Ultra-low noise single-photon detector based on Si avalanche photodiode

We report operation and characterization of a lab-assembled single-photon detector based on commercial silicon avalanche photodiodes (PerkinElmer C30902SH, C30921SH). Dark count rate as low as 5 Hz was achieved by cooling the photodiodes down to -80 °C. While afterpulsing increased as the photodiode temperature was decreased, total afterpulse probability did not become significant due to detector's relatively long deadtime in a passively-quenched scheme. We measured photon detection efficiency >50% at 806 nm.     

用于持续电源应用的热插拔连接器

目前,许多公司要求其通讯、监控、存储或控制用的电子系统不得失效。电信和公用事业公司显然首当其冲采纳了这一主张。但是,将电气系统的停工时间保持到绝对低程度的要求使得现在即使很小的公司在其计算机特别是电源系统结构中均采用了备用功能。 N 1 备用系统允许现场替换失效的程序存储单元(PSU),而不必关闭整个系统。这种方法不仅能确保效率更高、停工时间更少,而且符合产业发展趋势,如日益采用模块式叠层系统和更小的产品占用面积等。此外,如果系统可以重新设置且不需要关闭,则现场维护和日常系统升级会更简单且破坏性更小。 持续电源应用,即允许现场替换电源装置同时保持完整的正常运行时间,全都基于某种形式的“热插拔”或“热替换”连接器系统,而这两个术语经常被混淆。二者均消除了系统停工时间,但热替换系统是一种先断后插的技术,在这种技术中,电流只是在插合过程的最后阶段触发流动,而实际的热插拔接触件结构允许系统和界面连接器带电插拔而不中断电流。设计“热插拔”接触件是为了在这种带电条件下保持机械强度和电导率,并能够经受住在插合过程中发生的可能具有破坏性的电弧放电。当选择最适合应用的技术时,考虑到有多少空间供互连系统占用是同样重要的。热替换技...     

Molecular Origin of the Charge Carrier Mobility in Small Molecule Organic Semiconductors

Small‐molecule organic semiconductors are used in a wide spectrum of applications, ranging from organic light emitting diodes to organic photovoltaics. However, the low carrier mobility severely limits their potential, e.g., for large area devices. A number of factors determine mobility, such as molecular packing, electronic structure, dipole moment, and polarizability. Presently, quantitative ab initio models to assess the influence of these molecule‐dependent properties are lacking. Here, a multiscale model is presented, which provides an accurate prediction of experimental data over ten orders of magnitude in mobility, and allows for the decomposition of the carrier mobility into molecule‐specific quantities. Molecule‐specific quantitative measures are provided how two single molecule properties, the dependence of the orbital energy on conformation, and the dipole‐induced polarization determine mobility for hole‐transport materials. The availability of first‐principles based models to compute key performance characteristics of organic semiconductors may enable in silico screening of numerous chemical compounds for the development of highly efficient optoelectronic devices.     

Constructing Na‐Ion Cathodes via Alkali‐Site Substitution

Na‐ion batteries have experienced rapid development over the past decade and received significant attention from the academic and industrial communities. Although a large amount of effort has been made on material innovations, accessible design strategies on peculiar structural chemistry remain elusive. An approach to in situ construction of new Na‐based cathode materials by substitution in alkali sites is proposed to realize long‐term cycling stability and high‐energy density in low‐cost Na‐ion cathodes. A new compound, [K_0.444(1)Na_1.414(1)][Mn_3/4Fe_5/4](CN)₆, is obtained through a rational control of K⁺ content from electrochemical reaction. Results demonstrate that the remaining K⁺ (≈0.444 mol per unit) in the host matrix can stabilize the intrinsic K‐based structure during reversible Na⁺ extraction/insertion process without the structural evolution to the Na‐based structure after cycles. Thereby, the as‐prepared cathode shows the remarkably enhanced structural stability with the capacity retention of >78% after 1800 cycles, and a higher average operation voltage of ≈3.65 V versus Na⁺/Na, directly contrasting the non‐alkali‐site‐substitution cathode materials. This provides new insights into alkali‐site‐substitution constructing advanced Na‐ion cathode materials.     

Superior Thermoelectric Performance of Textured Ca3Co4−xO9+δ Ceramic Nanoribbons

Calcium cobaltite Ca₃Co_4−xO_9+δ (CCO) is a promising p-type thermoelectric (TE) material for high-temperature applications in air. The grains of the material exhibit strong anisotropic properties, making texturing and nanostructuring mostly favored to improve thermoelectric performance. On the one hand multitude of interfaces are needed within the bulk material to create reflecting surfaces that can lower the thermal conductivity. On the other hand, low residual porosity is needed to improve the contact between grains and raise the electrical conductivity. In this study, CCO fibers with 100% flat cross sections in a stacked, compact form are electrospun. Then the grains within the nanoribbons in the plane of the fibers are grown. Finally, the nanoribbons are electrospun into a textured ceramic that features simultaneously a high electrical conductivity of 177 S cm⁻¹ and an immensely enhanced Seebeck coefficient of 200 µV K⁻¹ at 1073 K are assembled. The power factor of 4.68 µW cm⁻¹ K⁻² at 1073 K in air surpasses all previous CCO TE performances of nanofiber ceramics by a factor of two. Given the relatively high power factor combined with low thermal conductivity, a relatively large figure-of-merit of 0.3 at 873 K in the air for the textured nanoribbon ceramic is obtained.     

Asymptotically Efficient Lattice-Based Digital Signatures

We present a general framework that converts certain types of linear collision-resistant hash functions into one-time signatures. Our generic construction can be instantiated based on both general and ideal (e.g., cyclic) lattices, and the resulting signature schemes are provably secure based on the worst-case hardness of approximating the shortest vector (and other standard lattice problems) in the corresponding class of lattices to within a polynomial factor. When instantiated with ideal lattices, the time complexity of the signing and verification algorithms, as well as key and signature size, is almost linear (up to poly-logarithmic factors) in the dimension n of the underlying lattice. Since no sub-exponential (in n) time algorithm is known to solve lattice problems in the worst case, even when restricted to ideal lattices, our construction gives a digital signature scheme with an essentially optimal performance/security trade-off.     

Absolute beam brightness detector

In generally accepted emittance measurement, main attention is concentrated on emittance areas ?(x), ?(y) occupied by desired part of ion beam in transverse phase space and shape of these areas. The absolute beam phase density (brightness) as usually is not measured directly and the average beam brightness B is calculated from a beam intensity I and the transverse emittances. In the ion source and low energy beam transport (LEBT) optimization, it is important to preserve the beam brightness because some aberration of ion optic and beam instabilities can decrease the brightness of the central part of ion beam significantly. For these brightness measurements, it is convenient to use an absolute beam brightness detector with the brightness determination from one short considered in this article.     

Cooperative multi-robot belief space planning for autonomous navigation in unknown environments

We investigate the problem of cooperative multi-robot planning in unknown environments, which is important in numerous applications in robotics. The research community has been actively developing belief space planning approaches that account for the different sources of uncertainty within planning, recently also considering uncertainty in the environment observed by planning time. We further advance the state of the art by reasoning about future observations of environments that are unknown at planning time. The key idea is to incorporate within the belief indirect multi-robot constraints that correspond to these future observations. Such a formulation facilitates a framework for active collaborative state estimation while operating in unknown environments. In particular, it can be used to identify best robot actions or trajectories among given candidates generated by existing motion planning approaches, or to refine nominal trajectories into locally optimal paths using direct trajectory optimization techniques. We demonstrate our approach in a multi-robot autonomous navigation scenario and consider its applicability for autonomous navigation in unknown obstacle-free and obstacle-populated environments. Results indicate that modeling future multi-robot interaction within the belief allows to determine robot actions (paths) that yield significantly improved estimation accuracy.     

Crack initiation and propagation in ductile specimens with notches: experimental and numerical study

Failures of components and structures are often related to the presence of notches of different shapes. Damage modelling techniques have been proven capable of modelling the crack initiation and propagation in ductile materials (such as Al alloys). The Gurson–Tvergaard–Needleman (GTN) method and extended finite-element method (XFEM) are compared against original experiments to study the crack initiation and propagation processes in aluminium specimens with different notch shapes (V-shape, U-shape and square). Two regimes are considered in this study: quasi-static and impact uniaxial tensile loading. Results show that the load-bearing capability predicted with the two methods is somewhat lower compared to experiments; still, the crack shapes were predicted correctly, with the exception of the square-notch case, for which XFEM was unable to predict the correct shape due to limitations in the model formulation. This study provides information useful for the design of components with stress raisers that are exposed to different loading regimes and shows limitations in both the GTN- and XFEM-based approaches that in many cases underestimate the load-bearing capacity.