Effect of Printing Process Parameters on the Shape Transformation Capability of 3D Printed Structures

The aim of our research was to investigate and optimise the main 3D printing process parameters that directly or indirectly affect the shape transformation capability and to determine the optimal transformation conditions to achieve predicted extent, and accurate and reproducible transformations of 3D printed, shape-changing two-material structures based on PLA and TPU. The shape-changing structures were printed using the FDM technology. The influence of each printing parameter that affects the final printability of shape-changing structures is presented and studied. After optimising the 3D printing process parameters, the extent, accuracy and reproducibility of the shape transformation performance for four-layer structures were analysed. The shape transformation was performed in hot water at different activation temperatures. Through a careful selection of 3D printing process parameters and transformation conditions, the predicted extent, accuracy and good reproducibility of shape transformation for 3D printed structures were achieved. The accurate deposition of filaments in the layers was achieved by adjusting the printing speed, flow rate and cooling conditions of extruded filaments. The shape transformation capability of 3D printed structures with a defined shape and defined active segment dimensions was influenced by the relaxation of compressive and tensile residual stresses in deposited filaments in the printed layers of the active material and different activation temperatures of the transformation.

Compact, flexible and highly selective wideband complementary FSS with high angular stability

This article presents a novel miniaturized (0.105λ0 × 0.105λ0) flexible complementary frequency selective surfaces (CFSS) structure with sharp band edge selectivity and very high angular stability. To explore two diverse applications as a passband and stopband filter, a novel complementary convoluted square loop (CCSL) type structure has been designed and investigated on ultrathin dielectric material of thickness 0.0023λ0. The second-order wide controllable passband with fractional bandwidth of 19.23% (−3 dB) and remarkably wide stopband of 64.7% (−10 dB) and 54.8% (−20 dB) respectively have been achieved by using a cascaded resonating structure which is composed of asymmetrical meandered CCSL array, arranged on two ultrathin dielectric layers with air foam separation. This particular format would lead to sharp band edge selectivity with steep roll-off (72.43 dB/GHz) and an excellent passband selectivity factor (0.731). An equivalent lumped LC circuit in conjunction with the transmission line model has also been adopted to comprehend the physical mechanism of the proposed single layer and double layer structures. Further, better passband and stopband angular stability at an oblique incident angle of 45° and the bending characteristics have also been investigated thoroughly for the proposed flexible CFSS to check their employability in different conformal structures with WiMAX passband and WLAN stopband application.

Position of Biphenyl Group Turning The Structure and Photophysical Property of D-π-π-A Prototype Fluorescent Material

Three novel D-π-π-A prototype compounds, namely, (E)-2-(3-([1,1'-biphenyl]-2-yl)-1-(9H-fluoren-2-yl) allylidene) malononitri-le (2-BAM), (E)-2-(3-([1,1'-biphenyl]-3-yl)-1-(9H-fluoren-2-yl)allylidene) malononitri-le (3-BAM), (E)-2-(3-([1,1'-biphenyl]-4-yl)-1-(9H-fluoren-2-yl)allylidene) malononitri-le (4-BAM) were synthesized. Furthermore, the structures and photophysical properties of three compounds were compared. Molecules of 2-BAM were packed into a 1D column structure with H-aggregation. However, both of 3-BAM and 4-BAM were packed into 3D layer structures with J-aggregation, respectively. Although three compounds all showed highly twisted molecular geometries, their molecular packing and intermolecular interactions were different. Because of the differences in electronic structures of molecules, the three compounds displayed different emission behaviors in solid and dilute solution. This study indicated that changing the position of biphenyl groups is an effective way to turn the structures and photophysical properties of such D-π-π-A prototype fluorescent material.

Anisotropic MOF-on-MOF Growth of Isostructural Multilayer Metal–Organic Framework Heterostructures

Isostructural MOFs with similar crystallographic parameter are easily available for MOF-on-MOF growth and possible to form core–shell structure by isotropic growth. However, due to well-matched cell lattice, selective growth in isostructural MOF heterostructures remains a great challenge for engineering atypical MOF heterostructures. Herein, an anisotropic MOF-on-MOF growth strategy was developed to structure a range of multilayer sandwich-like ZIF-L heterostructures via stacking isostructural ZIF-L-Zn and ZIF-L-Co alternately with three-, five-, seven-, and more layer structures. Moreover, these heterostructures with highly designable feature were fantastic precursors for fabricating derivatives with tunable magnetic and catalytic properties. Such strategy explores a novel way of achieving anisotropic MOF-on-MOF growth between isostructural MOFs and opens up new horizons for regulating the properties by MOF modular assembly in versatile functional nanocomposites.

An efficient procedure for mining egocentric temporal motifs

Temporal graphs are structures which model relational data between entities that change over time. Due to the complex structure of data, mining statistically significant temporal subgraphs, also known as temporal motifs, is a challenging task. In this work, we present an efficient technique for extracting temporal motifs in temporal networks. Our method is based on the novel notion of egocentric temporal neighborhoods, namely multi-layer structures centered on an ego node. Each temporal layer of the structure consists of the first-order neighborhood of the ego node, and corresponding nodes in sequential layers are connected by an edge. The strength of this approach lies in the possibility of encoding these structures into a unique bit vector, thus bypassing the problem of graph isomorphism in searching for temporal motifs. This allows our algorithm to mine substantially larger motifs with respect to alternative approaches. Furthermore, by bringing the focus on the temporal dynamics of the interactions of a specific node, our model allows to mine temporal motifs which are visibly interpretable. Experiments on a number of complex networks of social interactions confirm the advantage of the proposed approach over alternative non-egocentric solutions. The egocentric procedure is indeed more efficient in revealing similarities and discrepancies among different social environments, independently of the different technologies used to collect data, which instead affect standard non-egocentric measures.

Preliminary Studies on Rare Elements Addition and Effect on Oxidation Behaviour of Pack Cementation Coatings Deposited on Variety of Steels at High Temperature

The aim of the paper was to investigate the air oxidation behaviour of pack aluminised steels exposed at 650 °C for 1000 h in static natural air atmosphere. The pack coatings were doped by rare elements such as gadolinium (Gd), cerium oxide (CeO2), and lanthanum (La) in order to enhance the corrosion resistance and plasticity of the deposited layers. In this work, the following steels were used: 16M, T91, VM12, Super 304H, and finally SANICRO25. The results indicated a much higher corrosion resistance in the coated 16M, T91, and VM12 steels; the steels with a higher Cr content than 16 wt % Cr indicated a better behaviour in the uncoated state than in the coated state. However, the observed difference in mass gain between the uncoated and the coated austenitic steels was not enormous. Furthermore, the addition of RE elements to the coating showed some effect in terms of coating thicknesses and differences in the layer structures. The materials prior to testing and after the exposure were investigated using XRD, the SEM X-ray maps with an EDS instrument were used for particular samples to evaluate the phase identifications, element concentrations, microstructure, and chemical composition.

Influence of a High Static Magnetic Field on the Morphology of Primary Al3Fe Phase in Al-3%Fe Alloy

It had been done the experiments of the solidification on Al-Fe alloy under a high static magnetic field (10T). The effect of high magnetic field on the morphology of primary Al3Fe phase in Al-3%Fe alloy solidification structure has been investigated by analyzing the microstructures. The experimental results shew that the variation of the morphology of Al3Fe phase was obvious under a high static magnetic field, and them changed to particle-likes and short needles from needle-likes, and they were arranged in chains along the direction of magnetic field to form oriented layered structure. The critical nucleation work reduced and the nucleation rate increased under the applied field, and the magnetic interaction caused by the field can suppress the growth of needle-like Al3Fe phase, both of them resulted in the particle-likes and short needles grains of primary Al3Fe phase to nucleate and grow preferentially. Under the action of magnetic moment and the magnetic interaction force a high static magnetic field, the grains of Al3Fe rotated and then polymerized, and finally formed chain arrangements and layer structures.

Modeling of plasmon resonance of silver nanoparticles on a silicon surface

Silver nanoparticles have unique optical properties due to resonance effects that arise due to the presence of conduction electrons in them. When these electrons interacte with photons, they can create localization of electric fields at the interfaces with the environment. Silver nanoparticles deposited on a transparent substrate are often used for research, while Ag nanostructures on Si are studied in this work. They have great potential for practical applications. The interaction of light with nanostructures can be described using various models (pseudo-dielectric functions, effective medium, thin-layer structures, etc.) and optical methods for the experimental determination of their parameters (refractometry, spectrophotometry). Bulk plasmon resonance is considered in this work, which is excited when plasmons are excited at their resonant frequency by an external electromagnetic wave. Calculations were performed for different diameters of silver nanoparticles on a silicon substrate with different structure periods. The calculated spectra are in good agreement with the experimental data of the obtained samples. As a result of the plasmon resonance modeling, the position of the plasmon resonance depends on the density of the arrangement of silver nanoparticles, with an increase in the displacement resonance towards the long-wavelength region.