Construction of an InO/BiS Z-Scheme Heterojunction for Enhanced Photocatalytic CO Reduction.

Photocatalytic conversion of CO to hydrocarbon fuel is a potential strategy to solve energy shortage and mitigate the greenhouse effect. Here, direct Z-scheme heterojunction photocatalysts (InO/BiS) without an electron mediator are prepared by a simple hydrolysis method. The InO/BiS composite photocatalysts show greatly boosted photoactivity on CO conversion to CO compared with the pristine InO and BiS.

Emissivity Correction and Thermal Pattern Reconstruction in Eddy Current Pulsed Thermography.

Emissivity variations are one of the most critical challenges in thermography technologies; this is due to the temperature calculation strongly depending on emissivity settings for infrared signal extraction and evaluation. This paper describes an emissivity correction and thermal pattern reconstruction technique based on physical process modelling and thermal feature extraction, for eddy current pulsed thermography. An emissivity correction algorithm is proposed to address the pattern observation issues of thermography in both spatial and time domains.

Improved Esterification of Citric Acid and n-Butanol Using a Dense and Acid-Resistant Beta Zeolite Membrane.

In this work, a dense and acid-resistant beta zeolite membrane was applied to improve the esterification of citric acid and n-butanol, for the first time. Through the continuous removal of the by-product water via pervaporation (PV), the conversion of citric acid was significantly enhanced from 71.7% to 99.

Hierarchical S-Scheme Heterostructure of CdInS@UiO-66-NH toward Synchronously Boosting Photocatalytic Removal of Cr(VI) and Tetracycline.

Developing highly efficient photocatalysts toward synchronously removing heavy metals and organic pollutants is still a serious challenge. Herein, we depict hierarchical S-scheme heterostructured photocatalysts prepared via in situ anchoring UiO-66-NH nanoparticles onto the CdInS porous microsphere structures assembled with numerous nanosheets. In the mixed system of Cr(VI) and tetracycline (TC), the optimal photocatalyst (CIS@U66N-30) shows remarkable photocatalytic activities toward the synchronous removal of Cr(VI) (97.

Nitrogen-rich triazine-based porous polymers for efficient removal of bisphenol micropollutants.

Achieving both rapid adsorption rate and high adsorption capacity for bisphenol micropollutants from aquatic systems is critical for efficient adsorbents in water remediation. Here, we elaborately prepared three nitrogen-rich triazine-based porous polymers (NTPs) with similar geometric configurations and nitrogen contents (41.70-44.

Physical perspective forward-inverse learning for ultrasonic sensing diagnosis in small diameter and thin-wall tube.

The ultrasonic testing method is a well-known non-destructive testing technique which has been applied to the tube inspection for guarantying the quality of the production. However, there exist several challenges to detect the defects of tubes with small diameter and thin-wall due to the complex of multiple reflections and waveform conversion. Parameters selection of the transducer takes key role to enhance the detection sensitivity such as frequency, size, refraction angle, distance offset, and focal point distance.

Effects of Seed Crystals on the Growth and Catalytic Performance of TS-1 Zeolite Membranes.

Dense and good catalytic performance TS-1 zeolite membranes were rapidly prepared on porous mullite support by secondary hydrothermal synthesis. The properties of seed crystals were very important for the preparation of high-catalytic performance TS-1 zeolite membranes. Influences of seed crystals (Ti/Si ratios, size, morphology, and zeolites concentration of the seed suspension) on the growth and catalytic property of TS-1 zeolite membranes were investigated in details.

Wireless Passive Ultra High Frequency RFID Antenna Sensor for Surface Crack Monitoring and Quantitative Analysis.

An exponential increase in large-scale infrastructure facilitates the development of wireless passive sensors for permanent installation and in-service health monitoring. Due to their wireless, passive and cost-effective characteristics, ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) tag antenna based sensors are receiving increasing attention for structural health monitoring (SHM). This paper uses a circular patch antenna sensor with an open rectangular window for crack monitoring.

Physics-Based Image Segmentation Using First Order Statistical Properties and Genetic Algorithm for Inductive Thermography Imaging.

Thermographic inspection has been widely applied to non-destructive testing and evaluation with the capabilities of rapid, contactless, and large surface area detection. Image segmentation is considered essential for identifying and sizing defects. To attain a high-level performance, specific physics-based models that describe defects generation and enable the precise extraction of target region are of crucial importance.

High Sensitivity Refractometer Based on Reflective Smf-Small Diameter No Core Fiber Structure.

A high sensitivity refractive index sensor based on a single mode-small diameter no core fiber structure is proposed. In this structure, a small diameter no core fiber (SDNCF) used as a sensor probe, was fusion spliced to the end face of a traditional single mode fiber (SMF) and the end face of the SDNCF was coated with a thin film of gold to provide reflective light. The influence of SDNCF diameter and length on the refractive index sensitivity of the sensor has been investigated by both simulations and experiments, where results show that the diameter of SDNCF has significant influence.

Electromagnetic pulsed thermography for natural cracks inspection.

Emerging integrated sensing and monitoring of material degradation and cracks are increasingly required for characterizing the structural integrity and safety of infrastructure. However, most conventional nondestructive evaluation (NDE) methods are based on single modality sensing which is not adequate to evaluate structural integrity and natural cracks. This paper proposed electromagnetic pulsed thermography for fast and comprehensive defect characterization.

Eddy Current Pulsed Thermography with Different Excitation Configurations for Metallic Material and Defect Characterization.

This paper reviews recent developments of eddy current pulsed thermography (ECPT) for material characterization and nondestructive evaluation (NDE). Due to the fact that line-coil-based ECPT, with the limitation of non-uniform heating and a restricted view, is not suitable for complex geometry structures evaluation, Helmholtz coils and ferrite-yoke-based excitation configurations of ECPT are proposed and compared. Simulations and experiments of new ECPT configurations considering the multi-physical-phenomenon of hysteresis losses, stray losses, and eddy current heating in conjunction with uniform induction magnetic field have been conducted and implemented for ferromagnetic and non-ferromagnetic materials.

Electromagnetic Thermography Nondestructive Evaluation: Physics-based Modeling and Pattern Mining.

Electromagnetic mechanism of Joule heating and thermal conduction on conductive material characterization broadens their scope for implementation in real thermography based Nondestructive testing and evaluation (NDT&E) systems by imparting sensitivity, conformability and allowing fast and imaging detection, which is necessary for efficiency. The issue of automatic material evaluation has not been fully addressed by researchers and it marks a crucial first step to analyzing the structural health of the material, which in turn sheds light on understanding the production of the defects mechanisms. In this study, we bridge the gap between the physics world and mathematical modeling world.

A comparative study of principal component analysis and independent component analysis in eddy current pulsed thermography data processing.

Eddy Current Pulsed Thermography (ECPT), an emerging Non-Destructive Testing and Evaluation technique, has been applied for a wide range of materials. The lateral heat diffusion leads to decreasing of temperature contrast between defect and defect-free area. To enhance the flaw contrast, different statistical methods, such as Principal Component Analysis and Independent Component Analysis, have been proposed for thermography image sequences processing in recent years.

[Effect of technological parameters of sputtering on the microstructure of silicon film investigated by Raman analysis].

In order to facilitate optical polishing of silicon carbide space telescope, in the present paper, silicon film, which has similar coefficient of thermal expansion with silicon carbide, was fabricated on SiC substrate by radio frequency magnetron sputtering. The effect of substrate temperature, radio frequency power, and substrate bias voltage was investigated by Raman scattering. The results indicate that at lower substrate temperature, the crystalline volume fraction of Si films increases with the increase in deposition temperature.

[XPS and Raman spectral analysis of nitrogenated tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C : N) films with different nitrogen content].

Nitrogenated tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C : N) films were prepared on the polished C--Si substrates by introducing highly pure nitrogen gas into the cathode region and the depositing chamber synchronously using filtered cathodic vacuum arc (FCVA) technology. The nitrogen content in the films was controlled by changing the flow rate of nitrogen gas. The configuration of ta-C : N films was investigated by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and visible Raman spectroscopy.

Hybrid vision system for online measurement of surface roughness.

A hybrid vision system for online measurement of surface roughness is introduced. The hybrid vision system applies two cameras for capturing the laser speckle pattern and scattering images simultaneously. With the help of advanced image processing, several features of texture and shape are computed for the surface roughness characterization.