It has been known that the application of beneficial fungi and compost, has a favourable effect on easing water deficiency stress in plants, hence helping to boost agricultural activities in times of climate uncertainty. In this study, the influence of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in combination with oil palm empty fruit bunch compost (EFB) on the growth, yield, and physiology of chilli under deficit fertigation was investigated. Throughout the study, five-week-old chilli seedlings were fertigated daily with 100% and 60% of daily evapotranspiration (ET) readings. Three days after transplanting, 10g of sandy soil containing roughly 120-150 mycorrhizal spores was applied to the root zone. Physiological data such as real-time photosynthesis and stomatal conductance were measured at vegetative, early flowering, fruit setting, and maturity or harvesting stages. Meanwhile, yield and morphological measurements were recorded at the end of the study. It was discovered that the addition of EFB to the coconut coir dust media enhanced the beneficial effects of AMF on all parameters including total biomass, chlorophyll fluorescence Fv/Fm, total chlorophylls, photosynthesis rate and stomatal conductance regardless of fertigation levels. The study also revealed that AMF inoculation alone was less effective than non-inoculation + EFB. In conclusion, it is suggested that incorporation of AMF and EFB compost positively affect the yield, growth and physiology of chilli under deficit fertigation.

A new tunable broadband terahertz metamaterial absorber has been designed based on patterned vanadium dioxide (VO2). The absorber consists of three simple layers, the top VO2 pattern layer, the middle media layer, and the bottom metal layer. Based on phase transition properties of VO2, the designed device has excellent absorption modulation capability, achieving the functional transition from broadband absorption to near-perfect reflection. When VO2 is in the metallic state, there are two absorption peaks observed at frequencies of 4.16 and 6.05 THz, exhibiting near-perfect absorption characteristics; the combination of these two absorption peaks gives rise to the broadband phenomenon and the absorption bandwidth, where the absorbance exceeds 90% and spans from 3.40 to 7.00 THz, with a corresponding relative absorption bandwidth of 69.23%. The impedance matching theory, near-field patterns, and surface current distributions are provided to analyze the causes of broadband absorption. Furthermore, the broadband absorption could be completely suppressed when VO2 presents the dielectric phase, and its absorbance could be dynamically adjusted from 100% to less than 0.70%, thereby achieving near-perfect reflection. Owing to its symmetrical structure, it exhibits excellent performance in different polarization directions and at large incidence angles. Our proposed absorber may have a wide range of promising applications and can be applied in a variety of fields such as communications, imaging, sensing, and security detection.

The construction of interactions and synergies between sub-nanometric clusters and supports provides unexpected opportunity to realize high performance and low-cost composite catalysis. However, hierarchical micro/nano-porous structured catalysts closely related to mass transport have been neglected as support, which may play a leading role in industrial practical applications. Herein, we report sub-nanometric Pt clusters supported Co aerogel (Ptx/Co, X is the wt% of Pt) with hierarchical micro/nano-porous structure, and after optimization of the loading, Pt0.25/Co shows excellent HER performance. Additionally, Pt0.25/Co demonstrates the industrially needed current density of 1.0 A cm−2 at 1.8 V in PEM electrolyser, achieving stability in excess of 200 h. Theoretical calculations show that the advantages of the hierarchical micro/nano-porous structure accelerate the mass transport at the three-phase interface, and the strong interaction between sub-nanometric Pt clusters and Co aerogel not only optimizes the electronic structure of Pt0.25/Co, but also inhibits the dissolution of sub-nanometric Pt clusters.

Mixed transition metal oxides with adjustable composition and structures are widely used in electro chemical cell applications such as lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors their high theoretical capacity, high energy density, high cyclic durability, and environment friendliness compared to mono metal oxides. Different routes like sol gel, combustion, solvothermal, sonication, hydrothermal are used for their synthesis. This chapter gives an overview of some of the key MTMOs in different structural and forms like layer, core-shall, nanorods, nanosheets etc and in the forms of composites with materials like PANI, rGO, CNT, CNF etc

The current cement industry has several environmental and social problems, including high greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, water consumption, and the generation of large quantities of waste. This matter has grown into a significant concern, and there is now a pressing requirement to substitute the conventional binding material in concrete, namely Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC). This paper presents the report on the hybridisation of two industrial by-products, namely pulverised fuel ash (PFA) and ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBS), to produce an alternative binder known as geopolymer. A set of 11 hybrid PFA-GGBS geopolymeric mortar mixes was created using the complete range of hybridisation ratios, along with different water-to-binder ratios. The freshly mixed hybrid PFA-GGBS geopolymeric mortar was put through a flow table test to examine the required water-to-binder ratio to achieve the targeted level of workability. Afterward, all the samples were allowed to cure at room temperature before undergoing a destructive test to measure their compressive strength. According to the study's findings, the highest compressive strength of 4.6 MPa was achieved with a PFA-GGBS hybridisation ratio of 60-40 in the geopolymeric mortar. However, when the content of GGBS exceeded 40 %, the compressive strength of the hybrid PFA-GGBS geopolymeric mortar produced tended to decrease. Additionally, as the replacement level of GGBS increased, the required water-to-binder ratio also increased to maintain the targeted level of workability, ranging between 0.31-0.41. The PFA-GGBS hybridisation ratios of 60/40, 50/50, 40/60, and 30/70 have shown promising properties to be further refined regarding their application in cementless concrete. Moreover, the study conducted to replace cement as a binder in concrete has the potential to make the construction industry more sustainable and reduce carbon emissions by utilising industrial waste ash that would need to be affordable, strong, durable, and widely available in order to be practical.

Currently, there is a rapid development of thermophysics of solids associated with the need of creating models with a high degree of predictive reliability. This paper presents new approaches to solving relevant issues related to the study of heat transfer in semiconductors and dielectrics, mainly concerning nano-structures. The first of the considered tasks is the creation of a statistical model of the processes of interaction of heat carriers – phonons – with rough surfaces of solids. For the first time authors proposed a method based on the statistics of the slopes of the profile of a random surface. The calculation results are the mean free paths of phonon between the opposite boundaries of the sample, which are necessary for calculating the effective thermal conductivity in ballistic and diffusion-ballistic regime of heat transfer, depending on the roughness parameters. The second task is to develop methods for calculating the processes of heat transfer through the contact surfaces of solids. We were able to show that, taking into account the phonon dispersion and the corresponding restrictions on the frequency values, the modified acoustic mismatch model for calculating Kapitsa resistances can be extended to temperatures above 300 K. Previously, the limit of applicability of this method was considered to be a temperature of 30 K. Moreover, the proposed method is also generalized to the case of rough interfaces. The third task is a new approach to determining the thermal conductivity of solids. The authors have developed a method of direct Monte Carlo simulation of phonon kinetics with strict consideration of their interaction due to the direct use of the laws of conservation of energy and quasi-momentum. The calculations of the thermal conductivity coefficient for pure silicon in the temperature range from 100 to 300 K showed good agreement with the experiment and ab initio calculations of other authors, and also allowed us to consider in detail the kinetics of phonons.

Weighted fracturing fluid was considered to be one of the key technologies to deal with the challenge of abnormally high pressure and ultra-high temperature reservoir stimulation in the case of existing fracturing equipment. In this work, a thickener polymer Pt-Fb that meets the requirements of fracturing fluid weighting by HCOONa was synthesized. And HCOONa- weighted fracturing fluid with delayed crosslinking characteristics and good friction reduction performance was developed based on the polymer Pt-Fb. It is much cheaper than CHKO2-weighted guar gum fracturing fluid. The density of HCOONa-weighted fracturing fluid was up to 1.3 g/cm3. The fracturing fluid proposed in this study meets the temperature resistance and shear resistance requirements of 170 °C and 170 s−1. Besides, a complete gel breaking was obtained by using NaBrO3, and the internal mechanism was investigated from both experimental and theoretical aspects. It was revealed that a mild multi-step oxidation reaction enables NaBrO3 to break the HCOONa-weighted fracturing fluid.