Effect of carbonaceous materials on electrochemical properties of nano-sized Fe2O3-loaded carbon as a lithium battery negative electrode

Nano-sized Fe₂O₃-loaded carbon material was prepared by loading Fe₂O₃ on carbon using various carbonaceous materials. Carbonaceous materials strongly affected the electrochemical behavior of nano-sized Fe₂O₃-loaded carbon. Among the carbons used, nano-carbons such as acetylene black (AB), tubular carbon nanofibers (CNF), and platelet CNF provided larger capacities than other carbons. This may be due to the greater surface area of nano-carbon, which gives a greater distribution of nano-sized Fe₂O₃ particles than other carbons and delivers a greater capacity than other carbons. Investigation of the first-cycle materials by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) revealed that Fe₂O₃ was reduced to Fe metal in the charge process (reduction of Fe₂O₃), and, conversely, Fe metal was not completely oxidized to Fe₂O₃ during discharge (oxidation of Fe). This result may be due to the covering of non-conductive Li₂O formed during charging.     

A multi-agent-based approach for furniture arrangement

This paper proposes a furniture arrangement method based on a multi-agent approach for interior coordination. In the proposed model, each item of furniture acts as an agent, interacts with an environment and other agents, and moves to where it wants to go. Consequently, all items of furniture reach well-coordinated placement. The movements of agents in the proposed method are inspired by particle movements in particle swarm optimization algorithms, that is, the agent’s velocity is calculated from a linear summation of vectors to avoid constraint violations, to harmonize with other agents, and so on. A simple example shows that the proposed method can make a well-coordinated furniture arrangement from randomized positions.     

Formation control of multiple nonholonomic mobile robots

Tracking control problem of multiple mobile robots is considered. Our system is composed of a reference and follower robots of unicycle type. The robots are assumed to satisfy pure rolling and nonslipping conditions, which lead to nonholonomic constraints. The purpose is to control the followers so that the reference is tracked with arbitrary desired clearance and also to avoid interrobot collisions. To accomplish this goal, we first introduced a virtual robot (VR) tracking control to establish and maintain the formation when no collision is detected. VR is an ideal robot fixed with each follower and helps in simplifying the control, as the tracking error becomes zero in the final stage. During the process, if the possibility of collision is detected, a collision avoidance technique (l?ψ or l?l control) will be applied to the lower priority robot. The result of this control gives a monotonic convergence in an internal shape of distance variables, which enables us to predict the movement of the robots during this control and leads to collision‐free movement. These processes are repeated until the desired motion is accomplished. Simulation results prove the efficiency of our control techniques. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 157(3): 81–88, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20192 Copyright © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Seed specification for displaying a streamline in an irregular volume

Two techniques are presented for specifying seed points, which are the starting points for streamlines, in an irregular volume. One is an interactive seed specification technique, in which efficient data probing is achieved by traversing the adjacency graph of the volume. The other is an automatic seed specification technique. A seed point is placed near a critical point, where the velocity vector is zero. Efficient algorithms are given for finding and classifying the critical point by using a tetrahedral cell. A successful application of these techniques to a problem in a clean room is also described.koyamadaattrl.ibm.co.jp     

Influence of metal ions on the structure of poorly crystallized iron oxide rusts

The poorly crystallized steel rusts have been prepared by hydrolysis of aqueous solutions dissolving Fe(III) and different metal ions such as Ti(IV), Cr(III), Ni(II) and Cu(II) at varied atomic ratios in metal/(Fe+metal). The precipitates formed by the hydrolysis were frozen with liquid N₂ to inhibit crystallization and particle growth. The rusts produced were poorly crystalline and nanosized particles with sizes of 4-10 nm and the rust formed without adding metal ions was assigned to ferrihydrite. The crystallite size decreased from 1.1 to 0.7 nm with increasing the added metal ions. It was shown by extended X-ray fine structure and Mössbauer spectroscopy that the short-range structure of poorly crystalline rusts was disturbed by adding Ti(IV).     

Suppression of Discontinuous Precipitation in Cu-Ti Alloys by Aging in a Hydrogen Atmosphere

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - Age-hardened Cu-Ti alloys are widely used as conductive materials in small electrical devices, so it is important for them to have suitable mechanical...     

Electrotransport of organic electrolytes through 2‐(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate–grafted polyethylene films and their separation and concentration

Organic electrolytes with negatively chargeable functional groups such as benzoic acid (BA, weak acid), benzenesulfonic acid (BSA, strong acid), and p‐aminobenzoic acid (p‐ABA, ampholyte) were concentrated through polyethylene (PE) films photografted with 2‐(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) by electrotransport. The permeabilities of DMAEMA‐grafted PE (PE‐g‐PDMAEMA) films to BA and BSA were considerably increased by the application of direct current at pH 6. BA and BSA could be selectively permeated from the respective binary BA/phenyl‐1,2‐ethandiol (PhED, neutral) and BSA/PhED mixtures by making use of the difference in their permeabilities. In addition, BSA was selectively permeated from the binary BSA/BA mixtures. The organic electrolytes mentioned above were transported against their concentration gradient toward the anode side and their degrees of concentration went up to 90% by the continuous application of direct current. The degrees of concentration for organic electrolytes obtained by electrotransport in this study were slightly higher than those obtained by the uphill transport using the pH difference across the PE‐g‐PDMAEMA film, and the concentration time was considerably shortened. It was made clear that the electrotransport through the PE‐g‐PDMAEMA films is one of the effective techniques to selectively separate or concentrate organic electrolytes with negatively chargeable functional groups. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 89: 2535–2544, 2003     

Synthesis of novel block copolymers containing polyamide4 segments and control of their biodegradability

Different novel copolymers, ABA‐type block copolymers composed of polyamide4 as outer segments and polyoxyethylene as an inner segment and AB‐ and ABA‐type block copolyamides containing polyamide4 and another hydrophilic polyamide derived from a bicyclic lactam, were synthesized by the anionic ring‐opening polymerization of 2‐pyrrolidone using the corresponding acyllactam‐type macromolecular activators. The degradation rate of both block copolymers containing polyamide4 segments in a composted soil was found to decrease with increasing content of the second segments, although they were also hydrophilic and/or biodegradable. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 92: 3492–3498, 2004     

A method of new filter design based on the co‐occurrence histogram

We have proposed that the co‐occurrence frequency image (CFI) based on the co‐occurrence frequency histogram of the gray value of an image can be used in a new scheme for image feature extraction. This paper proposes new enhancement filters to achieve sharpening and smoothing of images. These filters are very similar in result but quite different in process from those which have been used previously. Thus, we show the possibility of a new paradigm for basic image enhancement filters making use of the CFI. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 166(1): 36–42, 2009; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20699