Improved morphology and enhanced stability via solvent engineering for planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells

Solvent engineering technique for planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells is an efficient way to achieve uniformly controlled grain morphology for perovskite films. In this report, diethyl ether solvent engineering technique was used for Methyl ammonium lead triiodide (CH₃NH₃PbI₃) perovskite thin films for planar heterojunction solar cells which exhibited a PCE of 9.20%. Morphological improvements and enhanced grain sizes leads to enhanced absorption of CH₃NH₃PbI₃. Moreover solar cells have showed an excellent environmental stability of more than 100 days. This increase in efficiency is due to improved film morphology of perovskite layer after solvent treatment which has been revealed under UV–Vis spectroscopy, SEM images, X-ray diffraction and impedance spectroscopy.     

Improving the fill factor of N2200-based all polymer solar cells by introducing EPPDI as a solid additive

A cheap and commercially available small molecule (namely EPPDI) is introduced to the active layer of N2200-based all polymer solar cells as a solid additive. EPPDI at the optimal ratio can improve the D-A nano-scale morphology and reduce trap density of the active layer by filling morphological spaces. As a result, the photovoltaic performance of the resulting devices based on PF2:N2200 are increased from 6.28% to 7.03% with significantly enhanced fill factor. This work demonstrates a facile approach for improving the performance of all polymer solar cells.     

Role of morphology in electrochemical hydrogen storage using binary DyFeO3-ZnO nanocomposites as electrode materials

Hydrogen storage technology is one of the most challenging issues due to the increasing demand for fossil fuel replacement and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In the current paper, the main aim is one-step and eco-friendly preparation of DyFeO₃-ZnO nanocomposites using Barberry fruit extract as natural precursor (with the role of both fuel and capping agent) to compare with various conventional carboxylic acids. To further examine, the effect of different parameters like calcination temperature and the type of the chelating agent was scrutinized to acquire optimum shape, structure, morphology and size of the obtained products. This is the first effort on the investigation of the hydrogen storage capacity of DyFeO₃-ZnO nanocomposites in terms of role of morphology. The electrochemical hydrogen storage capacity of obtained DyFeO₃-ZnO nanocomposites was studied mediated by chronopotentiometry charge-discharge methods in KOH medium. The synthesis of nanocomposites in the presence of chemical or natural capping agent (carboxylic acids or Barberry fruit extract) led to different morphologies which affects to the electrochemical performance. As a result, the electrode which is provided by plate-like DyFeO₃-ZnO nanocomposites performed 600.11 mAh/g discharge capacity compared with other samples. Based on the obtained results, DyFeO₃-ZnO nanocomposites can be promising compounds to improve the electrochemical performance of hydrogen storage.     

Influence of Substrate Temperature on Stress and Morphology Characteristics of Co Doped ZnO Films Prepared by Laser-Molecular Beam Epitaxy

Znl_xCoxO （x = 0.05） thin films are deposited on sapphire （0001） substrates by laser-molecular beam epitaxy technique at different substrate temperatures. The structural, stress and morphology evolution features are investigated by means of X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy. The surface parameters of roughness exponent α, root mean square （RMS） roughness w and autocorrelation length ~ are calculated and the surface parameters are preliminarily analyzed. The values of ~ vary from 0.7 to 0.9. The RMS roughness w is less than 2.2 nm, and it increases with increasing Ts from 300 to 400 °C, and then decreases when Ts is 500 °C. The autocorrelation length ~ decreases monotonously with the increase in Ts from 300 to 500 °C, which indicates that the increase in Ts restrains the spread of the surface fluctuations until Ts is higher than 400 °C.     

Comparison of steam-alkali-chemical and microwave-alkali pretreatment for enhancing the enzymatic saccharification of oil palm trunk

This paper demonstrates two different pretreatment protocols for oil palm trunks (OPT); steam-alkali-chemical (SAC) and microwave-alkali (Mw-A) method. The composition, morphology, structure and crystallinity of OPT before and after pretreatment were analyzed. The effectiveness of the pretreated methods was investigated by performing enzymatic saccharification on the OPT. The physiochemical factors namely: enzyme ratio (cellulase to β-glucosidase), pH, temperature and substrate loading (w/v) on enzymatic saccharification were also investigated. The pre-determined optimal conditions were then used for further enzymatic hydrolysis of raw and pretreated OPT substrates. The results revealed a huge degree of reduction in lignin, up to 89% for SAC treated OPT and at least 15% for Mw-A treated OPT sample as compared to untreated ones. High glucose accumulation (79.4%) was obtained after 72 h saccharification for both pretreated OPT samples.     

Concurrent nucleation, formation and growth of two intermetallic compounds (Cu6Sn5 and Cu3Sn) during the early stages of lead-free soldering

This study investigates the concurrent nucleation, formation and growth of two intermetallic compounds (IMCs), Cu₆Sn₅ (η) and Cu₃Sn (ε), during the early stages of soldering in the Cu-Sn system. The nucleation, formation and growth of the IMC layers is simulated through a multiphase-field model [1] and [2] in which the concurrent nucleation of both IMC phases is considered to be a stochastic Poisson process with nucleation rates calculated from classical nucleation theory [3]. CALPHAD thermodynamic models are used to calculate the local contributions to the free energy of the system and the driving forces for precipitation of the IMC phases. The nucleation parameters of the η phase are estimated from experimental results [4] and those of the ε phase are assumed to be similar. A parametric investigation of the effects of model parameters (e.g. grain boundary (GB) diffusion rates, interfacial and GB energies) on morphological evolution and IMC layer growth rate is presented and compared with previous works in which nucleation was ignored [5]. In addition, the resulting growth rates are compared with the available literature and it is found that, for a certain range in the model parameters, the agreement is quite satisfactory. This work provides valuable insight into the dominant mechanisms for mass transport as well as morphological evolution and growth of IMC layers during early stages of Pb-free soldering.     

Synthesis of morphology-controlled mesoporous transition aluminas derived from the decomposition of alumina hydrates

Aluminum hydroxides were synthesized through the acidification of sodium aluminate solution using single organic diester or diacid as pH adjustor and aluminum chelating agent. The obtained alumina hydrates are investigated by XRD, SEM, IR and TG. Bayerite firstly formed at room temperature, and its morphology greatly varied with the pH adjustors used, which probably attributes to different kinetics of the acidification. The bayerite can evolve to gibbsite and boehmite after the hydrothermal treatment at 100 °C and 145 °C, respectively, where these alumina hydrates show diverse morphologies. After the calcination, these alumina hydrates of bayerite, gibbsite and boehmite could pseudomorphically transform to the corresponding η-, χ- and γ-aluminas, respectively, exhibiting different structural and textural properties. Interestingly, the transition aluminas derived from the aluminum tri-hydroxides, bayerite and gibbsite, both display locally organized mesopores, while no such meso-structure can be observed in γ-alumina obtained from the aluminum mono-hydroxide, boehmite. The changes of bayerite during calcination are investigated detailed. The dehydration of non-porous bayerite accompanied with the formation of meso-structured transition aluminas, where the meso-structure becomes more and more clearly defined and pore size expands with the calcination temperature increasing.     

Oxidation behaviour of some modern heat-resistant cast steels

The kinetics and morphological development of the oxidation of a selection of modern heat-resistant cast steels have been examined and compared with those of the traditional material, HK40. The materials examined had Cr contents of 24 to 29 weight percent (wt %), Ni contents of 30 to 46 wt %and in several cases minority additions of Nb, W, or both. One steel contained 3.3 wt % Al. Kinetics were measured gravimetrically over periods of 6 to 100 h and found to be parabolic in all cases except for the Al-containing steel, which oxidized in an irregular and irreproducible fashion. All steels formed an external scale of Cr₂O₃ with a Mn-rich spinel layer at the outer surface. Beneath this scale was a layer of alloy depleted in both Cr and Mn. Within the depleted layer inter-dendritic carbides had been destroyed, leaving either oxide near the external alloy surface or voids deeper within the alloy.     

Motion detection using block based bi-directional optical flow method

Detecting moving objects from video frame sequences has a lot of useful applications in computer vision. This proposed method of moving object detection first estimates the bi-directional optical flow fields between (i) the current frame and the previous frame and between (ii) the current frame and the next frame. The bi-directional optical flow field is then subjected to normalization and enhancement. Each normalized and enhanced optical flow field is then divided into non-overlapping blocks. The moving objects are finally detected in the form of binary blobs by examining the histogram based thresholded values of such optical flow field of each block as well as the optical flow field of the candidate flow value. Our technique has been conceptualized, implemented and tested on real video data sets with complex background environment. The experimental results and quantitative evaluation establish that our technique achieves effective and efficient results than other existing methods.