Scalable Synthesis of Hierarchical Antimony/Carbon Micro-/Nanohybrid Lithium/Sodium-Ion Battery Anodes Based on Dimethacrylate Monomer

A facile scalable synthesis of hierarchical Sb/C micro-/nanohybrid has been addressed in this work,which possesses the advantages of both micrometer and nanometer scale structures as lithium-ion battery anode.Difunctional methacrylate monomers are used as solvent and carbon source as well.Liquid precursor of antimony(III) n-butoxide is dissolved in the resin monomer solution,and further incorporated into the cross-linking polymer network via photo polymerization.Through calcination in argon/hydrogen atmosphere,antimony nanoparticles are in situ formed by carbothermal reduction,and homogeneously embedded in the in situ formed micrometer sized carbon matrix.The morphology,structure,crystallinity,spatial dispersion,composition,and electrochemical performance of the Sb/C micro-/nanohybrid are systematically investigated.The cyclic and rate performance of the Sb/C micro-/nanohybrid anode have been effectively improved compared to the pure carbon anode.A reversible capacity of 362 m Ah g~(-1) is achieved with a reasonable mass loading density after 300 cycles at 66 m A g~(-1),corresponding to capacity retention of 79%.With reducing mass loading density,the reversible capacity reaches 793 m Ah g~(-1) after 100 cycles.Moreover,the electrochemical performance of Sb/C micro-/nanohybrid as sodium-ion battery anode is also investigated in this study.     

Satellite image fusion based on modified central force optimization

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Nowadays, optimization has become a brand methodology for different applications. One of the most promising fields for application of optimization is the image...     

Determination of the local gold contact morphology on a photoactive polymer film using nanobeam GISAXS

Grazing incidence small-angle X-ray scattering is performed with a nanometer sized X-ray beam (nGISAXS) to probe the local gold contact morphology on a photoactive polymer film. By evaporation a 50 nm thick gold contact is installed on a diblock copolymer film, which consists of a non-conducting poly(styrene) (PS) and a semi-conducting poly(paraphenylene) (PPP) block. The region around the edge of the gold contact of 200 μm is probed with nGISAXS by scanning the sample position in steps of 1 μm with respect to the X-ray beam. The diblock copolymer film has a densely packed micellar structure with a characteristic distance between adjacent micelles of 19 nm which is unaffected by the gold deposition. The gold contact exhibits a tail region which extends its lateral dimension. For the full extended surface area of the gold contact with its tails an interdiffusion of gold into the diblock copolymer film is observed. For comparison imaging ellipsometry, atomic force microscopy and optical microscopy measurements are performed.     

Growth and morphology of sputtered aluminum thin films on P3HT surfaces

Growth and morphology of an aluminum (Al) contact on a poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) thin film are investigated with X-ray methods and related to the interactions at the Al:P3HT interface. Grazing incidence small-angle scattering (GISAXS) is applied in situ during Al sputter deposition to monitor the growth of the layer. A growth mode is found, in which the polymer surface is wetted and rapidly covered with a continuous layer. This growth type results in a homogeneous film without voids and is explained by the strong chemical interaction between Al and P3HT, which suppresses the formation of three-dimensional cluster structures. A corresponding three stage growth model (surface bonding, agglomeration, and layer growth) is derived. X-ray reflectivity shows the penetration of Al atoms into the P3HT film during deposition and the presence of a 2 nm thick intermixing layer at the Al:P3HT interface.     

XAFS Investigation of Platinum Impurities in Phosphate Glasses

The coordination environments of Pt impurities in a ternary K-aluminophosphate (KAP) glass and commercial K,Mg-aluminophosphate (KMAP) laser glasses have been investigated by Pt L _III-edge X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) spectroscopy. Pt valence in the KAP glass depends on the melt preparation atmosphere. Pt⁴⁺ ions form in melts that are bubbled with oxygen, whereas metallic Pt particles form when these same samples are remelted in air. Residual chlorine in KMAP glasses has an effect on Pt bonding. In chlorine-free samples, Pt⁴⁺ ions are coordinated with ∼5.4 (8) oxygen atoms with an average distance of 2.02 (1) Å. For glasses with low chlorine contents (<200 ppm Cl), the Pt⁴⁺ ions have both O and Cl atoms in the first coordination shell. As the Cl concentration increases, the number of O nearest neighbors decreases and for Cl:Pt > 5, only Cl nearest neighbors are observed. Pt⁴⁺ ions in these latter glasses are coordinated by ∼5.5 (8) Cl atoms at an average distance of 2.27 (2) Å.     

Angiotensin converting enzyme‐inhibitory activity and antimicrobial effect of fermented camel milk (Camelus dromedarius)

This study aimed to determine the angiotensin converting enzyme‐inhibitory activity and antimicrobial effect of fermented camel milk. Samples were prepared either using Lactobacillus acidophilus and Streptococcus thermophilus or Lactobacillus helveticus and Str. thermophilus and labelled as S1 and S2, respectively. The IC₅₀ values of S1 and S2 samples ranged between 113–200 and 70–133 μg/mL, respectively. The antimicrobial effects of S1 and S2 samples against Bacillus cereus, Salmonella Typhimurium and Staphylococcus aureus were apparent after 12 h of incubation and continued until 15 days of storage, whereas unfermented camel milk exhibited no antimicrobial effects against any of the tested pathogens.     

Experimental-based feedforward control for a DoD inkjet printhead

Markets demand continuously for higher quality, higher speed, and more energy-efficient professional printers. Drop-on-Demand (DoD) inkjet printing is considered as one of the most promising printing technologies. It offers many advantages including high speed, quiet operation, and compatibility with a variety of printing media. Nowadays, it has been used as low-cost and efficient manufacturing technology in a wide variety of markets. Although the performance requirements, which are imposed by the current applications, are tight, the future performance requirements are expected to be even more challenging. These print requirements are related to the jetted drop properties, namely, drop velocity, drop volume, drop velocity consistency, productivity, and reliability. Meeting these performance requirements is restricted by several operational issues that are associated with the design and the operation of inkjet printheads. Major issues that are usually encountered are residual vibrations and crosstalk among ink channels. These result in a poor printing quality for high-speed printing. The main objective is to design a feedforward control strategy such that variations in the velocity and volume of the jetted drops are minimized. In this article, an experimental-based feedforward control scheme is proposed to improve the performance of a professional inkjet printer.     

Efficient pan-sharpening of satellite images with the contourlet transform

Recent studies show that hybrid panchromatic sharpening (pan-sharpening) methods using the non-sub-sampled contourlet transform (NSCT) and classical pan-sharpening methods such as intensity, hue and saturation (IHS), principal component analysis (PCA), and adaptive principal component analysis (APCA) reduce spectral distortion in pan-sharpened images. The NSCT is a shift-invariant multi-resolution decomposition. It is based on non-sub-sampled pyramid (NSP) decomposition and non-sub-sampled directional filter banks (NSDFBs). We compare the performance of the APCA–NSCT using different NSP filters, NSDFB filters, number of decomposition levels, and number of orientations in each level on SPOT 4 data with a spatial resolution ratio of 1:2, and Quickbird data with a spatial resolution ratio of 1:4. Experimental results show that the quality of pan-sharpening of remote-sensing images of different spatial resolution ratios using the APCA–NSCT method is affected by NSCT parameters. For the NSP, the ‘maxflat’ filters have the best quality, while the ‘sk’ filters give the best quality for the NSDFB. Changing the number of orientations at the same level of decomposition in the NSCT has a small effect on both the spectral and spatial qualities. The spectral and spatial qualities of pan-sharpened images mainly depend on the number of decomposition levels. Too few decomposition levels result in poor spatial quality, while excessive levels of decomposition result in poor spectral quality. Two levels of decomposition in the case of SPOT 4 data with a spatial resolution ratio of 1:2 achieve the best results. Also, three levels of decomposition in the case of QuickBird data with a spatial resolution ratio of 1:4 show the best results.     

Computer aided reliability for optimum maintenance planning

Computer aided Maintenance planning for mechanical equipment is presented in this work to implement the optimized extensive maintenance plan at a specific time horizon. The objective is to interchange the unscheduled corrective maintenance into scheduled preventive maintenance depending on historical data of equipment. This work is concerned with development of reliability analysis based on Weibull distribution. An optimization technique has been developed to provide the optimized preventive maintenance plan for the whole equipment during a required time horizon.