Directional Copper Dewetting to Grow Graphene Ribbons Arrays

V-groove confines the anisotropic dewetting of Cu film to form ribbons. Influence mechanism of film thickness and annealing procedure on the confined dewetting, structural and morphological evolution is investigated. Thus...

Изменение дефектной структуры поверхности ленты металлического стекла Fe-=SUB=-77-=/SUB=-Ni-=SUB=-1-=/SUB=-Si-=SUB=-9-=/SUB=-B-=SUB=-13-=/SUB=- при воздействии гидростатического давления и изотермического отжига

The features and generality of the effect of hydrostatic pressure and annealing on the surface relief of the contact and non-contact side of the Fe77Ni1Si9B13 metal glass ribbon are revealed. The relationship between transformation of the ribbon surface inhomogeneities under these effects and possible formation of nanocrystalline regions are analyzed. We found that the evolution of the surface inhomogeneities at the contact side of the ribbon after annealing procedure leads to appearing of discrete-sized fractions in these regions

Study of Annealed Aquivion® Ionomers with the INCA Method †

We investigated the possibility to increase the working temperature and endurance of proton exchange membranes for fuel cells and water electrolyzers by thermal annealing of short side chain perfluorosulfonic acid (SSC-PFSA) Aquivion® membranes. The Ionomer nc Analysis (INCA method), based on nc/T plots where nc is a counter elastic force index, was applied to SSC-PFSA in order to evaluate ionomer thermo-mechanical properties and to probe the increase of crystallinity during the annealing procedure. The enhanced thermal and mechanical stability of extruded Aquivion® 870 (equivalent weight, EW = 870 g·mol−1) was related to an increase of long-range order. Complementary differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) measurements confirmed the increase of polymer stiffness by the annealing treatment with an enhancement of the storage modulus over the whole range of temperature. The main thermomechanical relaxation temperature is also enhanced. DSC measurements showed slight base line changes after annealing, attributable to the glass transition and melting of a small amount of crystalline phase. The difference between the glass transition and melting temperatures derived from INCA plots and the ionic-cluster transition temperature derived from DMA measurements is consistent with the different experimental conditions, especially the dry atmosphere in DMA. Finally, the annealing procedure was also successfully applied for the first time to an un-crystallized cast membrane (EW = 830 g·mol−1) resulting in a remarkable mechanical and thermal stabilization.

Improvement of Ethanol Gas-Sensing Responses of ZnO–WO3 Composite Nanorods through Annealing Induced Local Phase Transformation

In this study, ZnO–WO3 composite nanorods were synthesized through a combination of hydrothermal growth and sputtering method. The structural analysis results revealed that the as-synthesized composite nanorods had a homogeneous coverage of WO3 crystallite layer. Moreover, the ZnO–WO3 composite nanorods were in a good crystallinity. Further post-annealed the composite nanorods in a hydrogen-containing atmosphere at 400 °C induced the local phase transformation between the ZnO and WO3. The ZnO–WO3 composite nanorods after annealing engendered the coexistence of ZnWO4 and WO3 phase in the shell layer which increased the potential barrier number at the interfacial contact region with ZnO. This further enhanced the ethanol gas-sensing response of the pristine ZnO–WO3 composite nanorods. The experimental results herein demonstrated a proper thermal annealing procedure of the binary composite nanorods is a promising approach to modulate the gas-sensing behavior the binary oxide composite nanorods.

Molecular dynamics simulations reveal how graphene oxide stabilizes and activates lipase in an anhydrous gas

The interaction between Candida antarctica lipase B (CALB) and graphene oxide (GO) in an anhydrous gas was studied using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations augmented with a simulated annealing procedure to accelerate relaxation towards equilibrium.

Construction of 2D/2D Ni2P/CdS heterojunctions with significantly enhanced photocatalytic H2 evolution performance

2D/2D Ni2P/CdS heterojunctions are prepared by combining liquid exfoliation of CdS with a post-annealing procedure and employed as highly efficient photocatalysts for H2 evolution.

Growth of invar nanoparticles on a graphene oxide support

Alloyed binary invar-like FeNi nanocrystals are synthesized on the surface of graphene oxide in a two-step impregnation–annealing procedure.

Crystal reorientation in methylammonium lead iodide perovskite thin film with thermal annealing

Two orientations in perovskite (CH3NH3PbI3) film, (110) and (002), were resolved and shown to be affected by the thermal annealing procedure.

Determination of stacking ordering in disordered close-packed structures from pairwise correlation functions

It is shown how to reconstruct the stacking sequence from the pairwise correlation functions between layers in close-packed structures. First, of theoretical interest, the analytical formulation and solution of the problem are presented when the exact pairwise correlation counts are known. In the second part, the practical problem is approached. A simulated annealing procedure is developed to solve the problem using as initial guess approximate solutions from previous treatments. The robustness of the procedure is tested with synthetic data, followed by an experimental example. The developed approach performs robustly over different synthetic and experimental data, comparing favorably with the reported methods.