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Full-Text Articles in Physics

Microstructural Origin Of The High-Energy Storage Performance In Epitaxial Lead-Free Ba(Zr 0.2 Ti 0.8 )O 3 Thick Films, Jun Ouyang, Xianke Wang, Changtao Shao, Hongbo Cheng, Hanfei Zhu, Yuhang Ren Sep 2022

Microstructural Origin Of The High-Energy Storage Performance In Epitaxial Lead-Free Ba(Zr 0.2 Ti 0.8 )O 3 Thick Films, Jun Ouyang, Xianke Wang, Changtao Shao, Hongbo Cheng, Hanfei Zhu, Yuhang Ren

Publications and Research

In our previous work, epitaxial Ba(Zr 0.2 Ti 0.8 )O 3 thick films (~1–2 μ m) showed an excellent energy storage performance with a large recyclable energy density (~58 J/cc) and a high energy efficiency (~92%), which was attributed to a nanoscale entangled heterophase polydomain structure. Here, we propose a detailed analysis of the structure–property relationship in these film materials, using an annealing process to illustrate the effect of nanodomain entanglement on the energy storage performance. It is revealed that an annealing-induced stress relaxation led to the segregation of the nanodomains (via detailed XRD analyses), and a degraded energy storage …


Evaluation Of Log P, Pka, And Log D Predictions From The Sampl7 Blind Challenge, Teresa Danielle Bergazin, Nicolas Tielker, Yingying Zhang, Junjun Mao, M. R. Gunner, Karol Francisco, Carlo Ballatore, Stefan M. Kast, David L. Mobley Jun 2021

Evaluation Of Log P, Pka, And Log D Predictions From The Sampl7 Blind Challenge, Teresa Danielle Bergazin, Nicolas Tielker, Yingying Zhang, Junjun Mao, M. R. Gunner, Karol Francisco, Carlo Ballatore, Stefan M. Kast, David L. Mobley

Publications and Research

The Statistical Assessment of Modeling of Proteins and Ligands (SAMPL) challenges focuses the computational modeling community on areas in need of improvement for rational drug design. The SAMPL7 physical property challenge dealt with prediction of octanol-water partition coefficients and pKa for 22 compounds. The dataset was composed of a series of N-acylsulfonamides and related bioisosteres. 17 research groups participated in the log P challenge, submitting 33 blind submissions total. For the pKa challenge, 7 different groups participated, submitting 9 blind submissions in total. Overall, the accuracy of octanol-water log P predictions in the SAMPL7 challenge was …


Alternative View Of Oxygen Reduction On Porous Carbon Electrocatalysts: The Substance Of Complex Oxygen-Surface Interactions, Giacomo De Falco, Marc Florent, Jacek Jagiello, Yongqiang Cheng, Luke L. Daemen, Anibal J. Ramirez-Cuesta, Teresa J. Bandosz Mar 2021

Alternative View Of Oxygen Reduction On Porous Carbon Electrocatalysts: The Substance Of Complex Oxygen-Surface Interactions, Giacomo De Falco, Marc Florent, Jacek Jagiello, Yongqiang Cheng, Luke L. Daemen, Anibal J. Ramirez-Cuesta, Teresa J. Bandosz

Publications and Research

Electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is an important energy-related process requiring alternative catalysts to expensive platinum-based ones. Although recently some advancements in carbon catalysts have been reported, there is still a lack of understanding which surface features might enhance their efficiency for ORR. Through a detailed study of oxygen adsorption on carbon molecular sieves and using inelastic neutron scattering, we demonstrated here that the extent of oxygen adsorption/interactions with surface is an important parameter affecting ORR. It was found that both the strength of O2 physical adsorption in small pores and its specific interactions with surface ether functionalities in the …


Nanostructured Fibers As A Versatile Photonic Platform: Radiative Cooling And Waveguiding Through Transverse Anderson Localization, Norman Nan Shi, Cheng-Chia Tsai, Michael J. Carter, Jyotirmoy Mandal, Adam C. Overvig, Matthew Y. Sfeir, Ming Lu, Catherine L. Craig, Gary D. Bernard, Yuan Yang, Nanfang Yu Jul 2018

Nanostructured Fibers As A Versatile Photonic Platform: Radiative Cooling And Waveguiding Through Transverse Anderson Localization, Norman Nan Shi, Cheng-Chia Tsai, Michael J. Carter, Jyotirmoy Mandal, Adam C. Overvig, Matthew Y. Sfeir, Ming Lu, Catherine L. Craig, Gary D. Bernard, Yuan Yang, Nanfang Yu

Publications and Research

Broadband high reflectance in nature is often the result of randomly, three-dimensionally structured materials. This study explores unique optical properties associated with one-dimensional nanostructures discovered in silk cocoon fibers of the comet moth, Argema mittrei. The fibers are populated with a high density of air voids randomly distributed across the fiber cross-section but are invariant along the fiber. These filamentary air voids strongly scatter light in the solar spectrum. A single silk fiber measuring ~50 μm thick can reflect 66% of incoming solar radiation, and this, together with the fibers' high emissivity of 0.88 in the mid-infrared range, allows …


Glass Polymorphism In Glycerol–Water Mixtures: I. A Computer Simulation Study, David A. Jahn, Jessina Wong, Johannes Bachler, Thomas Loerting, Nicolas Giovambattista Mar 2017

Glass Polymorphism In Glycerol–Water Mixtures: I. A Computer Simulation Study, David A. Jahn, Jessina Wong, Johannes Bachler, Thomas Loerting, Nicolas Giovambattista

Publications and Research

We perform out-of-equilibrium molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of water–glycerol mixtures in the glass state. Specifically, we study the transformations between low-density (LDA) and high-density amorphous (HDA) forms of these mixtures induced by compression/decompression at constant temperature. Our MD simulations reproduce qualitatively the density changes observed in experiments. Specifically, the LDA–HDA transformation becomes (i) smoother and (ii) the hysteresis in a compression/ decompression cycle decreases as T and/or glycerol content increase. This is surprising given the fast compression/decompression rates (relative to experiments) accessible in MD simulations. We study mixtures with glycerol molar concentration wg = 0–13% and find that, for the …


Atomistic Corrective Scheme For Supercell Density Functional Theory Calculations Of Charged Defects, Tengfei Cao, Angelo Bongiorno Jun 2016

Atomistic Corrective Scheme For Supercell Density Functional Theory Calculations Of Charged Defects, Tengfei Cao, Angelo Bongiorno

Publications and Research

A new method to correct formation energies of charged defects obtained by supercell densityfunctional calculations is presented and applied to bulk, surface, and low-dimensional systems. The method relies on atomistic models and a polarizable force field to describe a material system and its dielectric properties. The polarizable force field is based on a minimal set of fitting parameters, it accounts for the dielectric screening arising from ions and electrons separately, and it can be easily implemented in any software for atomistic molecular dynamics simulations. This work illustrates both technical aspects and applications of the new corrective scheme. The method is …


Light-Activated Photocurrent Degradation And Self-Healing In Perovskite Solar Cells, Wanyi Nie, Jean-Christophe Blancon, Amanda J. Neukirch, Kannatassen Appavoo, Hsinhan Tsai, Manish Chhowalla, Muhammad A. Alam, Matthew Y. Sfeir, Claudine Katan, Jacky Even, Sergei Tretiak, Jared J. Crochet, Gautam Gupta, Aditya D. Mohite May 2016

Light-Activated Photocurrent Degradation And Self-Healing In Perovskite Solar Cells, Wanyi Nie, Jean-Christophe Blancon, Amanda J. Neukirch, Kannatassen Appavoo, Hsinhan Tsai, Manish Chhowalla, Muhammad A. Alam, Matthew Y. Sfeir, Claudine Katan, Jacky Even, Sergei Tretiak, Jared J. Crochet, Gautam Gupta, Aditya D. Mohite

Publications and Research

Solution-processed organometallic perovskite solar cells have emerged as one of the most promising thin-film photovoltaic technology. However, a key challenge is their lack of stability over prolonged solar irradiation. Few studies have investigated the effect of light soaking on hybrid perovskites and have attributed the degradation in the optoelectronic properties to photochemical or field-assisted ion migration. Here we show that the slow photocurrent degradation in thin-film photovoltaic devices is due to the formation of light-activated meta-stable deep-level trap states. However, the devices can self-heal completely by resting them in the dark for <1 min or the degradation can be completely prevented by operating the devices at 0°C. We investigate several physical mechanisms to explain the microscopic origin for the formation of these trap states, among which the creation of small polaronic states involving localized cooperative lattice strain and molecular orientations emerges as a credible microscopic mechanism requiring further detailed studies.


A Direct Mechanism Of Ultrafast Intramolecular Singlet Fission In Pentacene Dimers, Eric G. Fuemmeler, Samuel N. Sanders, Andrew B. Pun, Elango Kumarasamy, Tao Zeng, Kiyoshi Miyata, Michael L. Steigerwald, X.-Y. Zhu, Matthew Y. Sfeir, Luis M. Campos, Nandini Ananth May 2016

A Direct Mechanism Of Ultrafast Intramolecular Singlet Fission In Pentacene Dimers, Eric G. Fuemmeler, Samuel N. Sanders, Andrew B. Pun, Elango Kumarasamy, Tao Zeng, Kiyoshi Miyata, Michael L. Steigerwald, X.-Y. Zhu, Matthew Y. Sfeir, Luis M. Campos, Nandini Ananth

Publications and Research

Interest in materials that undergo singlet fission (SF) has been catalyzed by the potential to exceed the Shockley–Queisser limit of solar power conversion efficiency. In conventional materials, the mechanism of SF is an intermolecular process (xSF), which is mediated by charge transfer (CT) states and depends sensitively on crystal packing or molecular collisions. In contrast, recently reported covalently coupled pentacenes yield ∼2 triplets per photon absorbed in individual molecules: the hallmark of intramolecular singlet fission (iSF). However, the mechanism of iSF is unclear. Here, using multireference electronic structure calculations and transient absorption spectroscopy, we establish that iSF can occur via …


Glass Polymorphism In Glycerol–Water Mixtures: Ii. Experimental Studies, Johannes Bachler, Violeta Fuentes-Landete, David A. Jahn, Jessina Wong, Nicolas Giovambattista, Thomas Loerting Mar 2016

Glass Polymorphism In Glycerol–Water Mixtures: Ii. Experimental Studies, Johannes Bachler, Violeta Fuentes-Landete, David A. Jahn, Jessina Wong, Nicolas Giovambattista, Thomas Loerting

Publications and Research

We report a detailed experimental study of (i) pressure-induced transformations in glycerol–water mixtures at T = 77 K and P = 0–1.8 GPa, and (ii) heating-induced transformations of glycerol–water mixtures recovered at 1 atm and T = 77 K. Our samples are prepared by cooling the solutions at ambient pressure at various cooling rates (100 K s1–10 K h1) and for the whole range of glycerol mole fractions, wg. Depending on concentration and cooling rates, cooling leads to samples containing amorphous ice (wg Z 0.20), ice (wg r 0.32), and/or ‘‘distorted ice’’ (0 o wg r 0.38). Upon compression, we …


Climate Change: The Fork At The End Of Now, Micha Tomkiewicz Jan 2011

Climate Change: The Fork At The End Of Now, Micha Tomkiewicz

Publications and Research

There are many books on global warming written entirely from a layman's perspective, and there is a great deal of scientific literature on this subject. But few if any books attempt to bridge the science to those who lack a rigorous background in mathematics, physics and chemistry-but who may be working on careers in environmental science and policy. The new text is designed to introduce the field of global climate change from a scientific perspective-but written in a way that is accessible to students with some or little science background. It reviews the basic principles of climatic thermodynamics and atmospheric …