Ab initio study of helium in Li4SiO4 crystals: Electronic properties,migration, and vacancy capture mechanism

Li₄SiO₄ crystal is a candidate material for tritium breeder material. Vacancy defects and He atoms will be produced in the crystal after neutron irradiation in fusion reactor. In previous research, we learned vacancy defects mainly include V_O⁰, V_O²⁺, and V_Li⁰, meanwhile, He atoms are easy to migrate and aggregate in the crystal. In order to understand the relationship between vacancy defects and He atoms, we use density functional theory (DFT) to study the interaction mechanism between vacancy and He atom. The results show that the local stable sites of He atoms are related to the surrounding charge distribution. V_O²⁺ and V_Li⁰ can capture interstitial He atoms, and it is difficult to escape the vacancies, thereby increasing the nucleation center of He atoms. V_O⁰ promotes the diffusion of He atoms in the interstitial space, which will cause small helium bubbles to merge more easily.     

Revealing cracking and breakage behaviours of gibbsite particles

Mitigating gibbsite particle cracking and breakage during industrial alumina production can increase the quality of smelter grade alumina product by reducing the ultrafine particle content. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the particle cracking during static calcination and the breakage of calcined gibbsite particles under external force. In this work, we investigated the impact of the calcination ramping rate and the crystallite size on gibbsite particle cracking during static calcination. A slow ramping rate and a large pristine crystallite size tend to increase particle cracking. Apart from the study of particle cracking behaviour, we also investigated the breakage of calcined gibbsite particle under external force. Cracks on the particle surface can initiate breakage within the crystallite and along the grain boundary under external force. The breakage within crystallite occurs as the cleavage of the crystallite, while the breakage along the grain boundary leads to the shedding of a whole crystallite. We further explored the factors influencing the strength of calcined gibbsite particles. With increasing calcination temperature, the strength of particle increases when gibbsite converts to boehmite, and then decreases when boehmite converts into amorphous alumina. Particles containing smaller crystallites and calcined with fast ramping rates exhibit higher resistance to breakage.     

Engineering Bioactive M2 Macrophage-Polarized Anti-Inflammatory,Antioxidant, and Antibacterial Scaffolds for Rapid Angiogenesis and Diabetic Wound Repair

Diabetic wound healing still faces great challenges due to the excessive inflammation, easy infection, and impaired angiogenesis in wound beds. The immunoregulation of macrophages polarization toward M2 phenotype that facilitates the transition from inflammation to proliferation phase has been proved to be an effective way to improve diabetic wound healing. Herein, an M2 phenotype-enabled anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antibacterial conductive hydrogel scaffolds (GDFE) for producing rapid angiogenesis and diabetic wound repair are reported. The GDFE scaffolds are fabricated facilely through the dynamic crosslinking between polypeptide and polydopamine and graphene oxide. The GDFE scaffolds possess thermosensitivity, self-healing behavior, injectability, broad-spectrum antibacterial activity, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory ability, and electronic conductivity. GDFE effectively activates the polarization of macrophages toward M2 phenotype and significantly promotes the proliferation of dermal fibroblasts, the migration, and in vitro angiogenesis of endothelial cells through paracrine mechanisms. The in vivo results from a full-thickness diabetic wound model demonstrate that GDFE can rapidly promote the diabetic wound repair and skin regeneration, through fast anti-inflammation and angiogenesis and M2 macrophage polarization. This study provides highly efficient strategy for treating diabetic wound repair through designing the M2 polarization-enabled anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antibacterial bioactive materials.     

视准线法在乌江站水平位移观测中的应用

文章以驷马山引江工程乌江抽水站为例,介绍了视准线法在大型泵站水平位移观测中的应用.     

How the biaxially stretching mode influence dielectric and energy storage properties of polypropylene films

The most important polymer film used in commercial capacitors is biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP), which could be produced by sequentially or simultaneously biaxial orientation after the melt-extrusion. In order to disclose the influence of the stretching technique on the properties of films, the BOPP films with varied thickness were fabricated by sequential and simultaneous orientation, respectively. Compared to the sequentially biaxially stretched films, the crystal grains in the simultaneously biaxially stretched films are more isotropically dispersed. As temperature increases, all the BOPP films exhibit similar dielectric constant, and the simultaneous films have much lower dielectric loss thanks to the finer blended crystalline and amorphous phases. When the film thickness is smaller than 5 μm, the breakdown field strength, energy density and discharging time of the simultaneous films can be increased by at least 10% comparing to the sequential ones, which is very important for reducing the volume of the film capacitors. All the results suggest the simultaneously biaxial orientation mode shows significant advantages in producing thin BOPP films with better mechanical and electrical properties.     

Effect of environmental pressure on the microstructure of YSZ thermal barrier coating via suspension plasma spraying

Suspension plasma spraying (SPS) as a potential technique to prepare thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) has been attracting more and more attention. However, most reports on SPS were carried out in the atmosphere. Given the unique features of in-flight particles and plasma jets under low pressure, the resulting coatings are expected to be different from those under atmospheric pressure. In this article, yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) thermal barrier coatings were prepared using suspension plasma spraying under different environmental pressures. The results show that as the environmental pressure decreased, the column-like structural coating turned into a vertical crack segmented structure, as well as a dramatic decrease in surface roughness. More nanoparticle agglomerates were formed in the coating under lower environmental pressures. The real porosity of the coating increased with a decrease in environmental pressure.     

抑制锌枝晶的新型负极材料ZnSO4·3Zn(OH)2·H2O@石墨烯的制备

锌的可充电电池有良好的电化学性能,但锌枝晶的问题会导致其库伦效率降低,发生短路,甚至形成"死锌".利用沉淀法制备新型复合材料ZnSO4·3Zn(OH)2·H2O@石墨烯作为电池的负极,使用2 mol/L K2SO4作为电解液,利用沉淀-溶解机制以达到实现抑制锌枝晶的目的.采用X线衍射仪(XRD)对循环前后的负极材料进行表征,用电子扫描显微镜(SEM)观察其形貌,结果表明,制备的新型负极材料在2 mol/L K2SO4电解液中能够完成1000次全放电/充电循环,库伦效率接近100％,容量保持80％,可以有效抑制锌枝晶,以实现电池的长循环稳定性.     

Re-Looking into the Active Moieties of Metal X-ides (X- = Phosph-, Sulf-, Nitr-, and Carb-) Toward Oxygen Evolution Reaction

Non-precious metal-based catalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) have been extensively studied, among which the transition metal X-ides (including phosph-ides, sulf-ides, nitr-ides, and carb-ides) materials are emerging as promising candidates to replace the benchmark Ir/Ru-based materials in alkaline media. However, it is controversial whether the metal Xides host the real active sites since these metal Xides are thermodynamically unstable under a harsh OER environment—it has been reported that the initial metal Xides can be electrochemically oxidized and transformed into corresponding oxides and (oxy)hydroxides. Therefore, the metal Xides are argued as “pre-catalysts”; the electrochemically formed oxides and (oxy)hydroxides are believed as the real active moieties for OER. Herein, the recent advances in understanding the transformation behavior of metal Xides during OER are re-looked; importantly, hypotheses are provided to understand why the electrochemically formed oxides and (oxy)hydroxides catalysts derived from metal Xides are superior for OER to the as-prepared metal oxides and (oxy)hydroxides catalysts.     

Nanovaccine-Mediated Cell Selective Delivery of Neoantigens Potentiating Adoptive Dendritic Cell Transfer for Personalized Immunization

Neoantigen vaccines and adoptive dendritic cell (DC) transfer are major clinical approaches to initiate personalized immunity in cancer patients. However, the immunization efficacy is largely limited by the in vivo trajectory including neoantigens’ access to resident DCs and DCs’ access to lymph nodes (LNs). Herein, an innovative strategy is proposed to improve personalized immunization through neoantigen-loaded nanovaccines synergized with adoptive DC transfer. It is found that it enables selective delivery of neoantigens to resident DCs and macrophages by coating cancer cell membranes onto neoantigen-loaded nanoparticles. In addition, the nanovaccines promote the secretion of chemokine C-C motif ligand 2 (CCL2), CCL3, and C-X-C motif ligand 10 from macrophages, thus potentiating the access of transferred DCs to LNs. This immunization strategy enables coordinated delivery of identified neoantigens and autologous tumor lysate-derived undefined antigens, leading to initiation of antitumor T cell immunity in a personalized manner. It significantly inhibits tumor growth in prophylactic and established mouse tumor models. The findings provide a new vision for potentiating adoptive cell transfer by nanovaccines, which may open the door to a transformative possibility for improving personalized immunization.     

非光滑凸问题投影型对偶平均优化方法的个体收敛性

对于一般凸问题,对偶平均方法的收敛性分析需要在对偶空间进行转换,难以得到个体收敛性结果.对此,文中首先给出对偶平均方法的简单收敛性分析,证明对偶平均方法具有与梯度下降法相同的最优个体收敛速率Ο(lnt/t).不同于梯度下降法,讨论2种典型的步长策略,验证对偶平均方法在个体收敛分析中具有步长策略灵活的特性.进一步,将个体收敛结果推广至随机形式,确保对偶平均方法可有效处理大规模机器学习问题.最后,在L1范数约束的hinge损失问题上验证理论分析的正确性.