Abstract:In this study, we present a facile method for the fabrication of ZnO/AuNPs hexagonal wurtzite structure by sol-gel method. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) results indicate that the synthesized AuNPs have good round shape and uniform size with an average diameter of 15 nm. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) results show that the prepared ZnO/AuNPs nanocomposites are uniform spheroidal nanoparticles with sizes in diameter from 60 nm to 100 nm. The presence of Zn, Au and O elements in those samples is determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. The investigation of photocatalytic ability shows that the ZnO/AuNPs (8 mL) achieve complete degradation of methylene blue (MB) under UV irradiation with 65 min. We can conclude that the presence of AuNPs hybrid ZnO can strongly enhance the photocatalytic performance of MB compared to pure ZnO, which may be attributed to the larger specific surface area and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect of AuNPs hybrid ZnO nanocomposites. This method may provide a new way to improve ZnO photocatalysis for water cleaning application.

Abstract:Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanospheres with excellent sensing ability towards formaldehyde were successfully synthesized using a single-capillary electrospinning method. Structural and electrical characteristics of the as-synthesized ZnO nanospheres were systematically investigated. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) images clearly display a novel structure of ZnO with pores distributed on the surface of the nanospheres. The results demonstrate that the ZnO nanospheres possess excellent formaldehyde gas-sensing properties. At room temperature, the response of ZnO nanospheres to formaldehyde with concentration of 100 ppm is determined to be 126.3. In addition, the ZnO nanosphere sensors exhibit short response time of 30 s and short recovery time of 2 s. These excellent gas-sensing properties make the ZnO nanospheres a promising material for the application in environmental monitoring devices.

Abstract:High quality zinc oxide (ZnO) micro/nano nails were prepared through thermal evaporation on the Si (100) substrate. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image shows that the bottom of the nanometer nails present hexagonal structure. The tip diameter of the micro/nano nails is about 319.9 nm, and the length is over 20 μm. X-ray crystal diffraction (XRD) pattern shows that the sample has a hexagonal wurtzite structure and preferred orientation in (002) direction obviously. Photoluminescence (PL) spectrum shows a strong ultraviolet (UV) luminescence peak near the wavelength of 346 nm. Finally, the growth mechanism of the ZnO micro/nano nails is analyzed and studied.

Abstract:The multiband co-aperture optical system with compact structure can achieve full and effective integration of multi-source intelligence information, which is one of the development direction of the optical system. Dichroic beam splitter is a vital optical component to make several systems with different bands share one aperture. The effect of the dichroic beam splitter on the multiband co-aperture optical system is analyzed by matrix optics method and primary aberration theory. The results indicate that the reflection angle of the dichroic beam splitter as a reflector changes imaging direction, and the wedge angle of the dichroic beam splitter as a transmission component increases some aberrations.

Abstract:Polarization navigation system is a hotspot in the field of bionic navigation. Compared with point source polarized light navigation sensor, the polarization information acquisition method based on image sensor and imaging technology has better robustness, and it can obtain more polarization information. In this paper, an embedded imaging polarization sensor for glimmer environment application is designed and developed. The multi-channel video processing technology of TMS320DM642 is used to capture the polarization information of charge coupled device (CCD) camera with three channels. The images are processed by digital signal processer (DSP) in real time, and the angle of polarization (AOP) image is calculated simultaneously with an acquisition and calculation speed of 10 frame per second. Sensor can obtain absolute rotation angle, and the AOP image can be displayed on liquid crystal display (LCD). It provides an effective experimental platform for the research of imaging polarization mode navigation device based on embedded system.

Abstract:In this paper, p-chlorophenylacetic acid and p-fluorophenylacetic acid were applied to modify the indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes. The surface work functions of unmodified ITO, p-chlorophenylacetic acid modified ITO (Cl-ITO) and p-fluorophenylacetic acid modified ITO (F-ITO) are 5.0 eV, 5.26 eV and 5.14 eV, respectively, and the water contact angles are 7.3°, 59.1° and 46.5°, respectively. The increase of the work function makes the hole injection ability of the devices improved, which is proved by the hole transport devices. The self-assembly (SAM) layers transfer hydrophilic ITO to hydrophobic ITO, which makes ITO more compatible with the hydrophobic organic layers, making the organic film more stable during the operation. After modification, the organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), SAM-modified ITO/NPB/Alq3/LiF/Al, with better performance and stability were fabricated. Especially, the OLED with Cl-ITO (Cl-OLED) has a maximum luminance of 22 428 cd/m2 (improved by 32.9%) and a half-lifetime of 46 h. Our results suggest that employing organic acids to modify ITO surface can enhance the stability and the luminescent properties of OLED devices.

Abstract:We report a time-of-flight photon-counting imaging system in conjunction with a single-photon detector mounted with a fiber optic taper, which equivalently enlarges the active area of the single-photon detector by 100 times. The field of view of the imaging system is extended from ±0.57° to ±7° by using the fiber optic taper to collect the scattered photons. Since only a single avalanche photodiode is used, the noise level of the system is maintained at a low level. We demonstrate the scanning of the targets at a stand-off distance of 28 m with a centimeter depth resolution.

Abstract:An implantable optrode composed of fiber and multi-channel flexible thin-film electrode is developed. The flexible recording electrode is made from polyimide and is wrapped around the optical fiber. The front end of the fiber is tapered by wet etching. With the tapered shape, the light can leak from the sidewall of the fiber, and the tapered tip makes it easy to be implanted. The flexible electrode is attached with its recording sites aligning to the tapered part on the fiber. With this method, the fiber acts as an optical waveguide, as well as a support probe for flexible thin-film electrode. This novel device simplifies the fabrication process and decreases the size of the optrode. The device works well in vivo and the optical caused spike can be recorded with signal-to-noise ratio of 6:1.

Abstract:Based on frequency demodulation method, a novel fiber Bragg grating (FBG) velocimeter which can achieve wind speed and temperature synchronous measurement is proposed in this paper. The wind speed and temperature synchronous measurement is realized by cup anemometer (CA) signal modulation and Hilbert-Huang transformation (HHT) signal processing. The working principle of the novel FBG velocimeter is demonstrated and its theory calculation model is also set up by using basic mechanical knowledge and blade element momentum (BEM). Further, calibration experiment is carried out on one prototype of the FBG velocimeter to obtain its measurement performance. HHT is introduced to deal with calibration experiment data. After data analyses, the results show that the novel FBG velocimter can achieve high-precision wind speed measurement of 0.012 m/s with minimum detection limit of 0.41 m/s, and its temperature detection precision is 10.6 pm/°C.

Abstract:A temperature-insensitive polarization filter and a neotype sensor based on a hybrid-circular-hole microstructured optical fiber (MOF) are proposed. Numerical investigations demonstrate that the x polarized component of silica core mode can couple to the cladding mode in the researched wavelength, while the y polarized component would not. Furthermore, the resonant region can be controlled by changing the diameters or coordinates of the air holes, and the MOF has good performance on stability of temperature. Moreover, the hybrid-circular-hole structure is propitious to selectively integrate different functional materials. Two different materials are integrated into this proposed MOF, the application of the Sagnac interferometer in temperature sensing is studied, and two groups of dips would be observed in the transmission spectra, which have different temperature sensitivities. Therefore, the proposed MOF can be used as a flexible temperature-insensitive polarization filter or potentially applied to a two-parameter sensor.

Abstract:We demonstrate tandem organic light-emitting diodes (TOLEDs) with excellent performance using Al and MoO3 buffer-modified C60/pentacene as charge generation layer (CGL). Al and MoO3 were used as the electron and hole injection layers of C60/pentacene CGL, respectively. Green phosphorescence TOLEDs with the structure of ITO/NPB/mCP:Ir(ppy)3/TPBi/Al/C60/pentacene/MoO3/NPB/mCP:Ir(ppy)3/TPBi/Cs2CO3/Al were fabricated. The results show that the inserted Al and MoO3 can effectively increase the charge injection capacity of organic CGL, resulting the improvement of luminance and current efficiency of TOLEDs. The turn-on voltage of TOLEDs is much lower than that of single-unit device, and the current efficiency is more than 2 times larger than that of the single-unit device. TOLEDs can exhibit excellent photoelectric performance when the thicknesses of Al, C60, pentacene and MoO3 are 3 nm, 15 nm, 25 nm and 1 nm, respectively. The maximum luminance and current efficiency are 7 920.0 cd/m2 and 16.4 cd/A, respectively. This work is significant to build new CGL structures for realizing high-performance TOLEDs.

Abstract:Ag3PO4 microparticles (MPs) were prepared through a facile chemical precipitation route and using silver acetate (AgAc) as metal salt. The effect of annealing temperature (Ta) and time (τa) on the actual photocatalytic (PC) activity of Ag3PO4 MPs is investigated. The optimal annealing parameters are Ta of 400 °C and τa of 90 min. The enhanced PC activity by annealing at 400 °C is ascribed to the increase of electron mobility. Besides, an Ag3PO4 photoelectrode was fabricated through a drop-coating deposition route, which demonstrates a photocurrent density of 80 μA/cm2 and acceptable stability. The n-type conduction behavior of Ag3PO4 is verified by a Mott-Schottky (M-S) plot.

Abstract:Taking into consideration theaperture averaging,the system performance of a point-to-multipoint free space optical (FSO) system for various multiuser diversity scheduling schemes is studied over exponentiated Weibull (EW) fading channels. The selection principles of greedy scheduling (GS), selective multiuser diversity scheduling (SMDS), proportional fair scheduling (PFS) and selective multiuser diversity scheduling with exponential rule (SMDS-ER) schemes are introduced and compared on the basis of time-varying behavior of turbulence channel fadingin the present system. The analytical average capacity expressions for the GS and SMDS schemes are derived, respectively. Then, the relative capacity simulations for PFS and SMDS-ER schemes are also provided over EW fading channels with the binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation. The results show thatthe GS scheme obtains the maximum average capacity at the cost of the fairness of users. The SMDS-ER receives the minimum capacity, but it guarantees the fairness of users. The SMDS and PFS schemes can get balance between capacity and fairness. This study can be used for FSO system design.

Abstract:In this paper, an accurate frequency offset estimator is investigated in the intermediate frequency for the satellite-based automatic identification system (AIS) signals. Using Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK) modulation for transmission, the AIS signal is shown to be a plane wave with the modulated phase information and carrier frequency resulting from the Doppler effects. Hence, the phase information can be eliminated with a re-modulated signal, and the frequency offset can be estimated by the ratio of the maximum spectral amplitude and its neighbor spectral amplitude based on the fast Fourier transformation (FFT) interpolation. The estimator has low complexity, and it is easy to implement. Computer simulations are used to assess the performance of the estimator.

Abstract:Quantification of fiber orientation is the key to characterizing the tissue mechanical properties and diagnosing diseases. A center line-based algorithm is presented for estimating the orientation distribution that first skeletonizes a binary image of fibers, followed by orientation estimation using a weight vector summation algorithm along the center line of image. Then we use the orientation at the skeleton to approximate the orientation of each pixel between the boundary and skeleton. The algorithm is applied for characterizing collagen fibers of mouse skins in second harmonic generation (SHG) image, and the circle standard deviation of orientation could be a biomarker to differentiate the naturally aging skins.

Abstract:In order to get a satisfactory image fusion effect, getting a focus map is very necessary and usually difficult to finish. In this paper, we address this problem with a half weighted gradient approach, aiming to obtain a direct mapping between focus map and source images. Based on the advantages of multi-scale weighted gradient, while abandoning the shortcomings of weighted gradient, a new multi-focus image fusion method called half weighted gradient and self-similarity (HWGSS) is proposed. Experimental results validate that the proposed algorithm can obtain state-of-the-art fusion performance in terms of both qualitative and quantitative evaluations.

Abstract:Dimensionality reduction is becoming an important problem in hyperspectral image classification. Band selection as an effective dimensionality reduction method has attracted more research interests. In this paper, a band selection method for hyperspectral remote sensing images based on subspace partition and particle frog leaping optimization algorithm is proposed. Three new evolution strategies are designed to form a probabilistic network extension structure to avoid local convergence. At the same time, the information entropy of the selected band subset is used as the weight of inter-class separability, and a new band selection criterion function is constructed. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has certain advantages over the existing similar algorithms in terms of classification accuracy and running time.

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