Hybrid film of chemically modified graphene and vapor-phase-polymerized PEDOT for electronic nose applications

A hybrid of graphene and conducting polymer holds great potential as the active materials for high performance chemical sensor application. In this work, a thin hybrid film of reduced graphene oxide (RG-O) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) was fabricated by means of vapor phase polymerization and explored as active material for chemical sensors. The chemical sensors based on hybrid film of RG-O and PEDOT are capable of detecting electrical signals caused by the absorption of trace levels of different analyte vapors with high sensitivity, selectivity and fast response.     

Inverted organic photovoltaic device with a new electron transport layer

We demonstrate that there is a new solution-processed electron transport layer, lithium-doped zinc oxide (LZO), with high-performance inverted organic photovoltaic device. The device exhibits a fill factor of 68.58%, an open circuit voltage of 0.86 V, a short-circuit current density of −9.35 cm/mA² along with 5.49% power conversion efficiency. In addition, we studied the performance of blend ratio dependence on inverted organic photovoltaics. Our device also demonstrates a long stability shelf life over 4 weeks in air.     

Energy state of InGaAs quantum dots on SiO2-patterned vicinal substrate

The optical properties of In_0.8Ga_0.2As self-assembled quantum dots (SAQDs) grown on GaAs wire structures formed by utilizing SiO₂-patterned exact and 5°-off (001) GaAs substrates have been studied with micro-photoluminescence (μ-PL). Single PL peak was occurred for In_0.8Ga_0.2As SAQDs grown on SiO₂-patterned exact (001) GaAs, whereas double PL peaks were showed for SAQDs grown on 5°-off (001) GaAs substrates as the width of the opening windows increased. The power-dependent μ-PL spectra show that the first and second peaks of these double peaks were originated from the well-defined ground and excited state, respectively. These results demonstrated that In_0.8Ga_0.2As SAQDs selectively grown by utilizing SiO₂-patterned 5°-off (001) GaAs substrates have well-defined zero-dimensional quantum states.     

Rapid and efficient deoxygenation of sulfoxides to sulfides with tantalum(V) chloride/sodium iodide system

TaCl₅/NaI system converts a wide range of sulfoxides to the corresponding sulfides in high yields with short reaction times, under mild conditions. It is worth mentioning that this protocol is chemoselective and tolerates various functional groups (such as –Br, –Cl, –OCH₃, –CHO, and –NO₂) and double bond.     

Active object search in an unknown large-scale environment using commonsense knowledge and spatial relations

Intelligent Service Robotics - In this study, the goal is to efficiently and actively search for a target object in a previously unknown large-scale environment. To this end, we develop a...     

Nontoxic poly(ethylene oxide phosphonamidate) hydrogels as templates for biomimetic mineralization of calcium carbonate and hydroxyapatite architectures

A simple protocol has been developed for the creation of the biomimetic hybrid materials, calcium carbonate, and hydroxyapatite, by in situ growth and mineralization in newly developed nontoxic hydrogel templates. A series of poly(ethylene oxide phosphonamidate) hydrogels with different network structures were synthesized by reacting various poly(ethylene glycol)s with phosphorous oxychloride and diamines in a one-pot protocol, which exhibits promising advantages including a short reaction time, an easy separation, and a high yield with a mass producible feasibility. The hydrogels were proven to be nontoxic according to an in vitro viability assay using human embryonic kidney 293T cells. Careful control of growth and mineralization conditions such as ions transport rate, pH, type of hydrogel, and mineralization temperature resulted in a variety of calcium carbonate and hydroxylapatite architectures including nanorods, nanowires, and well-defined hybrid structures. The resulting materials were analyzed by infrared spectroscopy, electron microscopes, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and X-ray powder diffraction.     

A 360-Degree Panoramic Image Inpainting Network Using a Cube Map

Inpainting has been continuously studied in the field of computer vision. As artificial intelligence technology developed, deep learning technology was introduced in inpainting research, helping to improve performance. Currently, the input target of an inpainting algorithm using deep learning has been studied from a single image to a video. However, deep learning-based inpainting technology for panoramic images has not been actively studied. We propose a 360-degree panoramic image inpainting method using generative adversarial networks (GANs). The proposed network inputs a 360-degree equirectangular format panoramic image converts it into a cube map format, which has relatively little distortion and uses it as a training network. Since the cube map format is used, the correlation of the six sides of the cube map should be considered. Therefore, all faces of the cube map are used as input for the whole discriminative network, and each face of the cube map is used as input for the slice discriminative network to determine the authenticity of the generated image. The proposed network performed qualitatively better than existing single-image inpainting algorithms and baseline algorithms.