A Terahertz Video Camera Patch Sheet with an Adjustable Design based on Self-Aligned, 2D,Suspended Sensor Array Patterning

Terahertz (THz) imaging is expected to become powerful tools for non-destructive inspections. To ensure the practical use of THz non-destructive monitoring, versatile THz imagers with adjustable designs that can eliminate the complexities and the bulkiness of the device are urgently required. Herein, a self-aligned filtration process for a 2D, free-standing carbon nanotube film array and its application to a THz video camera patch are reported. The presented techniques enable a) to freely design the camera size, sensor array pattern, and suspended shape according to its applications, b) to cut the camera patch into desired shapes, and c) to attach them to the objects that are intended to be measured. Real-time, non-destructive monitoring of various infrastructures is demonstrated. These results indicate that it can function regardless of restrictions, such as the shapes and locations of the measurement samples, thus providing a strong possibility for use in future non-destructive sensor networks.     

Novel silicon-contained lignin-based carbon fibers derived from bamboo pulping black liquor with improved electrochemical performance for supercapacitors

Carbon fibers (CFs) are a promising candidate as electrode materials for flexible supercapacitors given its light weight and moderate cost. In this study, the lignin used was partially separated from kraft bamboo pulping black liquor and the higher molecular weight fraction, unavoidably contains a small amount of silicon compounds, so named silicon-contained lignin. Novel CFs were prepared using commercial polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and the lignin by electrospinning and further carbonization. Even in the presence of silicon compounds, the fibrous morphology of precursor fibers was significantly good, and the CFs with uniform fiber diameter and high specific surface area up to 182 m²/g were obtained with an increase in silicon-contained lignin. The CFs fabricated from silicon-contained lignin and commercial PAN had higher specific capacitance (22.20 mF/cm² at 10 mA/cm²) and superb cycling stability (94.21%) than that from silicon-free lignin or pure PAN separately.     

Unique CNTs-chained Li4Ti5O12 nanoparticles as excellent high rate anode materials for Li-ion capacitors

Composite anode materials with a unique architecture of carbon nanotubes (CNTs)-chained spinel lithium titanate (Li₄Ti₅O₁₂, LTO) nanoparticles are prepared for lithium ion capacitors (LICs). The CNTs networks derived from commercial conductive slurry not only bring out a steric hindrance effect to restrict the growth of Li₄Ti₅O₁₂ particles but greatly enhance the electronic conductivity of the CNTs/LTO composites, both have contributed to the excellent rate capability and cycle stability. The capacity retention at 30 C (1 C = 175 mA g^?1) is as high as 89.7% of that at 0.2 C with a CNTs content of 11 wt%. Meanwhile, there is not any capacity degradation after 500 cycles at 5 C. The LIC assembled with activated carbon (AC) cathode and such a CNTs/LTO composite anode displays excellent energy storage properties, including a high energy density of 35 Wh kg^?1 at 7434 W kg^?1, and a high capacity retention of 87.8% after 2200 cycles at 1 A g^?1. These electrochemical performances outperform the reported data achieved on other LTO anode-based LICs. Considering the facile and scalable preparation process proposed herein, the CNTs/LTO composites can be very potential anode materials for hybrid capacitors towards high power-energy outputs.     

Effects of sintering temperature and Bi2O3, Y2O3 and MgO co-doping on the dielectric properties of X8R BaTiO3-based ceramics

Bi₂O₃, Y₂O₃ and MgO co-doped BaTiO₃ (BT)-based X8R ceramics were synthesized successfully for the first time. The effects of the sintering temperature and Bi₂O₃, Y₂O₃ and MgO dopants on the dielectric properties were investigated systematically. Bi₂O₃ doping can increase the Curie temperature (T_c), but reduces the overall dielectric permittivity. On the other hand, Y₂O₃ doping is beneficial to the formation of core-shell microstructure and the increase of T_c, whereas MgO can prevent excessive Y₂O₃ from diffusing into grain core, and thereby further contributes to the generation of the core–shell microstructure. The generation of the typical core-shell microstructure was confirmed and investigated in detail by using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It is argued that the synergistic effects of Bi₂O₃, Y₂O₃ and MgO co-doping in terms of the formation of the core-shell structure and the increase of T_c, can help improve the temperature stability of the dielectric permittivity effectively. Increasing the sintering temperature leads to an increase in the grain size, which in turn leads to an increase in the overall dielectric permittivity due to the grain size effect.     

Various density light field image coding based on distortion minimization interpolation

In recent years, the light field (LF) as a new imaging modality has attracted wide interest. The large data volume of LF images poses great challenge to LF image coding, and the LF images captured by different devices show significant differences in angular domain. In this paper we propose a view prediction framework to handle LF image coding with various sampling density. All LF images are represented as view arrays. We first partition the views into reference view (RV) set and intermediate view (IV) set. The RVs are rearranged into a pseudo sequence and directly compressed by a video encoder. Other views are then predicted by the RVs. To exploit the four dimensional signal structure, we propose the linear approximation prior (LAP) to reveal the correlation among LF views and efficiently remove the LF data redundancy. Based on the LAP, a distortion minimization interpolation (DMI) method is used to predict IVs. To robustly handle the LF images with different sampling density, we propose an Iteratively Updating depth image based rendering (IU-DIBR) method to extend our DMI. Some auxiliary views are generated to cover the target region and then the DMI calculates reconstruction coefficients for the IVs. Different view partition patterns are also explored. Extensive experiments on different types LF images also valid the efficiency of the proposed method.     

Electrical and optical characteristics of atmospheric helium jet array plasma

In this paper, a honeycomb structure jet array with seven jet units was adopted to generate plasmas. Both the average discharge power and the emission intensity of the main excited species increase with increasing applied voltage. There are three stages of discharge evolution at different applied voltages: initial discharge, uniform discharge and strong coupling discharge.The spatial distribution of the emission intensity of the excited species can be divided into three categories: growth class, weakening class and variation class. The gas temperature along the whole plasma plume at different applied voltages is maintained at around 320K and can be widely used in heat-labile applications.     

Nonuniform linear array DOA estimation using EM criterion

In this letter, we address the problem of Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation with nonuniform linear array in the context of sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) framework. The nonuniform array output is deemed as an incomplete-data observation, and a hypothetical uniform linear array output is treated as an unavailable complete-data observation. Then the Expectation-Maximization (EM) criterion is directly utilized to iteratively maximize the expected value of the complete-data log likelihood under the posterior distribution of the latent variable. The novelties of the proposed method lie in its capability of interpolating the actual received data to a virtual uniform linear array, therefore extending the achievable array aperture. Simulation results manifests the superiority of the proposed method over off-the-shelf algorithms, specially on circumstances such as low SNR, insufficient snapshots, and spatially adjacent sources.     

Channel estimation and tracking with nested sampling for fast-moving users in millimeter-wave communication

Channel estimation is very challenging in millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications since the receiver is usually equipped with a limited number of radio-frequency (RF) chains and a large number of antennas. The receiver can only observe a low-dimensional projection of the received signals due to the huge gap between the numbers of RF chains and antennas. Instead of using the phase-shifter which is not a simple circuit at mmWave, we employ a switch network for analog design, which is equivalent to an antenna selection process. To increase the resolution and accuracy, a nested sampling strategy is used to formulate a virtual array with a larger aperture, aiming to reduce the complexity and power consumption of the system. We also consider the Doppler effect caused by the fast-moving user which may seriously deteriorate the channel estimation accuracy. Based on the covariance fitting criterion, a joint Doppler and channel estimation method is proposed without need of discretizing the angle space, and thus the model mismatch effect can be totally eliminated. Finally, we excavate the temporal variation law of the user to estimate the line-of-sight (LoS) channel in the current time slot by using the estimates from the previous two time slots. Numerical simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of our proposed method.     

基于分支定界法的相控阵雷达事件调度算法

为解决相控阵雷达事件调度问题中调度成功率、时间偏移率与算法时效性三者之间的矛盾，本文提出一种基于分支定界法的调度算法；该算法首先在现有调度结果上调取所有可执行事件，即获得若干"节点"，多步递推后由多"层"节点形成若干条备选"分支"，扩大解空间范围，提高算法性能；然后通过"删减"操作删减掉收益较低分支，将解空间控制在一适当范围内，减小搜索盲目性，降低算法计算量.仿真实验表明，与基于综合优先级算法的调度结果相比，利用本文算法调度时调度成功率提升了52%；与基于时间指针算法的调度结果相比，本身算法时间偏移率降低了61%；与基于遗传算法的调度结果相比，本文算法调度耗时仅为前者1~2%.     

UPLC-PDA法检测桉木预水解液中5-羟甲基糠醛

采用超高效液相色谱-二极管阵列检测器（UPLC-PDA）法检测桉木预水解液中5-羟甲基糠醛（5-HMF）。该方法检测过程中，样品无需复杂的预处理，即可在流动相为乙腈/水（20∶80，V/V）、淋洗速度为0.2 mL/min的条件下对桉木预水解液中各组分进行先洗脱分离，然后采用PDA检测器于波长283.55 nm处定量检测桉木预水解液中的5-HMF；其检出限为3.883 μg/L，相关系数为0.9998，重现检测相对标准偏差为0.2%，加标回收率为105.2%；该法具有样品预处理简单、检测快速和准确的特点，为更好地控制预水解条件、提高预水解液利用价值提供了一定的理论支撑。