A new maritime lifesaving multiple-effect solar still design

This paper presents a new maritime lifesaving multiple-effect solar still design where several extended wicks feed seawater to their evaporating areas by capillary force, and the resulting water vapor diffuses and condenses on facing wicks with the condensate flowing through the wicks into storage bags. A theoretical analysis showed that a temperature drop through diffusion layers between evaporating and condensing wicks slowly increases in the main evaporating areas and rapidly near salt depositions whereas the evaporation rate decreases slowly in the main area and rapidly near salt depositions. These changes are caused by increases in salt concentrations and resulting boiling point elevation. With steady-state transfer analysis, the proposed still is predicted to produce about 15 kg m ⁻²d⁻¹ fresh water on a sunny day of 22 MJm⁻²d⁻¹ solar radiation, showing a potential to be a maritime lifesaving desalinator.     

Electron transport characteristics of organic molecule encapsulated carbon nanotubes

One-dimensional carbon nanotube (CNT) junctions with interesting device characteristics have been designed by encapsulating p- and n-type organic molecules into CNTs with electrophilic tetracyano-p-quinodimethane (TCNQ) and nucleophilic tetrakis(dimethylamino)ethylene (TDAE) molecules in order to explore the effect of encapsulation of organic molecules and rectifying behaviors of the designed one-dimensional CNT p-n junctions. Our results show that p- and n-type doping of CNTs and their associated charge transfer play an important role in determining the electron transport characteristics and lead to materials with unique properties, p-n junction diode, i.e. Zener-like diode. Furthermore, we show that the operational device characteristics of non-covalently doped CNT junctions originate from the distinct response of intrinsic transmission peaks of pure CNTs according to the type of dopant and the applied bias. We believe that the results give an insight into the design and implementation of various electronic logic functions based on CNTs for applications in the field of nanoelectronics.     

Glycoinformatics: data mining-based approaches

Carbohydrates or glycans are major cellular macromolecules, working for a variety of vital biological functions. Due to long-term efforts by experimentalists, the current number of structurally different, determined carbohydrates has exceeded 10,000 or more. As a result data mining-based approaches for glycans (or trees in a computer science sense) have attracted attention and have been developed over the last five years, presenting new techniques even from computer science viewpoints. This review summarizes cutting-edge techniques for glycans in each of the three categories of data mining: classification, clustering and frequent pattern mining, and shows results obtained by applying these techniques to real sets of glycan structures.     

Detection of cytochrome P450 substrates by using a small-molecule droplet array on an NADH-immobilized solid surface

Seeing below the surface: A small-molecule droplet array platform on an NADH-immobilized solid surface and a biotinylated acetophenone derivative were developed to identify the substrate candidates for soluble P450 enzymes of interest. This methodology is thought to be easily applicable to other class I P450 systems, including those that use NADPH as cofactor.     

High-efficiency GaAs and GaInP solar cells grown by all solid-state molecular-beam-epitaxy

We report the initial results of GaAs and GaInP solar cells grown by all solid-state molecular-beam-epitaxy (MBE) technique. For GaAs single-junction solar cell, with the application of AlInP as the window layer and GaInP as the back surface field layer, the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of 26% at one sun concentration and air mass 1.5 global (AM1.5G) is realized. The efficiency of 16.4% is also reached for GaInP solar cell. Our results demonstrate that the MBE-grown phosphide-contained III-V compound semiconductor solar cell can be quite comparable to the metal-organic-chemical-vapor-deposition-grown high-efficiency solar cell.     

Synthesis of γ-Ga2O3-Al2O3 solid solutions by spray pyrolysis method

Synthesis of the γ-Ga₂O₃-Al₂O₃ solid solutions by spray pyrolysis was examined. Spherical particles were obtained using an aqueous solution of Al(NO₃)₃ and Ga(NO₃)₃ with HNO₃. For Ga-rich composition, γ-phase solid solutions were directly crystallized by the spray pyrolysis. For Al-rich composition, spray pyrolysis gave amorphous products unless a sufficient thermal energy was supplied during the spray pyrolysis. Subsequent calcination of the amorphous products gave γ-Ga₂O₃-Al₂O₃ solid solutions. However, physical properties of the solid solutions were affected by the spray pyrolysis conditions.     

层层自组装法制备碳纳米管薄膜研究进展

综述了近年来通过层层自组装法制备碳纳米管薄膜的一些最新研究进展,重点介绍了通过物理吸附和化学吸附两种方式来制备碳纳米管组装膜,并对如何提高碳纳米管薄膜的电化学稳定性方面进行了论述。     

Molecular weight dependence of growth and morphology of it-poly(butene-1) spherulites

Molecular weight dependence of growth and morphology of spherulites of isotactic poly(butene-1), iPB-1, and those of the mixtures with atactic poly(butene-1), aPB-1, were examined by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and polarizing optical microscopy (POM) in order to examine the mechanism of the structural evolution by the branching and re-orientation of lamellar crystals at the growth front. The width of lamellar crystals and the characteristic size of the inner structure of spherulites decreased with increasing molecular weight. The result suggests that the mobility of the melt determines the sizes in spherulites and supports the growth front instability induced by a gradient triggering the branching. The sizes in the mixtures also decreased with increasing weight-averaged molecular weight, M_w. The size dependence in low M_w region, however, was too strong and that in high M_w was too weak in comparison with the predicted dependence for the prepared M_w. It has been concluded that the peculiar behaviors should be discussed with effective M_w influenced by the occurrence of separation and exclusion of non-crystallizing aPB-1 at the growth front.     

Analysis of proton exchange membrane fuel cell catalyst layers for reduction of platinum loading at Nissan

The biggest issue that must be addressed in promoting widespread use of fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) is to reduce the cost of the fuel cell system. Especially, it is of vital importance to reduce platinum (Pt) loading of catalyst layers (CLs) in the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC). In order to lower the Pt loading of the MEA, mass transport of reactants related to the performance in high current density should be enhanced significantly as well as kinetics of the catalyst, which can result in the better Pt utilization and effectiveness. In this study, we summarized our analytical approach and methods for reduction of Pt loading in CLs. Microstructure, mass transport properties of the reactants, and their relation in CLs were elucidated by applying experimental analyses and computational methods. A simple CL model for I–V performance prediction was then established, where experimentally elucidated parameters of the microstructure and the properties in CLs were taken into account. Finally, we revealed the impact of lowering the Pt loading on the transport properties, polarization, and the I–V performance.     

蒽-N，N-二甲基苯胺二元体系的荧光开关行为研究

通过Curtius重排反应,将高荧光量子产率的葸基团通过脲基连接在N,N-二甲基苯胺单元上,合成了二元给受电子体系9-（4-N,N-二甲胺基苯基）脲基葸（DMA—An）。选择性激发蒽单元,该二元体系发生从N,N-二甲基苯胺到蒽的光诱导电子转移反应（photoinduced electron transfer PET）,导致葸荧光猝灭。酸化使N,N-二甲基苯胺基质子化,PET过程受阻,DMA-An的荧光恢复。此时,向该体系中加入三乙胺可使DMA-An的荧光恢复至初始的猝灭状态。多次实验证明此荧光猝灭-增大过程是可逆的,即DMA—An的荧光随酸碱变化呈光开关on／off行为。