Synthesis of Highly Anisotropic 2D Insulator CrOCl Nanosheets for Interfacial Symmetry Breaking in Isotropic 2D Semiconductors.

Chromium oxychloride (CrOCl), a van der Waals antiferromagnetic insulator, has attracted significant interest in 2D optoelectronic, ferromagnetic, and quantum devices. However, the bottom-up preparation of 2D CrOCl remains challenging, limiting its property exploration and device application. Herein, the controllable synthesis of 2D CrOCl crystals by chemical vapor deposition is demonstrated.

Mn-inlaid antiphase boundaries in perovskite structure.

Improvements in the polarization of environmentally-friendly perovskite ferroelectrics have proved to be a challenging task in order to replace the toxic Pb-based counterparts. In contrast to common methods by complex chemical composition designs, we have formed Mn-inlaid antiphase boundaries in Mn-doped (K,Na)NbO thin films using pulsed laser deposition method. Here, we observed that mono- or bi-atomic layer of Mn has been identified to inlay along the antiphase boundaries to balance the charges originated from the deficiency of alkali ions and to induce the strain in the KNN films.

From NeRFLiX to NeRFLiX++: A General NeRF-Agnostic Restorer Paradigm.

Neural radiance fields (NeRF) have shown great success in novel view synthesis. However, recovering high-quality details from real-world scenes is still challenging for the existing NeRF-based approaches, due to the potential imperfect calibration information and scene representation inaccuracy. Even with high-quality training frames, the synthetic novel views produced by NeRF models still suffer from notable rendering artifacts, such as noise and blur.

Carbon Vacancy-Enhanced Activity of Fe-N-C Single Atom Catalysts toward Luminol Chemiluminescence in the Absence of HO.

The classic luminol-HO chemiluminescence (CL) systems suffer from easy self-decomposition of HO at room temperature, hindering the practical applications of the luminol-HO CL system. In this work, unexpectedly, we found that the carbon vacancy-modified Fe-N-C single atom catalysts (V-Fe-N-C SACs) can directly trigger a luminol solution to generate strong CL emission in the absence of HO. The Fe-based SACs were prepared through the conventional pyrolysis of zeolitic imidazolate frameworks.

Synergy of multiple precipitate/matrix interface structures for a heat resistant high-strength Al alloy.

High strength aluminum alloys are widely used but their strength is reduced as nano-precipitates coarsen rapidly in medium and high temperatures, which greatly limits their application. Single solute segregation layers at precipitate/matrix interfaces are not satisfactory in stabilizing precipitates. Here we obtain multiple interface structures in an Al-Cu-Mg-Ag-Si-Sc alloy including Sc segregation layers, C and L phases as well as a newly discovered χ-AgMg phase, which partially cover the θ' precipitates.

Enhancing Energy Storage Performance in Lead-Free Bismuth Sodium Niobate-Based Tungsten Bronze Ceramics through Relaxor Tuning.

A series of tungsten bronze SrNaBiNbTaO (SBNN-Ta) ferroelectric ceramics were designed and synthesized by the traditional solid-phase reaction method. The B-site engineering strategy was utilized to induce structural distortion, order-disorder distribution, and polarization modulation to enhance relaxor behavior. Through investigating the impact of B-site Ta replacement on the structure, relaxor behavior, and energy storage performance, this study has shed light on the two main factors for relaxor nature: (1) with the increase of Ta substitution, the tungsten bronze crystal distortion and expansion induced the structural change from an orthorhombic 2 phase to 2 phase at room temperature; (2) the transition from ferroelectric to relaxor behavior could be attributed to the coordinate incommensurate local superstructural modulations and the generation of nanodomain structure regions.

Thickness-Independent Capacitive Performance of Holey Ti C T Film Prepared through a Mild Oxidation Strategy.

The Ti C T film with metallic conductivity and high pseudo-capacitance holds profound promise in flexible high-rate supercapacitors. However, the restacking of Ti C T sheets hinders ion access to thick film electrodes. Herein, a mild yet green route has been developed to partially oxidize Ti C T to TiO /Ti C T by introducing O  molecules during refluxing the Ti C T suspension.

Utilizing Cell Culture Assisted Anodization to Fabricate Aluminium Oxide with a Gradient Microstep and Nanopore Structure.

Anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) with a gradient microstep and nanopore structure (GMNP) is fabricated by inversely using cell culture to control the reaction areas in the electrochemical anodization, which shows a larger porosity than that of typical planar AAO. The figure of the microstep is influenced by the cell dehydration temperature which controls the cell shrinkage degree. A GMNP AAO with a diameter of 2.

Group Sparsity Mixture Model and Its Application on Image Denoising.

Prior learning is a fundamental problem in the field of image processing. In this paper, we conduct a detailed study on (1) how to model and learn the prior of the image patch group, which consists of a group of non-local similar image patches, and (2) how to apply the learned prior to the whole image denoising task. To tackle the first problem, we propose a new prior model named Group Sparsity Mixture Model (GSMM).

Optical encoding of luminescent carbon nanodots in confined spaces.

Stable emissive carbon nanodots were generated in zeolite crystals using near infrared photon irradiation gradually converting the occluded organic template, originally used to synthesize the zeolite crystals, into discrete luminescent species consisting of nano-sized carbogenic fluorophores, as ascertained using Raman microscopy, and steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopic techniques. Photoactivation in a confocal laser fluorescence microscope allows 3D resolved writing of luminescent carbon nanodot patterns inside zeolites providing a cost-effective and non-toxic alternative to previously reported metal-based nanoclusters confined in zeolites, and opens up opportunities in bio-labelling and sensing applications.

Air-Stable 2D Cr Te Nanosheets with Thickness-Tunable Ferromagnetism.

2D magnetic materials have aroused widespread research interest owing to their promising application in spintronic devices. However, exploring new kinds of 2D magnetic materials with better stability and realizing their batch synthesis remain challenging. Herein, the synthesis of air-stable 2D Cr Te ultrathin crystals with tunable thickness via tube-in-tube chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth technology is reported.

An enhanced plasmonic photothermal effect for crystal transformation by a heat-trapping structure.

Photothermal utilization is an important approach for sustaining global ecological balance. Due to the enhancement of light absorption through surface plasmon resonance, silver or gold nanostructures can be used as efficient photothermal heat sources in visible and near-infrared regions. Herein, a heat-trapping system of self-assembled gold nanoislands with a thin AlO layer is designed to significantly enhance the photothermal effect, which can contribute to a fast crystal transformation.

Image Co-Skeletonization via Co-Segmentation.

Recent advances in the joint processing of a set of images have shown its advantages over individual processing. Unlike the existing works geared towards co-segmentation or co-localization, in this article, we explore a new joint processing topic: image co-skeletonization, which is defined as joint skeleton extraction of the foreground objects in an image collection. It is well known that object skeletonization in a single natural image is challenging, because there is hardly any prior knowledge available about the object present in the image.

HEMlets PoSh: Learning Part-Centric Heatmap Triplets for 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation.

Estimating 3D human pose from a single image is a challenging task. This work attempts to address the uncertainty of lifting the detected 2D joints to the 3D space by introducing an intermediate state - Part-Centric Heatmap Triplets (HEMlets), which shortens the gap between the 2D observation and the 3D interpretation. The HEMlets utilize three joint-heatmaps to represent the relative depth information of the end-joints for each skeletal body part.

Study of interfacial random strain fields in core-shell ZnO nanowires by scanning transmission electron microscopy.

Imaging strain fields at the nanoscale is crucial for understanding the physical properties as well as the performance of oxide heterostructures and electronic devices. Based on scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) techniques, we successfully imaged the random strain field at the interface of core-shell ZnO nanowires. Combining experimental observations and image simulations, we find that the strain contrast originates from dechanneling of electrons and increased diffuse scattering induced by static atomic displacements.

Bismuthene Nanosheets for 1 μm Multipulse Generation.

Bismuthene, as a new two-dimensional material made up of diazo metal elements, has drawn massive attention for its unique electronic, mechanical, quantum, and nonlinear optical properties. In recent years, researchers have increasingly turned their attention to the ultrafast photonics fields based on bismuthene. However, the internal ultrashort pulse dynamics has seldom been explored yet.

Plasmon-Driven Rapid In Situ Formation of Luminescence Single Crystal Nanoparticle.

Single crystal nanomaterials are very important for the fundamental investigation and application of luminescence. However, a very critical growth condition or high temperature treatment is always required for their preparation. Here, an easy and rapid in situ achievement of a single crystal luminescent material is realized by taking advantage of plasmon-induced thermal and catalysis effects.

Strain-induced high-temperature perovskite ferromagnetic insulator.

Ferromagnetic insulators are required for many new magnetic devices, such as dissipationless quantum-spintronic devices, magnetic tunneling junctions, etc. Ferromagnetic insulators with a high Curie temperature and a high-symmetry structure are critical integration with common single-crystalline oxide films or substrates. So far, the commonly used ferromagnetic insulators mostly possess low-symmetry structures associated with a poor growth quality and widespread properties.

Single Image Rain Streak Decomposition Using Layer Priors.

Rain streaks impair visibility of an image and introduce undesirable interference that can severely affect the performance of computer vision and image analysis systems. Rain streak removal algorithms try to recover a rain streak free background scene. In this paper, we address the problem of rain streak removal from a single image by formulating it as a layer decomposition problem, with a rain streak layer superimposed on a background layer containing the true scene content.

CODE: Coherence Based Decision Boundaries for Feature Correspondence.

A key challenge in feature correspondence is the difficulty in differentiating true and false matches at a local descriptor level. This forces adoption of strict similarity thresholds that discard many true matches. However, if analyzed at a global level, false matches are usually randomly scattered while true matches tend to be coherent (clustered around a few dominant motions), thus creating a coherence based separability constraint.

Ultrahigh Energy Storage Performance of Lead-Free Oxide Multilayer Film Capacitors via Interface Engineering.

Ultrahigh energy storage density of 52.4 J cm with optimistic efficiency of 72.3% is achieved by interface engineering of epitaxial lead-free oxide multilayers at room temperature.

Manipulation of Optical Transmittance by Ordered-Oxygen-Vacancy in Epitaxial LaBaCoO Thin Films.

Giant optical transmittance changes of over 300% in wide wavelength range from 500 nm to 2500 nm were observed in LaBaCoO thin films annealed in air and ethanol ambient, respectively. The reduction process induces high density of ordered oxygen vacancies and the formation of LaBaCoO (δ = 0) structure evidenced by aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy. Moreover, the first-principles calculations reveal the origin and mechanism of optical transmittance enhancement in LaBaCoO (δ = 0), which exhibits quite different energy band structure compared to that of LaBaCoO (δ = 0.

Novel lead-free ferroelectric film by ultra-small BaSrTiO nanocubes assembled for a large electrocaloric effect.

A giant electrocaloric effect (ECE) can be achieved in ferroelectric thin films, which demonstrates the applications of thin films in alternative cooling. However, electrocaloric thin films fabricated by conventional techniques, such as the pulsed laser deposition or sol-gel methods, may be limited by high costs, low yield and their dependence on substrates. In this study, we present a new bottom-up strategy to construct electrocaloric BaSrTiO thin films by assembling precisely designed building blocks of ferroelectric nanocubes, which is supported by detailed structural characterization.

PatchMatch Filter: Edge-Aware Filtering Meets Randomized Search for Visual Correspondence.

Though many tasks in computer vision can be formulated elegantly as pixel-labeling problems, a typical challenge discouraging such a discrete formulation is often due to computational efficiency. Recent studies on fast cost volume filtering based on efficient edge-aware filters provide a fast alternative to solve discrete labeling problems, with the complexity independent of the support window size. However, these methods still have to step through the entire cost volume exhaustively, which makes the solution speed scale linearly with the label space size.