Potential applications of phase change materials in concrete technology

In internal curing, pre-wetted lightweight aggregates (LWA) serve as internal reservoirs to supply the extra water needed by the cementitious and pozzolanic components of the concrete during their hydration processes. Due to their porous nature and reasonably high absorption capacity, the LWA can also be filled with other materials, such as phase change materials (PCMs). In this paper, three potential applications of PCM-filled LWA in concrete technology are presented. In addition to the previously explored application of increasing the energy storage capacity of concrete in residential and commercial construction by using a PCM with a transition temperature near room temperature, applications for higher and lower temperature PCMs also exist. In the former case, a PCM can be used to reduce the temperature rise (and subsequent rate of temperature decrease) of a large concrete section during (semi)adiabatic curing, to minimize thermal cracking, etc. In the latter case, a PCM can perhaps reduce the number or intensity of freeze/thaw cycles experienced by a bridge deck or other concrete exposed to a winter environment. In this paper, these latter two applications are preliminarily explored from both experimental and modeling viewpoints.     

Chloride ingress data from field and laboratory exposure – Influence of salinity and temperature

Marine exposure conditions provide an aggressive environment for reinforced concrete structures, mainly due to the occurrence of chloride-induced reinforcement corrosion. There are several influencing factors, but despite a lot of research little is known about the influence from variations in the exposure conditions. Therefore an exposure programme has been made, where concrete specimens, made from one single concrete composition, have been exposed at 12 marine locations around the world, along with a parallel study under laboratory conditions. The specimens have been constantly submerged during the exposure to get well-defined exposure conditions. The purpose was to get a quantitative measure of how different exposure conditions influence the durability of reinforced concrete, measured in terms of chloride ingress into the concrete. The results indicate that the exposure conditions (salinity and temperature of seawater), as expected, influenced the chloride ingress. This is further analysed and discussed in the paper.     

Collaborative representation with reduced residual for face recognition

Collaboration representation-based classification (CRC) was proposed as an alternative approach to the sparse representation method with similar efficiency. The CRC is essentially a competition scheme for the training samples to compete with each other in representing the test sample, and the training class with the minimum representation residual from the test sample wins the competition in the classification. However, the representation error is usually calculated based on the Euclidean distance between a test sample and the weighted sum of all the same-class samples. This paper exploits alternative methods of calculating the representation error in the CRC methods to reduce the representation residual in a more optimal way, so that the sample classes compete with each other in a closer range to represent the test sample. A large number of face recognition experiments on three face image databases show that the CRC methods with optimized presentation residual achieve better performance than the original CRC, and the maximum improvement in classification accuracy is up to 12 %.     

Aggregation-induced emission luminogen-assisted stimulated emission depletion nanoscopy for super-resolution mitochondrial visualization in live cells

Nano Research - Aggregation-induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) are fluorescent agents that are ideal for bioimaging and have been widely used for organelle targeting, cellular mapping, and...     

Fabrication of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin films by ion beam sputtering deposition from a quaternary target at different substrate temperatures

Cu(In, Ga)Se₂ (CIGS) thin films were fabricated by ion beam sputtering deposition from a single quaternary target at different substrate temperatures (T _sub). The thin films were characterized with X-ray diffractometry, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and four-point probe technique to study the microstructures, surface morphology, composition and electrical properties, respectively. The results show that the films grown above 400?°C are of chalcopyrite structure. Cu(In_0.7Ga_0.3)Se₂ thin film was obtained when T _sub is 550?°C. The Cu and Se atomic percentage when T _sub is above 500?°C is higher than when T _sub is below 500?°C. With the increase in T _sub, the surfaces morphology of the films is denser and the resistivity of the films decreases.     

Effect of ligand passivation on morphology,optical and photoresponse properties of CdS colloidal quantum dots thin film

In the present report, cadmium sulfide (CdS) colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) with average diameter of 6 nm were synthesized by using oleylamine as ligand and solvent. The insulating oleylamine ligands form barriers around the CdS CQDs to decrease carrier mobility. In order to remove the ligands and improve the photoelectrical properties of the closed-packed film, ethanedithiol, mercaptopropionic acid and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) were applied for solid state ligand exchange. CTAB treated film had the fastest 3 dB bandwidth of 144.7 Hz and yielded the highest detectivity of 1.37 × 10⁸ Jones. The excellent properties of ligand passivation have important application in nanocrystals based electronic and optoelectronic devices.     

蛋类膜-壳结构启发制备兼具高灵敏度和宽检测范围的应变传感

为了解决可拉伸应变传感器的灵敏度与检测范围(最大和最小可拉伸性)之间相互制约的问题.受蛋类膜-壳结构的启发,本文提出了一种构筑具有高灵敏度、宽可拉伸应变传感器的新策略,即基于柔性可拉伸的表面接枝聚吡咯膜(s-PPy)(类似于蛋膜)和脆性金膜(类似于蛋壳)制备器件.Au和s-PPy膜在电学和机械性能上产生相互协同作用.A...     

商业生态系统的扩展性研究

提出一个两层的商业生态系统模型,上层网络中的用户进行商业活动,构成一个生态系统;下层网络由多个查询服务器组成,构成分布式查询系统,供上层用户注册其服务代理以及查找服务.上层和下层网络随时间不断演化且相互影响.在该模型的基础上,研究下层分布式系统的可扩展性.实验表明,该系统是可扩展的,并通过比较得出影响可扩展性的因素.     

一种新的混沌键控方案——分段移位混沌键控

为了进一步提高混沌通信系统的数据传输率,提出了一种新的混沌键控方案——分段移位混沌键控SSCSK,它是一种多进制调制方案。将SSCSK中的参考信号等分成M个信号段,根据传送的M进制数字码元,将M个信号段循环左移n（0≤n〈M）段,即形成信息携带信号。通过对其误码性能进行仿真分析可知,在相同的误比特率条件下,在信噪比要求上,二进制SSCSK比DCSK方案大约小3dB,四进制SSCSK的误比特率与DCSK方案接近,在混沌信号长度相同的条件下,四进制SSCSK的信息传输速率比DCSK提高了1倍。