Templated titania films with meso- and macroporosities

Porous TiO₂ films with both mesoporosity and macroporosity were fabricated by a templated sol–gel method for applications, such as dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC), photocatalysis and catalysis. With the incorporation of differently sized pores, the resultant structures exhibit high surface areas and possess interpenetrating aligned pore channels, which are believed to be beneficial for applications where diffusion of reactants to interior surface can be rate limiting. Both liquid and solid TiO₂ precursors can be applied for large area coating in this process. Almost crack-free films were produced by templated coating of pre-synthesized TiO₂ nanoparticles. The measured specific surface area and porosity of synthesized films were in the range of 33–137 m²/g and 61–80%, respectively, depending on the size of the selected template.     

First-principle study of ferroelectricity in PbTiO3/SrTiO3 superlattices

We performed the first-principles calculation to investigate the electronic structure and polarization behaviors in PbTiO₃/SrTiO₃ (PST) superlattices. The DOS (density of state) profiles show that there are strong hybridizations of atom Ti–O and Pb–O which play very important roles on ferroelectricity of the PbTiO₃/SrTiO₃ superlattices. Comparing to the corresponding paraelectric phase, we find the electrons of the PT (PbTiO₃) layers occupy lower energy states and electrons of the ST (SrTiO₃) layer occupy higher energy states. It is shown that the polarizations of the superlattices decrease with proportion of SrTiO₃ increasing. The constant polarization of local layer indicates that PST superlattices with small modulation lengthen can be approximately considered as a single ferroelectric material. Furthermore, according to electrostatic model, we find that directions of internal electric fields in PT and ST layers are opposite. In PST superlattices, internal electric field in PT layer leads to the loss of polarization of this layer, but the polarization of ST layer is induced by internal electric field of this layer. Compared to the value of the polarization in bulk PbTiO₃, polarization of PST is smaller.     

Synthesis and two-photon absorption property of new π-conjugated dendritic fluorophores containing styrylpyridyl moieties

Four new multi-branched two-photon absorption chromophores, namely 1-(4-bromobenzal)-3,5-bis(4-((E)-2-(pyridin-4-yl)vinyl)phenyl)benzene (4), tris(4-((E)-2-(pyridin-4-yl)vinyl)phenyl)-benzene (5), 6-chloro-N²,N⁴-bis(4-((E)-2-(pyridin-4-yl)vinyl)phenyl)-1,3,5-triazine-2,4-diamine (6), tris-[4-(2-pyridin-4-yl-vinyl)-phenyl]-amine (7), have been synthesized and characterized. One-photon fluorescence, fluorescent quantum yields and two-photon fluorescence have been investigated. The experimental two-photon absorption cross-sections of 4–7 in DMF are 6, 11, 13 GM (pumped by 740 nm laser) and 19 GM (pumped by 800 nm laser), respectively. The calculated two-photon absorption cross-sections of 4–7 are 5.41, 7.67, 9.57 and 76.14 GM, respectively. The two-photon induced fluorescent peak wavelengths of 4–7 in DMF are 421, 425, 474 and 534 nm pumped by 680, 680, 740 and 800 nm laser, respectively. The results show that molecule 7 is a good two-photon absorption fluorophore possessing long two-photon fluorescent lifetime, good fluorescent quantum yield and large two-photon absorption cross-section. The two-photon absorption peak wavelength of molecule 7 is at 800 nm, which is favourable for initiating two-photon photopolymerization.     

Structure and blood compatibility of tetrahedral amorphous hydrogenated carbon formed by a magnetic-field-filter plasma stream

Tetrahedral amorphous hydrogenated carbon (ta-C:H) films with various substrate bias voltages were prepared using a magnetic-field-filter plasma stream deposition system. The microstructural and optical properties were studied using ellipsometric spectra. The refractive index n of each sample was obtained by simulating their ellipsometric spectral using Tauc-Lorentz oscillator model, and then the relative sp³ C ratio of each sample was calculated using Bruggeman effective medium approximation. The sp³ C fraction of each sample was quantified by using electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS). The blood compatibility of the samples was evaluated by tests of platelet adhesion, kinetic clotting time and thrombin time. The quantity and morphology of the adherent platelets on the surface of these samples were investigated using scanning electron microscopy. Results show that the spectroscopic ellipsometry is a helpful method to evaluate the sp³ carbon fraction of the carbon films. The substrate bias voltage has an obvious effect on sp³ content and blood compatibility of ta-C:H films. The sample prepared with substrate bias voltage of − 20 V showed the best blood compatibility. A simple bio-physical hypothetical model was proposed to explain the experiment results.     

Safety-based availability assessment at design stage

The availability of a system or equipment is one of the crucial characteristics that measures the customer satisfaction and strongly influences his final choice decision between concurrent products. The aim of this work is to provide an approach to improve the products availability assessment by taking into account the safety criteria by considering the use situations at design stage. Our work focuses on the routine design of complex products. The availability is often simply estimated considering reliability and maintainability. Basically, the intrinsic availability is the probability that it is operating satisfactorily at any point in time when used under conditions stated by design specifications. The time considered includes operating time and active repair time. Thus, intrinsic availability excludes from consideration all other times in the product lifecycle such as: accident management time, storage time, administrative time or logistic time. But many studies show that the loss of availability performance is also due to accidents that occur in different unforeseeable utilization situations. This engenders stops of the system to ensure the users safety according to standards recommendations. In this purpose, we consider the structural product architecture and the different use cases that correspond to the operational states and downtimes due to stop events that may happen during the utilization like failures, maintenance tasks and accidents. Then, we propose a product behavioral analysis including the use cases to describe interactions between the product and users or maintenance operators. We use Markov chains to model the use cases corresponding to operating time (OT), maintenance time (MT) and preparing time after accidents (RT). Then these three parameters are considered to specify a generic approach to improve the availability assessment. Such an approach provides the traceability of the product behavior along its lifecycle. In this way, the main causes of stop can be identified and this may guide the designer for improving the availability of the product future versions. To validate our approach, an application is presented considering a printing line. The comparison of our simulation considering an industrial case study shows a good agreement about the influence of safety on the availability.     

Efficient synthesis of benzophenone derivatives in Lewis acid ionic liquids

Benzophenone and its derivatives were prepared via Friedel–Crafts acylation reactions using ionic liquids (ILs) of BmimCl–FeCl₃, BmimCl–AlCl₃ and BmimCl–ZnCl₂ as dual catalyst–solvent. Among them, BmimCl–FeCl₃ showed much higher catalytic activity than that observed for the other two ILs, and in conventional organic solvents. In these reaction systems, good to excellent yields (up to 97%) of acylation products were obtained in a short reaction time. This method features high yield, a simple product isolation procedure, ILs reusability and reduced waste discharge, thus rendering this catalytic system both efficient and environmentally friendly.     

Morphologic study of electrochemically formed lead dioxide

Various electrochemical methods with different conditions were used to prepare lead dioxide (PbO₂). The observation revealed that the morphology of deposited PbO₂ could be controlled by simply changing deposition parameters. Under the condition of oxygen evolution, which dominates the electrode process, uniformly distributed high porous structured PbO₂ was formed. The results indicated that large current density or high potential polarization should be one of the most important and necessary factors for forming high surface area PbO₂ deposit. Only β-PbO₂ was identified by X-ray diffraction measurement for the deposit prepared by present methods and solution. One potential application of this method is to prepare nanoscaled PbO₂ parallel lines.