Thermal History Mapping in Powder Bed Laser Sintering at the Micrometer Scale.

A thermal sensor was used to better understand parameters which influenced the interaction between a laser beam and a 0.5% Mn-doped ZnAlO material, especially the laser defocusing parameter. The optical properties of the material depend on whether the Mn ions occupy octahedral and/or tetrahedral sites depending on thermal history.

Polymer-Derived Silicoboron Carbonitride Foams for CO2 Capture: From Design to Application as Scaffolds for the in Situ Growth of Metal-Organic Frameworks.

A template-assisted polymer-derived ceramic route is investigated for preparing a series of silicoboron carbonitride (Si/B/C/N) foams with a hierarchical pore size distribution and tailorable interconnected porosity. A boron-modified polycarbosilazane was selected to impregnate monolithic silica and carbonaceous templates and form after pyrolysis and template removal Si/B/C/N foams. By changing the hard template nature and controlling the quantity of polymer to be impregnated, controlled micropore/macropore distributions with mesoscopic cell windows are generated.

Mechanism of strength reduction along the graphenization pathway.

Even though polycrystalline graphene has shown a surprisingly high tensile strength, the influence of inherent grain boundaries on such property remains unclear. We study the fracture properties of a series of polycrystalline graphene models of increasing thermodynamic stability, as obtained from a long molecular dynamics simulation at an elevated temperature. All of the models show the typical and well-documented brittle fracture behavior of polycrystalline graphene; however, a clear decrease in all fracture properties is observed with increasing annealing time.

An Efficient and Accurate Formalism for the Treatment of Large Amplitude Intramolecular Motion.

We propose a general approach to describe large amplitude motions (LAM) with multiple degrees of freedom (DOF) in molecules or reaction intermediates, which is useful for the computation of thermochemical or kinetic data. The kinetic part of the LAM Lagrangian is derived using a Z-matrix internal coordinate representation within a new numerical procedure. This derivation is exact for a classical system, and the uncertainties on the prediction of observable quantities largely arise from uncertainties on the LAM potential energy surface (PES) itself.

Rippled nanocarbons from periodic arrangements of reordered bivacancies in graphene or nanotubes.

We report on various nanocarbons formed from a unique structural pattern containing two pentagons, three hexagons, and two heptagons, resulting from local rearrangements around a divacancy in pristine graphene, or nanotubes. This defect can be inserted in sheets or tubes either individually or as extended defect lines. Sheets or tubes containing only this defect as a pattern can also be obtained.

Reaction mechanism for the thermal decomposition of BCl3/CH4/H2 gas mixtures.

This paper presents an ab initio study of the B/C/Cl/H gas phase mechanism, featuring 10 addition-elimination reactions involving BH(i)Cl(j) (i + j ≤ 3) species and a first description of the chemical interaction between the carbon-containing and boron-containing subsystems through the three reactions BCl(3) + CH(4) ⇌ BCl(2)CH(3) + HCl, BHCl(2) + CH(4) ⇌ BCl(2)CH(3) + H(2), and BCl(2) + CH(4) ⇌ BHCl(2) + CH(3). A reaction mechanism is then proposed and used to perform some illustrative equilibrium and kinetic calculations in the context of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of boron carbide. Our results show that the new addition-elimination reaction paths play a crucial role by lowering considerably the activation barrier with respect to previous theoretical evaluations; they also confirm that BCl(2)CH(3) is an important species in the mechanism.

Theoretical study of the decomposition of BCl3 induced by a H radical.

We report on a theoretical study of the gas-phase decomposition of boron trichloride in the presence of hydrogen radicals using ab initio energetic calculations coupled to TST, RRKM, and VTST-VRC kinetic calculations. In particular, we present an addition-elimination mechanism (BCl(3) + H → BHCl(2) + Cl) allowing for a much more rapid consumption of BCl(3) than the direct abstraction reaction (BCl(3) + H → BCl(2) + HCl) considered up to now. At low temperatures, T ≤ 800 K, our results show that a weakly stabilized complex BHCl(3) is formed with a kinetic law compatible with the consumption rate measured in the former experiments.

Surface relaxation and oxygen adsorption behavior of different SiC polytypes: a first-principles study.

The surface relaxations and oxygen adsorptions on C- and Si-terminated 3C-SiC(111) and 2H/4H/6H-SiC(0001) surfaces are systematically studied using density functional theory (DFT) calculations. First, the general surface relaxation trends of different SiC surfaces are explained using the electrostatic interaction and the calculation results of spin density distributions. In the second part of the present work, the relations between adsorption energies and stacking sequence are studied.

Hindered rotor models with variable kinetic functions for accurate thermodynamic and kinetic predictions.

We present an extension of some popular hindered rotor (HR) models, namely, the one-dimensional HR (1DHR) and the degenerated two-dimensional HR (d2DHR) models, allowing for a simple and accurate treatment of internal rotations. This extension, based on the use of a variable kinetic function in the Hamiltonian instead of a constant reduced moment of inertia, is extremely suitable in the case of rocking/wagging motions involved in dissociation or atom transfer reactions. The variable kinetic function is first introduced in the framework of a classical 1DHR model.

Adaptive estimation of normals and surface area for discrete 3-D objects: application to snow binary data from X-ray tomography.

Estimating the normal vector field on the boundary of discrete three-dimensional objects is essential for rendering and image measurement problems. Most of the existing algorithms do not provide an accurate determination of the normal vector field for shapes that present edges. Here, we propose a new and simple computational method in order to obtain accurate results on all types of shapes, whatever their local convexity degree.