套管开窗侧钻技术存在下入摩阻大、磨铣耗时长导致开窗失败等问题。为此，提出了基于多材质复合管柱的超深水平井裸眼井壁支撑工艺，结合中国西北油田已完钻超深裸眼水平井井况，首先，提出了基于“铝合金+碳钢”的多材质复合管柱组合及设计方法；其次，开展了基于管柱实物屈曲实验数据的管柱临界屈曲载荷计算模型适用性评价，并优选出了适合于“铝合金+碳钢”多材质复合管柱的屈曲临界载荷计算模型；最后，研究了综合考虑管柱扭矩、摩阻、刚性、井眼条件、管柱强度及材质的多材质复合管柱下入性分析方法，并利用下入性分析软件对西北油田顺北X1井、X2井、X3井、X4井复合管柱进行了下入可行性评价。该方法在X1井和X2井得到成功应用，进一步论证了该工艺现场应用的可行性。研究成果可为超深水平井裸眼井壁支撑的复合管柱设计和下入可行性评价提供理论参考。     

Chemical versus Electrochemical Synthesis of Carbon Nano‐onion/Polypyrrole Composites for Supercapacitor Electrodes

The development of high‐surface‐area carbon electrodes with a defined pore size distribution and the incorporation of pseudo‐active materials to optimize the overall capacitance and conductivity without destroying the stability are at present important research areas. Composite electrodes of carbon nano‐onions (CNOs) and polypyrrole (Ppy) were fabricated to improve the specific capacitance of a supercapacitor. The carbon nanostructures were uniformly coated with Ppy by chemical polymerization or by electrochemical potentiostatic deposition to form homogenous composites or bilayers. The materials were characterized by transmission‐ and scanning electron microscopy, differential thermogravimetric analyses, FTIR spectroscopy, piezoelectric microgravimetry, and cyclic voltammetry. The composites show higher mechanical and electrochemical stabilities, with high specific capacitances of up to about 800 F g^?1 for the CNOs/SDS/Ppy composites (chemical synthesis) and about 1300 F g^?1 for the CNOs/Ppy bilayer (electrochemical deposition).     

Microstructure,mechanical properties and wear resistance of an Al–Mg–Si alloy produced by equal channel angular pressing

Microstructure, mechanical properties and wear resistance in an ultrafine-grained Al–Mg–Si alloy fabricated utilizing a combination of equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) and dynamic aging were investigated in this paper. The results indicated that the grain size of the ECAP alloy was significantly refined, i.e., to ~239 nm after three ECAP passes. Meanwhile, the yield and tensile strength of the ECAPed material reached 340 MPa and 445 MPa, respectively, while maintaining a significant uniform elongation of 14%. Wear resistance results demonstrated that the wear rate, wear depth and width of the ECAPed material decreased in comparison with the solution-treated (SST) and peak-aged (T6) conditions under a load range of 5–25 N. The adhesive wear that occurs in the undeformed specimens at 10 N does not appear in the ECAPed specimen at the same load, indicating that the ECAPed specimen delay the appearance of more serious wear mechanisms under certain loads. The cooperative interaction of high density nano-scale β" precipitates and dislocations resulted in a combination of super-high strength and good work hardening ability which suppressed the extension of cracks between the friction layer and the plastic deformation zone. As a consequence, the combination of ECAP and dynamic aging brings a significant improvement for antifriction performance of the 6061 aluminum alloy.     

磁流变液中磁性颗粒成链与团聚的临界特征分析

热运动对纳米级磁流变液系统的颗粒团聚行为和宏观流变特性扰动影响不可忽视.为研究施加外磁场后系统微结构与热运动间的关系，探讨在不同颗粒粒径情况下热运动能量在系统总能量中的占比.采用CCD设计方法，分析Monte Carlo仿真获取的颗粒位形信息，生成关于外磁场磁感应强度、颗粒粒径和体积分数的系统热耦合系数<λ>回归模型;成链团聚的临界颗粒粒径计算值比文献经验值高出约23%，证实在考虑系统内多因素的综合影响下，纳米级磁流变液具有更严格的流变现象临界发生条件.     

An Improved Composite Multiscale Fuzzy Entropy for Feature Extraction of MI-EEG

Motor Imagery Electroencephalography (MI-EEG) has shown good prospects in neurorehabilitation, and the entropy-based nonlinear dynamic methods have been successfully applied to feature extraction of MI-EEG. Especially based on Multiscale Fuzzy Entropy (MFE), the fuzzy entropies of the τ coarse-grained sequences in τ scale are calculated and averaged to develop the Composite MFE (CMFE) with more feature information. However, the coarse-grained process fails to match the nonstationary characteristic of MI-EEG by a mean filtering algorithm. In this paper, CMFE is improved by assigning the different weight factors to the different sample points in the coarse-grained process, i.e., using the weighted mean filters instead of the original mean filters, which is conductive to signal filtering and feature extraction, and the resulting personalized Weighted CMFE (WCMFE) is more suitable to represent the nonstationary MI-EEG for different subjects. All the WCMFEs of multi-channel MI-EEG are fused in serial to construct the feature vector, which is evaluated by a back-propagation neural network. Based on a public dataset, extensive experiments are conducted, yielding a relatively higher classification accuracy by WCMFE, and the statistical significance is examined by two-sample t-test. The results suggest that WCMFE is superior to the other entropy-based and traditional feature extraction methods.     

Heterogeneous photobleaching in confocal microscopy

Photobleaching was studied during recording of confocal scanning laser microscopy. Studies on fluorescent gels of FITC-labeled dextran were used to evaluate differential bleaching along thez-axis. Differential bleaching along the z-axis was observed and it was seen that this was related to the numerical aperture of the objective in use. This points to the conclusion that photon energy flux density is an important parameter in photobleaching. To check if photon energy flux density heterogeneity is affected by local variation in the refractive index of the sample, photobleaching rates were calculated for different fluorescent objects (sections of seeds, animal cells stained with nuclear stains, immunocytochemistry preparations) and a pronounced similarity was found between photobleaching rates and DIC images.