Light scattering and extinction in polydisperse systems

A simple approach to predict transmittance spectra of polydisperse systems is recalled and applied to various model systems (spinel-like particles in water, pores in a spinel-like matrix) and real systems (spinel in water, diamond in water, amorphous carbon soot in isopropanol) in order to investigate principal effects of size distributions (normal/lognormal, narrow/wide, monomodal/bimodal, shift of mode positions, shift of mode heights) and optical properties (refractive index contrast, with or without absorption) on the in-line transmittance. A comparison of predicted and measured spectra showed that size distributions with more small particles cause a more significant decrease in transmittance (at least for sufficiently short wavelengths) and that laser diffraction may seriously underestimate the amount of small particles (for absorbing particles, for which the influence on transmittance is enormous, a difference of up to 30% in absolute transmittance measured via spectrophotometry has been found against predictions based on laser diffraction results).     

Biodegradability Study of the Biosurfactant Contained in a Crude Extract from Corn Steep Water

Over the last few years, the global biosurfactant market has raised due to the increasing awareness among consumers, for the use of biological or bio-based products. Because of their composition, it can be speculated that these are more biocompatible and more biodegradable than their chemical homologous. However, at the moment, no studies exist in the literature about the biodegradability of biosurfactants. In this work, a biosurfactant contained in a crude extract, obtained from a corn wet-milling industry stream that ferments spontaneously in the presence of lactic acid bacteria, was subjected to a biodegradation study, without addition of external microbial biomass, under different conditions of temperature (5–45 °C), biodegradation time (15–55 days), and pH (5–7). For that, a Box–Behnken factorial design was applied, which allowed to predict the percentage of biodegradation for the biosurfactant contained in the crude extract, between the range of the independent variables selected in the study, obtaining biodegradation values between 3 and 80%. The percentage of biodegradation for the biosurfactant was calculated based on the increase in the surface tension of samples of the crude extract. Furthermore, it was also possible to predict the variation in t_1/2 for the biosurfactant (time to achieve the 50% of biodegradation) under different conditions.     

Study of metal assisted anisotropic chemical etching of silicon for high aspect ratio in crystalline silicon solar cells

Textured surface is commonly used to enhance the efficiency of silicon solar cells by reducing the overall reflectance and improving the light scattering. In this study, a comparison between isotropic and anisotropic etching methods was investigated. The deep funnel shaped structures with high aspect ratio are proposed for better light trapping with low reflectance in crystalline silicon solar cells. The anisotropic metal assisted chemical etching (MACE) was used to form the funnel shaped structures with various aspect ratios. The funnel shaped structures showed an average reflectance of 14.75% while it was 15.77% for the pillar shaped structures. The average reflectance was further reduced to 9.49% using deep funnel shaped structures with an aspect ratio of 1:1.18. The deep funnel shaped structures with high aspect ratios can be employed for high performance of crystalline silicon solar cells.     

Synthesis,characterization, and antimicrobial activity of chitosan–zinc oxide/polyaniline composites

Organic–inorganic materials of chitosan–zinc oxide/polyaniline (CS–ZnO/PANI) composite were prepared via precipitation with a polymerization method and characterized by FT-IR, XRD, EDXS and TEM analysis, thereby providing evidence of composite formation. The size of the prepared CS–ZnO/PANI composite was found to be 100–200 nm, thereby rendering the morphology suitable for biomedical applications. Antibacterial activities of chitosan–ZnO (CS–ZnO), polyaniline (PANI) and CS–ZnO/PANI composites were determined against Gram-positive bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), and Gram-negative bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) and were tested in-vitro at 5–50 μg/mL. Results showed that CS–ZnO/PANI composite had broad-spectrum antibacterial activity that was greatly enhanced in comparison with CS–ZnO. In addition, CS–ZnO/PANI composite has tested fungal strains of Candida albicans (C. albicans) and relatively higher activities were observed than the known antibiotics. Finally, the antimicrobial activity of CS–ZnO/PANI composite against established biofilms was also examined and resulted in more than 95% inhibition in biofilm formation.     

Charge transport and recombination in heterostructure organic light emitting transistors

Light-emitting field effect transistors (LEFETs) are a class of organic optoelectronic device capable of simultaneously delivering the electrical switching characteristics of a transistor and the light emission of a diode. We report on the temperature dependence of the charge transport and emissive properties in a model organic heterostructure LEFET system from 300 K to 135 K. We study parameters such as carrier mobility, brightness, and external quantum efficiency (EQE), and observe clear thermally activated behaviour for transport and injection. Overall, the EQE increases with decreasing temperature and conversely the brightness decreases. These contrary effects can be explained by a higher recombination efficiency occurring at lower temperatures, and this insight delivers new knowledge concerning the optimisation of both the transport and emissive properties in LEFETs.     

高速铁路绝缘块耐环境能力的研究

铁路扣件系统是将钢轨固定在轨枕上,阻止钢轨相对于轨枕发生横纵向移动,保持轨距,在高速铁路运行过程中起到缓冲减震作用的系统。经过长期使用及列车的运行,有些尼龙产品扣件存在不同程度的损坏,产生松动现象,进而影响铁路运行安全。以扣件系统中的绝缘轨距块为研究对象,从环境及气候等多种因素研究其对轨距块性能的影响,找寻较为关键的影响因素。研究结果发现,室外环境放置的轨距块极限剪切性能下降更明显,耐冲击性更差。经过研究不同恶劣环境下轨距块性能的变化,发现高温高湿及高温环境下产品性能下降幅度较大,其中高温高湿影响最大。     

Effect of graphite particles as additive on the curing behaviour of β-tricalcium phosphate suspensions and scaffold fabrication by digital light processing

Reducing the viscosity of high solid-loading ceramic suspensions and controlling the resolution of ceramic green parts produced by digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing are two important concerns in the ceramic additive manufacturing industry. The presence of ceramic particles within a photopolymerizable system leads to light scattering that reduces the resolution of the ceramic green scaffolds. This study introduced a graphite additive to solve these problems and focused on the effects of graphite concentration on the viscosity, curing behaviour and scaffold fabrication of β-TCP ceramic suspensions. As a result, it was found that an appropriate addition of graphite reduced the viscosity of the ceramic suspensions, and the light scattering decreased with the increase of graphite concentration. Both the cure depth (C_d) and excess width (C_ex) also decreased with the increase of graphite concentration. But, graphite has a larger effect on the width curing than depth curing.     

Numerical investigation of light gas release,stratification and dissolution in TH22 test facility using 3-D CFD code GASFLOW-MPI

An accurate prediction of the hydrogen behaviors in the accident and management process is a crucial topic for both the hydrogen safety assessment and safety analysis in the confined enclosure like the containment of the nuclear power plant (NPP). Hence, the hydrogen behaviors including the transient light gas release, stratification and dissolution in the TH22 test facility for the NPP containment are analyzed and compared using the 3-D CFD code GASFLOW-MPI in this study. In this paper, the light gas helium is adopted as a substitute for the hydrogen in the calculations in accordance with the experiment. Firstly, the detached eddy simulation (DES) turbulence model, 3-D numerical model and experiment setup are introduced. Then, the hydrogen behaviors with the GASFLOW-MPI including the light gas release, stratification and dissolution are analyzed and validated with the experiment data. In addition, the velocity profiles, light gas concentrations, dimensionless numbers and temperature distributions are evaluated for the characteristics of the hydrogen behaviors. The results indicate that the calculation results agree well with the experiment data. Foremostly, the relative errors between the calculation results and experiment data during the phase of the dissolution of the light gas cloud are within 11.9%. Meanwhile, the relative errors of the time for the complete dissolution during the phase of the dissolution of the light gas cloud are within 5.0%. For the light gas release and stratification phase, the jet flow dominates as the Froude (Fr) number exceeds 10 during the time t = 600 s–800 s. Additionally, the time averaged centerline velocity and light gas concentration after the potential core region decay with a slop of 1/z which coincide with the theoretical jet limit. Lastly, the light gas concentrations and temperature distributions in all three phases are captured clearly with the GAFLOW-MPI. It demonstrates that the GASFLOW-MPI can accurately described the details of the related hydrogen behaviors in the accident and management process in the confined enclosure like the NPP. This paper can provide guidance for the numerical computation of the hydrogen safety issues in the confined space.     

Separation of aromatic components from light cycle oil by solvent extraction

To improve the versatility of light cycle oil (LCO), separation of aromatic compounds from LCO by solvent extraction was investigated. LCO was analyzed to identify 35 components: 19 aromatics and 16 alkanes. The batch liquid–liquid equilibrium extraction of LCO was performed using furfural, sulfolane, and methanol as extraction solvents. In each solvent, the aromatics present in LCO were selectively extracted relative to the alkanes. The separation selectivities of aromatics relative to alkanes were larger in sulfolane than in the other solvents. Among the aromatic components, di- and tricyclic compounds were selectively extracted relative to the monocyclic ones.     

Compressively sampled light field reconstruction using orthogonal frequency selection and refinement

This paper considers the compressive sensing framework as a way of overcoming the spatio-angular trade-off inherent to light field acquisition devices. We present a novel method to reconstruct a full 4D light field from a sparse set of data samples or measurements. The approach relies on the assumption that sparse models in the 4D Fourier domain can efficiently represent light fields. The proposed algorithm reconstructs light fields by selecting the frequencies of the Fourier basis functions that best approximate the available samples in 4D hyper-blocks. The performance of the reconstruction algorithm is further improved by enforcing orthogonality of the approximation residue at each iteration, i.e. for each selected basis function. Since sparsity is better preserved in the continuous Fourier domain, we propose to refine the selected frequencies by searching for neighboring non-integer frequency values. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm yields performance improvements of more than 1 dB compared to state-of-the-art compressive light field reconstruction methods. The frequency refinement step also significantly enhances the visual quality of reconstruction results of our method by a 1.8 dB average.