Wafer-scale plasmonic metal-dielectric-metal structural color featuring high saturation and low angular dependence

Structural color has been studied through various methods due to its distinguished features of stability, durability, high information storage density and high integration. However, the artificial structural color samples do not exhibit superior performance in color saturation and low angular dependence. Here, we present an approach to acquire additive reflective color based on a metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) stack. The upper layer composed of Ag particles is perforated in a hexagonal arrangement which profits from the dielectric anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membrane, the size and shape of the Ag particles are getting inhomogeneous as the deposition thickness of the upper layer increasing, which expands the desired absorption range of surface plasmons. The residual non-anodized Al foil serves as a highly reflective substrate for efficient color presenting through the thin-film interference in this plasmonic MDM system. As a result, the color gamut area of this MDM stack is extended 8 times in CIE chromaticity coordinates. Finally, a wafer-scale (diameter of 83 mm) badge of Harbin Engineering University (HEU) with highly saturated colors and a pattern characterized with low angle-dependent property (up to 60°) are presented, which exhibit promising prospects in commercial coloring and imaging.

Prion type 2 selection in sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease affecting peripheral ganglia

In sporadic Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (sCJD), the pathological changes appear to be restricted to the central nervous system. Only involvement of the trigeminal ganglion is widely accepted. The present study systematically examined the involvement of peripheral ganglia in sCJD utilizing the currently most sensitive technique for detecting prions in tissue morphologically. The trigeminal, nodose, stellate, and celiac ganglia, as well as ganglia of the cervical, thoracic and lumbar sympathetic trunk of 40 patients were analyzed with the paraffin-embedded tissue (PET)-blot method. Apart from the trigeminal ganglion, which contained protein aggregates in five of 19 prion type 1 patients, evidence of prion protein aggregation was only found in patients associated with type 2 prions. With the PET-blot, aggregates of prion protein type 2 were found in all trigeminal (17/17), in some nodose (5 of 7) and thoracic (3 of 6) ganglia, as well as in a few celiac (4 of 19) and lumbar (1 of 5) ganglia of sCJD patients. Whereas aggregates of both prion types may spread to dorsal root ganglia, more CNS-distant ganglia seem to be only involved in patients accumulating prion type 2. Whether the prion type association is due to selection by prion type-dependent replication, or due to a prion type-dependent property of axonal spread remains to be resolved in further studies.

Dependency of active pressure and equation of state on stiffness of wall

Autonomous motion and motility are hallmarks of active matter. Active agents, such as biological cells and synthetic colloidal particles, consume internal energy or extract energy from the environment to generate self-propulsion and locomotion. These systems are persistently out of equilibrium due to continuous energy consumption. It is known that pressure is not always a state function for generic active matter. Torque interaction between active constituents and confinement renders the pressure of the system a boundary-dependent property. The mechanical pressure of anisotropic active particles depends on their microscopic interactions with a solid wall. Using self-propelled dumbbells confined by solid walls as a model system, we perform numerical simulations to explore how variations in the wall stiffness influence the mechanical pressure of dry active matter. In contrast to previous findings, we find that mechanical pressure can be independent of the interaction of anisotropic active particles with walls, even in the presence of intrinsic torque interaction. Particularly, the dependency of pressure on the wall stiffness vanishes when the stiffness is above a critical level. In such a limit, the dynamics of dumbbells near the walls are randomized due to the large torque experienced by the dumbbells, leading to the recovery of pressure as a state variable of density.

On the BET Surface Area of Nanocellulose Determined Using Volumetric, Gravimetric and Chromatographic Adsorption Methods

Volumetric N2 adsorption at −196°C is generally accepted as “gold standard” for estimating the Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET) surface area of nanocellulose. It is unclear however, whether the BET surface area of nanocellulose obtained at such low temperatures and pressures is meaningful at an absolute sense, as nanocellulose is used at ambient temperature and pressure. In this work, a systematic evaluation of the BET surface area of nanocellulose using highly crystalline bacterial cellulose (BC) as model nanocellulose was undertaken to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the limitations of BET method for nanocellulose. BET surface area obtained using volumetric N2 adsorption at −196°C was compared with the BET surface area acquired from gravimetric experiments based on n-octane adsorption using dynamic vapour sorption (DVS) and n-octane adsorption determined by inverse gas chromatography (iGC), both at 25°C. It was found that the BET surface area calculated from volumetric N2 adsorption data was 25% lower than that of n-octane adsorption at 25°C obtained using DVS and iGC adsorption methods. These results supported the hypothesis that the BET surface area of nanocellulose is both a molecular scale (N2vs n-octane, molecular cross section of 0.162 nm2vs 0.646 nm2) and temperature (−196°C vs 25°C) dependent property. This study also demonstrates the importance of selecting appropriate BET pressure range based on established criteria and would suggest that room temperature measurement is more relevant for many nanocellulose applications.

Surface engraving engineering of polyhedral photocatalysts

Polyhedral micro-/nanocrystals are an important and charming member of photocatalysts, which have been extensively investigated to reveal the crystal facet-dependent property in the past decades. The photocatalytic activity of polyhedral...

Effect of Axial Porosities on Flexomagnetic Response of In-Plane Compressed Piezomagnetic Nanobeams

We investigated the stability of an axially loaded Euler–Bernoulli porous nanobeam considering the flexomagnetic material properties. The flexomagneticity relates to the magnetization with strain gradients. Here we assume both piezomagnetic and flexomagnetic phenomena are coupled simultaneously with elastic relations in an inverse magnetization. Similar to flexoelectricity, the flexomagneticity is a size-dependent property. Therefore, its effect is more pronounced at small scales. We merge the stability equation with a nonlocal model of the strain gradient elasticity. The Navier sinusoidal transverse deflection is employed to attain the critical buckling load. Furthermore, different types of axial symmetric and asymmetric porosity distributions are studied. It was revealed that regardless of the high magnetic field, one can realize the flexomagnetic effect at a small scale. We demonstrate as well that for the larger thicknesses a difference between responses of piezomagnetic and piezo-flexomagnetic nanobeams would not be significant.

Approach for Optimisation of Tunnel Lining Design

This paper presents an approach that enables the specific characteristics of a primary tunnel lining implemented using numerical modelling to be taken into account during its design. According to the fundamental principles of the New Austrian Tunnelling Method, the primary lining undergoes time-dependent deformation, which is determined by its design. The main design element is shotcrete, which, shortly after its application, interacts with the surrounding rock mass and steel arch frame. The primary lining ensures the equilibrium stress–strain state of “rock mass–tunnel lining” during excavation. The structural interaction varies depending on the hardening of the shotcrete, the rheological properties of the rock mass, and other factors. The proposed approach uses the Homogenisation software application, which was developed by the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Department of Geotechnics and Underground Engineering of the VSB—Technical University of Ostrava. This software allows the heterogeneous structure of the lining to be considered by replacing it with a homogenous structure. The parameters of the homogeneous primary lining, which take into account the steel reinforcement elements and the time-dependent property of the shotcrete, are included in numerical models.