No Arabic abstract
The on-going COVID-19 pandemic highlights the severe health risks posed by deep submicron sized airborne viruses and particulates in the spread of infectious diseases. There is an urgent need for the development of efficient, durable and reusable filters for this size range. Here we report the realization of efficient particulate filters using nanowire-based low-density metal foams which combine extremely large surface areas with excellent mechanical properties. The metal foams exhibit outstanding filtration efficiencies (>96.6%) in the PM_{0.3} regime, with potentials for further improvement. Their mechanical stability and light weight, chemical and radiation resistance, ease of cleaning and reuse, and recyclability further make such metal foams promising filters for combating COVID-19 and other types of airborne particulates.
Nanostructured palladium foams offer exciting potential for applications in diverse fields such as catalyst, fuel cell, and particularly hydrogen storage technologies. We have fabricated palladium nanowire foams using a cross-linking and freeze-drying technique. These foams have a tunable density down to 0.1% of the bulk, and a surface area to volume ratio of up to 1,540,000:1. They exhibit highly attractive characteristics for hydrogen storage, in terms of loading capacity, rate of absorption and heat of absorption. The hydrogen absorption/desorption process is hysteretic in nature, accompanied by substantial lattice expansion/contraction as the foam converts between Pd and PdHx.
The nature of the atomic defects on the hydrogen passivated Si (100) surface is analyzed using deep learning and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). A robust deep learning framework capable of identifying atomic species, defects, in the presence of non-resolved contaminates, step edges, and noise is developed. The automated workflow, based on the combination of several networks for image assessment, atom-finding and defect finding, is developed to perform the analysis at different levels of description and is deployed on an operational STM platform. This is further extended to unsupervised classification of the extracted defects using the mean-shift clustering algorithm, which utilizes features automatically engineered from the combined output of neural networks. This combined approach allows the identification of localized and extended defects on the topographically non-uniform surfaces or real materials. Our approach is universal in nature and can be applied to other surfaces for building comprehensive libraries of atomic defects in quantum materials.
Terahertz electromagnetic radiation is extremely useful for numerous applications such as imaging and spectroscopy. Therefore, it is highly desirable to have an efficient table-top emitter covering the 1-to-30-THz window whilst being driven by a low-cost, low-power femtosecond laser oscillator. So far, all solid-state emitters solely exploit physics related to the electron charge and deliver emission spectra with substantial gaps. Here, we take advantage of the electron spin to realize a conceptually new terahertz source which relies on tailored fundamental spintronic and photonic phenomena in magnetic metal multilayers: ultrafast photo-induced spin currents, the inverse spin-Hall effect and a broadband Fabry-Perot resonance. Guided by an analytical model, such spintronic route offers unique possibilities for systematic optimization. We find that a 5.8-nm-thick W/CoFeB/Pt trilayer generates ultrashort pulses fully covering the 1-to-30-THz range. Our novel source outperforms laser-oscillator-driven emitters such as ZnTe(110) crystals in terms of bandwidth, terahertz-field amplitude, flexibility, scalability and cost.
The development of silicon anodes to replace conventional graphite in efforts to increase energy densities of lithium-ion batteries has been largely impeded by poor interfacial stability against liquid electrolytes. Here, stable operation of 99.9 weight% micro-Si (uSi) anode is enabled by utilizing the interface passivating properties of sulfide based solid-electrolytes. Bulk to surface characterization, as well as quantification of interfacial components showed that such an approach eliminates continuous interfacial growth and irreversible lithium losses. In uSi || layered-oxide full cells, high current densities at room temperature (5 mA cm 2), wide operating temperature (-20{deg}C to 80{deg}C) and high loadings (>11 mAh cm-2) were demonstrated for both charge and discharge operations. The promising battery performance can be attributed to both the desirable interfacial property between uSi and sulfide electrolytes, as well as the unique chemo-mechanical behavior of the Li-Si alloys.
Perovskite semiconductors have demonstrated outstanding external luminescence quantum yields, enabling high power conversion efficiencies (PCE). However, the precise conditions to advance to an efficiency regime above monocrystalline silicon cells are not well understood. Here, we establish a simulation model that well describes efficient p-i-n type perovskite solar cells and a range of different experiments. We then study important device and material parameters and we find that an efficiency regime of 30% can be unlocked by optimizing the built-in potential across the perovskite layer by using either highly doped (10^19 cm-3), thick transport layers (TLs) or ultrathin undoped TLs, e.g. self-assembled monolayers. Importantly, we only consider parameters that have been already demonstrated in recent literature, that is a bulk lifetime of 10 us, interfacial recombination velocities of 10 cm/s, a perovskite bandgap of 1.5 eV and an EQE of 95%. A maximum efficiency of 31% is predicted for a bandgap of 1.4 eV. Finally, we demonstrate that the relatively high mobile ion density does not represent a significant barrier to reach this efficiency regime. Thus, the results of this paper promise continuous PCE improvements until perovskites may become the most efficient single-junction solar cell technology in the near future.