Optical Design of Silica Aerogels for On-Demand Thermal Management

Silica aerogels, a type of porous material featuring extra low density and thermal conductivity, have drawn increasing interest from both academia and industry owing to their excellent thermal insulation performance. However, thermal insulation is always the single consideration when silica aerogels are used for thermal management. In this study, the on-demand thermal management (ODTM) of silica aerogel with either passive thermal insulation, passive heating, or passive cooling in different environments is revealed. The ODTM behavior of silica aerogels can be simply fulfilled through their optical property variations such as solar light transparency and infrared emissivity, which are controllable via the microstructures of the building blocks and surface composition design. Robust solar heating of 25 °C higher than the ambient in the daytime and sub-ambient cooling of 7 °C at night is achieved with the traditional transparent silica aerogel. Interestingly, sub-ambient cooling of 5 °C in the daytime and a warmer state on cold nights is achieved by modifying its solar transmittance and infrared emissivity. This study guides a comprehensive understanding of the thermal management behavior of silica aerogels and leads to ODTM applications of silica aerogels by tailoring their optical and thermal conductivity properties.     

Amine Coordinated Electron-Rich Palladium Nanoparticles for Electrochemical Hydrogenation of Benzaldehyde

Electrocatalytic hydrogenation (ECH) is a burgeoning strategy for the sustainable utilization of hydrogen. However, how to effectively suppress the competitive hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is a big challenge to ECH catalysis. In this study, amine (NH₂ R)-coordinated Pd nanoparticles loaded on carbon felt (Pd@CF) as a catalyst is successfully synthesized by a one-step solvothermal reduction method using oleylamine as the reducing agent. An exceptional ECH reactivity on benzaldehyde is achieved on the optimal Pd@CF catalyst in terms of a high conversion (89.7%) and selectivity toward benzyl alcohol (89.8%) at −0.4 V in 60 min. Notably, the Faradaic efficiency for producing benzyl alcohol is up to 90.2%, much higher than that catalyzed by Pd@CF-without N-group (41.1%) and thecommercial Pd/C (20.9%). The excellent ECH performance of Pd@CF can be attributed to the enriched electrons on Pd surface resulted from the introduction of NH₂ R groups, which strengthens both the adsorption of benzaldehyde and the adsorbed hydrogen (H_ads) on Pd, preventing the combination of H_ads to form H₂, that is, inhibiting the HER. This study gives a new insight into design principles of highly efficient electrocatalysts for the hydrogenation of unsaturated aldehydes molecules.     

Solution-Mediated Hybrid FAPbI3 Perovskite Quantum Dots for Over 15% Efficient Solar Cell

Organic–inorganic formamidinium lead triiodide (FAPbI₃) hybrid perovskite quantum dot (QD) is of great interest to photovoltaic (PV) community due to its narrow band gap, higher ambient stability, and long carrier lifetime. However, the surface ligand management of FAPbI₃ QD is still a key hurdle that impedes the design of high-efficiency solar cells. Herein, this study first develops a solution-mediated ligand exchange (SMLE) for preparing FAPbI₃ QD film with enhanced electronic coupling. By dissolving optimal methylammonium iodide (MAI) into antisolvent to treat the FAPbI₃ QD solution, the SMLE can not only effectively replace the long-chain ligands, but also passivate the A- and X-site vacancies. By combining experimental and theoretical results, this study demonstrates that the SMLE engineered FAPbI₃ QD exhibits lower defect density, which is beneficial for fabricating high-quality QD arrays with desired morphology and carrier transport. Consequently, the SMLE FAPbI₃ QD based solar cell outputs a champion efficiency of 15.10% together with improved long-term ambient storage stability, which is currently the highest reported value for hybrid perovskite QD solar cells. These results would provide new design principle of hybrid perovskite QDs toward high-performance optoelectronic application.     

Sufficient Utilization of Mn2+/Mn3+/Mn4+ Redox in NASICON Phosphate Cathodes towards High-Energy Na-Ions Batteries

Na superionic conductor of Na₃MnTi(PO₄)₃ only containing high earth-abundance elements is regarded as one of the most promising cathodes for the applicable Na-ion batteries due to its desirable cycling stability and high safety. However, the voltage hysteresis caused by Mn²⁺ ions resided in Na⁺ vacancies has led to significant capacity loss associated with Mn reaction centers between 2.5–4.2 V. Herein, the sodium excess strategy based on charge compensation is applied to suppress the undesirable voltage hysteresis, thereby achieving sufficient utilization of the Mn²⁺/Mn³⁺ and Mn³⁺/Mn⁴⁺ redox couples. These findings indicate that the sodium excess Na_3.5MnTi_0.5Ti_0.5(PO₄)₃ cathode with Ti⁴⁺ reduction has a lowest Mn²⁺ occupation on the Na⁺ vacancies in its initial composition, which can improve the kinetics properties, finally contributing to a suppressed voltage hysteresis. Based on these findings, it is further applied the sodium excess route on a Mn-richer phosphate cathode, which enables the suppressed voltage hysteresis and more reversible capacity. Consequently, this developed Na_3.6Mn_1.15Ti_0.85(PO₄)₃ cathode achieved a high energy density over 380 Wh kg⁻¹ (based on active substance mass of cathode) in full-cell configurations, which is not only superior to most of the phosphate cathodes, but also delivers more application potential than the typical oxides cathodes for Na-ion batteries.     

Ultrafast Switchable Passive Radiative Cooling Smart Windows with Synergistic Optical Modulation

Switchable passive radiative cooling (PRC) smart windows can modulate sunlight transmission and spontaneously emit heat to outer space through atmospheric transparent window, presenting great potential in building energy conservation. However, realizing stable and on-demand control of the cooling efficiency for PRC materials is still challenging. Herein, an electro-controlled polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) smart window showing PRC property is designed and prepared by adding mid-infrared emitting reactive monomers into the conventional PDLC matrix. It is found that not only the electro-optical properties but also the PRC efficiency of PRC PDLC film are tunable by regulating the content of the mid-infrared emitting components, film thickness, and micromorphology. This advanced PRC PDLC material achieves a near/sub-ambient temperature when the solar irradiance is below 400 W m⁻² and can dynamically manage daytime cooling efficiency. Importantly, its PRC efficiency is capable of being tuned in an on-demand and ultrafast millisecond-scale way, whose controllable transparency enables multistage heat regulation. This study is hoped to provide new inspiration in the preparation of advanced optical devices and energy-efficient equipment.     

Probing into Reverse Bias Dark Current in Perovskite Photodiodes: Critical Role of Surface Defects

Minimizing reverse bias dark current density (J_dark) while retaining high external quantum efficiency is crucial for promising applications of perovskite photodiodes, and it remains challenging to elucidate the ultimate origin of J_dark. It is demonstrated in this study that the surface defects induced by iodine vacancies are the main cause of J_dark in perovskite photodiodes. In a targeted way, the surface defects are thoroughly passivated through a simple treatment with butylamine hydroiodide to form ultrathin 2D perovskite on its 3D bulk. In the passivated perovskite photodiodes, J_dark as low as 3.78 × 10^-10 A cm^-2 at -0.1 V is achieved, and the photoresponse is also enhanced, especially at low light intensities. A combination of the two improvements realizes high specific detectivity up to 1.46 × 10¹² Jones in the devices. It is clarified that the trap states induced by the surface defects can not only raise the generation-recombination current density associated with the Shockley–Read–Hall mechanisms in the dark (increasing J_dark), but also provide additional carrier recombination paths under light illumination (decreasing photocurrent). The critical role of surface defects on J_dark of perovskite photodiodes suggests that making trap-free perovskite thin films, for example, by fine preparation and/or surface engineering, is a top priority for high-performance perovskite photodiodes.     

Multi-task entity linking with supervision from a taxonomy

Knowledge and Information Systems - Entity linking is the task of resolving ambiguous mentions in documents to their referent entities in a knowledge graph (KG). Existing solutions mainly rely on...     

Effect of growth interruption time on the quality of InAs/GaSb type-II superlattice grown by molecular beam epitaxy

We systematically investigate the influence of growth interruption time on the properties of InAs/GaSb type-II superlattices (T2SLs) epitaxial materials grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscope (AFM) are used to characterize the material quality and morphology. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the XRD 0th satellite peaks ranges from 32'' to 41'', and the root mean square (RMS) roughness on a 5 μm×5 μm scan area is 0.2 nm. Photoluminescence (PL) test is used to reveal the influence of the growth interruption time on the optical property. Grazing incidence X-ray reflectivity (GIXRR) measurements are performed to analyze the roughness of the interface. The interface roughness (0.24 nm) is optimal when the interruption time is 0.5 s. The crystal quality of T2SLs can be optimized with appropriate interruption time by MBE, which is a guide for the material epitaxy of high performance T2SL infrared detector.     

The research on channel estimation and signal-noise ratio estimation based on minimum error entropy kalman filter for single carrier frequency domain equalization system

In this paper, the channel estimation and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation technique of single-carrier frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE) system under low SNR in aeronautical multipath channel are studied, a SNR estimation algorithm which is easy to implement in engineering and an improved LS channel estimation algorithm based on Kalman filter using minimum error entropy (MEE-KF) are proposed. This paper first introduces the SC-FDE system and introduces the principle of MEE-KF, and then, the channel estimation flow based on MEE-KF is obtained by combining it with the traditional LS channel estimation algorithm, which makes the estimation results perform better. Simulation results show that after getting more accurate noise variance, the channel estimation results can better follow the changes of the channel after MEE-KF processing, so as to resist the doppler frequency offset effect and make the channel estimation results more accurate, that is the channel response results of the data part can be closer to the real situation, so that the communication performance of SC-FDE system has also been greatly improved.     

Paving the Way for High-Performance UVB-LEDs Through Substrate-Dominated Strain-Modulation

AlGaN-based ultraviolet-B light-emitting diodes (UVB-LEDs) exhibit great potential in phototherapy, vitamin D3 synthesis promotion, plant growth regulation, and so on. However, subjected to the excess compressive strain induced by the large lattice mismatch between multiple quantum wells (MQWs) and AlN, UVB-LEDs that simultaneously satisfy the requirements of high light output power (LOP), low working voltage, and excellent stability are rarely reported. Here, a substrate-dominated strain-modulation strategy is proposed. By precisely manipulating the strain in AlN grown on nano-patterned sapphire substrate (NPSS) to a slightly tensile one, the compressive strain in the following Al_0.55Ga_0.45N underlayer and Al_0.28Ga_0.72N/Al_0.45Ga_0.55N MQWs is successfully suppressed. As a result, an outstanding UVB-LED with a peak wavelength at 303.6 nm is achieved. The 20 × 20 mil² UVB-LED chip shows a wall-plug efficiency (WPE) of 3.27% under a forward current of 20 mA and a high LOP of 57.2 mW with an extremely low voltage of 5.87 V under a forward current of 800 mA. It is more exciting that the LOP degradation is as low as 17% after 1000 h operation under a forward current density of 75 A cm⁻², showing excellent stability. The here-developed UVB-LED, with a high LOP and excellent reliability, will definitely promote the applications of AlGaN-based UVB-LEDs.