Fe(III) grafted MoO3 nanorods for effective electrocatalytic fixation of atmospheric N2 to NH3

Electrocatalytic nitrogen reduction reaction (ENRR) offers a carbon-neutral process to fix nitrogen into ammonia, but its feasibility depends on the development of highly efficient electrocatalysts. Herein, we report that Fe ion grafted on MoO₃ nanorods synthesized by an impregnation technique can efficiently enhance the electron harvesting ability and the selectivity of H⁺ during the NRR process in neutral electrolyte. In 0.1 M Na₂SO₄ solution, the electrocatalyst exhibited a remarkable NRR activity with an NH₃ yield of 9.66 μg h^?1 mg^?1_cat and a Faradaic efficiency (FE) of 13.1%, far outperforming the ungrafted MnO₃. Density functional theory calculations revealed that the Fe sites are major activation centers along the alternating pathway.     

Density functional theory study of the hydrogen evolution reaction in haeckelite boron nitride quantum dots

To satisfy arising energy needs and to handle the forthcoming worldwide climate transformation, the major research attention has been drawn to environmentally friendly, renewable and abundant energy resources. Hydrogen plays an ideal and significant role is such resources, due to its non-carbon based energy and production through clean energy. In this work, we have explored catalytic activity of a newly predicted haeckelite boron nitride quantum dot (haeck-BNQD), constructed from the infinite BN sheet, for its utilization in hydrogen production. Density functional theory calculations are employed to investigate geometry optimization, electronic and adsorption mechanism of haeck-BNQD using Gaussian16 package, employing the hybrid B3LYP and wB97XD functionals, along with 6–31G(d,p) basis set. A number of physical quantities such as HOMO/LUMO energies, density of states, hydrogen atom adsorption energies, Mulliken populations, Gibbs free energy, work functions, overpotentials, etc., have been computed and analysed in the context of the catalytic performance of haeck-BNQD for the hydrogen-evolution reaction (HER). Based on our calculations, we predict that the best catalytic performance will be obtained for H adsorption on top of the squares or the octagons of haeck-BNQD. We hope that our prediction of most active catalytic sites on haeck-BNQD for HER will be put to test in future experiments.     

疫情下电磁场理论课程的网络教学

本文主要总结了新冠疫情期间作者的电磁场理论课程在线教学经验。对比分析了录播和直播的优缺点后,选择录播教学方式。基于超星网络教学平台,展示了录播网络教学的具体措施,包括网上答疑和学习效果检查以及在线批改作业等。给出了网络教学可以为线下教学继续使用的方法和手段,为疫情结束后的正常教学提供了新的网络教学补充措施。     

Engineering the hydrogen storage properties of the perovskite hydride ZrNiH3 by uniaxial/biaxial strain

In the present work, the bonding length, electronic structure, stability, and dehydrogenation properties of the Perovskite-type ZrNiH₃ hydride, under different uniaxial/biaxial strains are investigated through ab-initio calculations based on the plane-wave pseudo-potential (PW-PP) approach. The findings reveal that the uniaxial/biaxial compressive and tensile strains are responsible for the structural deformation of the ZrNiH₃ crystal structure, and its lattice deformation becomes more significant with decreasing or increasing the strain magnitude. Due to the strain energy contribution, the uniaxial/biaxial strain not only lowers the stability of ZrNiH₃ but also decreases considerably the dehydrogenation enthalpy and decomposition temperature. Precisely, the formation enthalpy and decomposition temperature are reduced from ?67.73 kJ/mol.H₂ and 521 K for non-strained ZrNiH₃ up to ?33.73 kJ/mol.H₂ and 259.5 K under maximal biaxial compression strain of ε = ?6%, and to ?50.99 kJ/mol.H₂ and 392.23 K for the maximal biaxial tensile strain of ε = +6%. The same phenomenon has been also observed for the uniaxial strain, where the formation enthalpy and decomposition temperature are both decreased to ?39.36 kJ/mol.H₂ and 302.78 K for a maximal uniaxial compressive strain of ε = - 12%, and to ?51.86 kJ/mol.H₂ and 399 K under the maximal uniaxial tensile strain of ε = +12%. Moreover, the densities of states analysis suggests that the strain-induced variation in the dehydrogenation and structural properties of ZrNiH₃ are strongly related to the Fermi level value of total densities of states. These ab-initio calculations demonstrate insightful novel approach into the development of Zr-based intermetallic hydrides for hydrogen storage practical applications.     

Applications of sketches in network traffic measurement: A survey

Accurate and timely network traffic measurement is essential for network status monitoring, network fault analysis, network intrusion detection, and network security management. With the rapid development of the network, massive network traffic brings severe challenges to network traffic measurement. However, existing measurement methods suffer from many limitations for effectively recording and accurately analyzing big-volume traffic. Recently, sketches, a family of probabilistic data structures that employ hashing technology for summarizing traffic data, have been widely used to solve these problems. However, current literature still lacks a thorough review on sketch-based traffic measurement methods to offer a comprehensive insight on how to apply sketches for fulfilling various traffic measurement tasks. In this paper, we provide a detailed and comprehensive review on the applications of sketches in network traffic measurement. To this end, we classify the network traffic measurement tasks into four categories based on the target of traffic measurement, namely cardinality estimation, flow size estimation, change anomaly detection, and persistent spreader identification. First, we briefly introduce these four types of traffic measurement tasks and discuss the advantages of applying sketches. Then, we propose a series of requirements with regard to the applications of sketches in network traffic measurement. After that, we perform a fine-grained classification for each sketch-based measurement category according to the technologies applied on sketches. During the review, we evaluate the performance, advantages and disadvantages of current sketch-based traffic measurement methods based on the proposed requirements. Through the thorough review, we gain a number of valuable implications that can guide us to choose and design proper traffic measurement methods based on sketches. We also review a number of general sketches that are highly expected in modern network systems to simultaneously perform multiple traffic measurement tasks and discuss their performance based on the proposed requirements. Finally, through our serious review, we summarize a number of open issues and identify several promising research directions.     

Carbon corrosion mechanism on nitrogen-doped carbon support — A density functional theory study

In this work, density functional theory (DFT) calculations were used to investigate the mechanism of carbon corrosion on nitrogen-doped carbon support. Free energy diagrams were generated based on three proposed reaction pathways to evaluate corrosion mechanisms. The most energetically preferred mechanism on nitrogen-doped carbon was determined. The results show that the step of water dissociation to form ^#OH was the rate-determining step for gra-G-1N (graphene doped with graphitic N) and pyrr-G-1N (graphene doped with pyrrolic N). As for graphene doped with pyridinic N, the step of C^#OC^#O formation was critical. It was found that the control of nitrogen concentration was necessary for precisely designing optimized carbon materials. Abundance of nitrogen moieties aggravated the carbon corrosion. When the high potential was applied, specific types of graphitic N and pyridinic N were found to be favorable carbon modifications to improve carbon corrosion resistance. Moreover, the solvent effect was also investigated. The results provide theoretical insights and design guidelines to improve corrosion resistance in carbon support through material modification by inhibiting the adsorption of surface oxides (OH, O, and OOH).     

The effect of alkali metal oxide on the properties of borosilicate fireproof glass: Structure,thermal properties,viscosity, chemical stability

The purpose of the current work was to research the effect of alkali metal oxide on the structure, thermal properties, viscosity and chemical stability in the glass system (R₂O–CaO–B₂O₃–SiO₂) systematically. Because the glass would emulsify when Li₂O was added to the glass batch, this article did not discuss Li₂O. The results showed that when the amount of Na₂O was less than 4 mol.%, there was a higher interconnectivity of borate and silicate sub-networks in glass, as more mixed Si–O–B bonds were present in glass. The glass samples exhibited excellent thermal properties and chemical stabilities. As the amount of Na₂O exceeded 4 mol.%, the interconnectivity of borate and silicate sub-networks was weakened. The thermal properties and chemical stabilities of the glass samples were reduced. The connectivity of the silicate sub-network was weakened slightly as the Na/K ratio varied, and the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of the glass samples gradually increased, and the resistance to thermal shock (RTS) value gradually decreased. Moreover, the viscosity of the glass samples decreased with the ratio of Na/Si and Na/K increased.     

Lithiation MXene Derivative Skeletons for Wide-Temperature Lithium Metal Anodes

Lithium (Li) metal, as an appealing candidate for the next-generation of high-energy-density batteries, is plagued by its safety issue mainly caused by uncontrolled dendrite growth and infinite volume expansion. Developing new materials that can improve the performance of Li-metal anode is one of the urgent tasks. Herein, a new MXene derivative containing pure rutile TiO₂ and N-doped carbon prepared by heat-treating MXene under a mixing gas, exhibiting high chemical activity in molten Li, is reported. The lithiation MXene derivative with a hybrid of LiTiO₂-Li₃N-C and Li offers outstanding electrochemical properties. The symmetrical cell assembling lithiation MXene derivative hybrid anode exhibits an ultra-long cycle lifespan of 2000 h with an overpotential of ≈30 mV at 1 mA cm⁻², which overwhelms Li-based anodes reported so far. Additionally, long-term operations of 34, 350, and 500 h at 10 mA cm⁻² can be achieved in symmetrical cells at temperatures of −10, 25, and 50 °C, respectively. Both experimental tests and density functional theory calculations confirm that the LiTiO₂-Li₃N-C skeleton serves as a promising host for Li infusion by alleviating volume variation. Simultaneously, the superlithiophilic interphase of Li₃N guides Li deposition along the LiTiO₂-Li₃N-C skeleton to avoid dendrite growth.     

Learning shape and texture progression for young child face aging

Face aging (FA) for young faces refers to rendering the aging faces at target age for an individual, generally under 20s, which is an important topic of facial age analysis. Unlike traditional FA for adults, it is challenging to age children with one deep learning-based FA network, since there are deformations of facial shapes and variations of textural details. To alleviate the deficiency, a unified FA framework for young faces is proposed, which consists of two decoupled networks to apply aging image translation. It explicitly models transformations of geometry and appearance using two components: GD-GAN, which simulates the Geometric Deformation using Generative Adversarial Network; TV-GAN, which simulates the Textural Variations guided by the age-related saliency map. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method has advantages over the state-of-the-art methods in terms of synthesizing visually plausible images for young faces, as well as preserving the personalized features.     

控制爆破法处理卡钻事故

介绍了在包头市某工程实施管道穿越黄河施工中,采用爆破法处理卡钻的经验。针对深水环境条件及钻杆内径小不宜采用集团装药的条件,确定采用"小直径爆破筒,钻杆内部装药"的爆破方案,阐述了爆破设计及施工注意事项。可供类似工程参考。