Metal-like Materials Research Articles

Toward low-emissivity passive heating: a supramolecular-enhanced membrane with warmth retention.

Maintaining a reasonably stable body temperature is vital for a variety of human activities in an energy-conservation strategy. However, it is well-known that metal-like materials, utilized as radiative reflectors, severely restrict wearability properties, thus posing a tremendous obstacle in personal thermal management (PTM) systems. Herein, we designed a supramolecular-enhanced membrane (SupraEM) acting as a mid-infrared (MIR) reflector to solve the conundrum of warmth-wearability performance. Benefiting from the low-emissivity of decorating titanium carbide (MXene) and the formation of supramolecular interactions, the prototyped polyvinylidene difluoride&Polyurethane/MXene (PVDF&PU/MXene) SupraEM demonstrated a low-emissivity of 0.246 and reinforced mechanical performance, resulting in an evenly higher temperature retention of 8 °C in comparison to the pristine hybrid membrane counterpart, and compared with a commercial textile that is three times thicker, it also exhibited higher temperature retention of 6.2 °C. This work demonstrates the wearability of decorated MXene without sacrificing its temperature retention, overcoming a major bottleneck that has plagued MXene as a thermoregulatory material for PTM systems.

Computer vision framework for crack detection of civil infrastructure—A review

Civil infrastructure (e.g., buildings, roads, underground tunnels) could lose its expected physical and functional conditions after years of operation. Timely and accurate inspection and assessment of such infrastructures are essential to ensure safety and serviceability, e.g., by preventing unsafe working conditions and hazards. Cracks, which are one of the most common distress, can indicate severe structural integrity issues that threaten the safety of the structure and people in the environment. As such, accurate, fast, and automatic detection of cracks on structure surfaces is a major issue for a variety of civil engineering applications. Due to advances in hardware data acquisition systems, significant progress has been made in the automatic detection and quantification of cracks in recent decades. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the research progress and prospects in computer vision frameworks for crack detection of civil infrastructures from multiple materials, including asphalt, concrete, and metal-like materials. The review encompasses major components of typical frameworks, i.e., data acquisition techniques, publicly available datasets, detection algorithms, and evaluation metrics. In particular, we provide a taxonomy of detection algorithms with a detailed discussion of the advantages, limitations, and application scenarios of the methods in each category, as well as the relationships between methods of different categories. We also discuss unsolved issues and key challenges in crack detection that could drive future research directions.

Першопринципні методи обчислення лінійного коефіцієнта термічного розширення квазібінарних евтектичних систем

To calculate the linear coefficient of thermal expansion (LCTE) and its temperature dependence, a combination of the method of a priori pseudopotential and quasi-harmonic approximation (author's methods) is used. After approximating the results obtained for metal-like materials (carbides, borides, silicides), the LCTE is presented in an analytical form. In the case of quasi-binary eutectic systems based on carbides, borides, silicides, to estimate the interaction energy of the elements of two components, the concept of a virtual crystal (with a virtual cell) along the line of contact of two components is introduced. A virtual cell is assigned a volume average between the volume of a unit cell of two components, taking into account their concentration ratio. The components that make up the eutectic retain their crystal structure, their LCTE can be estimated as for pure components. Without taking into account the influence of interphase interaction, the LCTE of the eutectic system is determined using the rule of mixtures based on the LCTE components, taking into account their volume fraction. Taking into account the influence of the interface on thermal expansion is estimated by the virtual cell assigned to it. To determine the LCTE of the eutectic system, a ratio is proposed that connects the LCTE components and the docking boundaries through the concentration ratio. This method more realistically describes the structure of a quasi-binary eutectic. There is a consistency between the calculated and experimental data. Keywords: electron-ion system energy, interatomic interaction potential, quasiharmonic approximation, linear coefficient of thermal expansion, eutectic temperature.

Hydrogen-Doping-Induced Metal-Like Ultrahigh Free-Carrier Concentration in Metal-Oxide Material for Giant and Tunable Plasmon Resonance.

The practical utilization of plasmon-based technology relies on the ability to find high-performance plasmonic materials other than noble metals. A key scientific challenge is to significantly increase the intrinsically low concentration of free carriers in metal-oxide materials. Here, a novel electron-proton co-doping strategy is developed to achieve uniform hydrogen doping in metal-oxide MoO3 at mild conditions, which creates a metal-like ultrahigh free-carrier concentration approaching that of noble metals (1021 cm-3 in H1.68 MoO3 versus 1022 cm-3 in Au/Ag). This bestows giant and tunable plasmonic resonances in the visible region to this originally semiconductive material. Using ultrafast spectroscopy characterizations and first-principle simulations, the formation of a quasi-metallic energy band structure that leads to long-lived and strong plasmonic field is revealed. As verified by the surface-enhanced Raman spectra (SERS) of rhodamine 6G molecules on Hx MoO3 , the SERS enhancement factor reaches as high as 1.1 × 107 with a detection limit at concentration as low as 1 × 10-9 mol L-1 , representing the best among the hitherto reported non-metal systems. The findings not only provide a set of metal-like semiconductor materials with merits of low cost, tunable electronic structure, and plasmonic resonance, but also a general strategy to induce tunable ultrahigh free-carrier concentration in non-metal systems.

Revising the penetration behavior of concrete-like and metal-like materials against the rigid projectile impact

Many studies indicate that projectile deceleration exhibits a quasi-constant behavior in the tunneling penetration stage of the rigid penetration mode for both metal-like and concrete-like materials. As to the issue, in the present paper the penetration process under the rigid penetration mode was revised, where a two-phase penetration theory is proposed including the ‘Squeeze and Push’ penetration phase and the dynamic spherical cavity expansion penetration phase. When the striking velocity is below the critical striking velocity, the ‘Squeeze and Push’ effect is generated since the cavitation size is less than the projectile diameter, where the quasi-static term overshadows the dynamic term. The interaction from the surface friction between projectile and target and the penetration force due to the main quasi-static term contributes to the occurrence of the quasi-constant phenomenon. Conversely, when the striking velocity is above the critical velocity, the penetration enters into the dynamic spherical cavity expansion penetration phase, the accompanying feature is that the tunnel becomes large beyond the projectile diameter, meanwhile the friction effect between the projectile and target disappears, the deceleration shows a well-defined peak with the rise of the striking velocity. Following the features, semi-empirical formulas are obtained. Finally, the semi-empirical formulae are discussed and validated by comparing with the typical penetration experiments including concrete-like and metal-like materials.

Probability of conductive bond formation in a percolating network of nanowires with fusible tips

Meeting the heat dissipation demands of microelectronic devices requires development of polymeric composites with high thermal conductivity. This property is drastically improved by percolation networks of metallic filler particles that have their particle-to-particle contact resistances reduced through thermal or electromagnetic fusing. However, composites with fused metallic fillers are electrically conductive, which prevents their application within the chip-board and the inter-chip gaps. Here, we propose that electrically insulating composites for these purposes can be achieved by the application of fusible metallic coatings to the tips of nanowires with thermally conductive but electrically insulating cores. We derive analytical models that relate the ratio of the coated and total nanowire lengths to the fraction of fused, and thus conductive, bonds within percolating networks of these structures. We consider two types of materials for these fusible coatings. First, we consider silver-like coatings, which form only conductive bonds when contacting the silver-like coating of another nanowire. Second, we consider liquid metal-like coatings, which form conductive bonds regardless of whether they contact a coated or an uncoated segment of another nanowire. These models were validated using Monte Carlo simulations, which also revealed that electrical short-circuiting is highly unlikely until most of the wire is coated. Furthermore, we demonstrate that switching the tip coating from silver- to liquid metal-like materials can double the fraction of conductive bonds. Consequently, this work provides motivation to develop scalable methods for fabrication of the hybrid liquid-coated nanowires, whose dispersion in a polymer matrix is predicted to yield highly thermally conductive but electrically insulating composites.

On the surface electromagnetic waves in single-layer metal-like materials

Surface electromagnetic waves in single-layer metal-like materials (such as graphene and borophene) in planar and cylindrical geometries are studied. Expressions for the permittivity tensor, dispersion relations, and vibrational spectra are obtained under conditions when the spatial dispersion can be neglected. It is shown that vibrations of two types exist in single-layer materials: bulk-type vibrations with a field localized on the surface and surface-type vibrations in which the field exponentially decrease on both sides beyond the surface.

Healable supramolecular polymers as organic metals.

Organic materials exhibiting metallic behavior are promising for numerous applications ranging from printed nanocircuits to large area electronics. However, the optimization of electronic conduction in organic metals such as charge-transfer salts or doped conjugated polymers requires high crystallinity, which is detrimental to their processability. To overcome this problem, the combination of the electronic properties of metal-like materials with the mechanical properties of soft self-assembled systems is attractive but necessitates the absence of structural defects in a regular lattice. Here we describe a one-dimensional supramolecular polymer in which photoinduced through-space charge-transfer complexes lead to highly coherent domains with delocalized electronic states displaying metallic behavior. We also reveal that diffusion of supramolecular polarons in the nanowires repairs structural defects thereby improving their conduction. The ability to access metallic properties from mendable self-assemblies extends the current understanding of both fields and opens a wide range of processing techniques for applications in organic electronics.

Dispersion engineering of surface plasmons

In this work, it is shown how the shapes of surface plasmon dispersion curves can be engineered by manipulating the distribution of the electromagnetic fields in multilayer structures, which themselves are controlled by the free electron density in metal-like materials, such as doped semiconductors in the THz spectral range. By having a nonuniform free electron density profile, reduced relative to that in typical bulk metals, the electromagnetic fields of surface plasmons are distributed in different metallic materials that have different complex dielectric permittivities. As the in-plane component of surface plasmon's wave-vector increases, they become more confined to a particular layer of the multilayer structure and have energies that are predictable by considering the permittivity of the layer in which the fields are most concentrated. Unusual and arbitrary shapes of surface plasmon dispersion curves can be designed, including stair steps and dovetails shapes.

Weak-localization effect for light backscattered by surfaces with a complex structure

Results of laboratory measurements of the weak-localization effect for light scattered by surfaces with different characteristics are presented. The measurements were made in a range of phase angles of 0.2°–3.5°. The aim of the measurements was to study the influence of the choice of surface material (metal, dielectric), the size of particles of the scattering surface, their packing density, the reflectivity of a sample, and the wavelength of incident radiation on the effect. For the measurements, both nonpolarized and linearly polarized light was used. Powders of dielectric materials were found to enhance the weak-localization effect with increasing particle size, but the effect weakened starting with a certain size of the order of wavelength. The pressing of powders of dielectric transparent materials enhanced the opposition effect. This was most pronounced for samples with small-sized particles. The phase dependence of brightness became wider and more linear with decreasing reflectivity of the surface. A qualitative difference in the behavior of the phase dependence for the ratio of cross-and copolarized components was observed. For metals and metal-like materials, the ratio increased with decreasing phase angle. Dielectrics were found to have an opposite dependence.

Spectroscopic and magnetic studies of two electrically conducting charge-transfer compounds of 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethanide with cationic copper chelates

Abstract : In the initial work on charge transfer compounds of 7,7,8,8,-tetracyanoquinodimethanides, several compounds with copper chelates that had relatively high electrical conductivities were reported. One of the advantage of using copper(II) chelates as acceptors in charge transfer compounds with TCNQ- would appear to be the high probability of forming stacked TNCQ- segregated chains in preference to mixed CuL2-TCNQ stacked chains. The cationic copper chelate-TCNQ charge transfer compounds have unusual properties and have continued to attract attention. This significant finding has stimulated additional studies on TCNQ salts with copper chelates since an understanding of electron-transport properties may lead to the production of a variety of new metal-like materials. Results of our studies of the electronic structural properties of the compounds (CuL2)(TCNQ)2 (L = ethylenediamine or 1.10-phenanthroline) are reported in this article.

Icosahedral Boron-Rich Solids as Refractory Semiconductors

ABSTRACTIcosahedral boron-rich solids are refractory materials composed of twelve-atom boron-rich icosahedral units with strong intericosahedral linkages. These distinctive structures admit unusual electronic and thermal transport properties. Here the distinctive (three-center) bonding which underlies these materials is first described. Then it is shown how insulators, semiconductors and highly degenerate (metal-like) materials emerge from the same basic structure with appropriate substitutions.The electronic transport of the boron carbides is then addressed. The boron carbides are degenerate p-type semiconductors in which the charge carriers are diamagnetically aligned pairs of electrons which hop between icosahedra. Uniquely, this thermally activated hopping conductivity increases with increasing hydrostatic pressure. However, the Seebeck coefficient (thermoelectric power) is uncharacteristic of a degenerate semiconductor. Namely, the Seebeck coefficient is typically both large and an increasing function of temperature. In addition, despite the hardness and refractory character of these materials, their thermal conductivities can be surprisingly low with a glass-like temperature dependence. These features are manifestations of the distinctive structure and bonding of these solids. In fact, this novel mix of properties makes the boron carbides exceptionally good very-high-temperature p-type thermoelectric materials.Icosahedral boron-rich solids have additional potential as high temperature semiconductors. In particular, the wide-gap icosahedral boronrich pnictides, B12P2 and B12As2, may be doped to form wide-gap refractory semiconductors. For example, replacement of the group V element with either a group VI or a group IV element is expected to yield n-type and ptype material, respectively.

AN APPLICATION OF DAMAGE TENSOR FOR ESTIMATING MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF ROCK MASS

Distributed discontinuities essentially affect to the mechanical behaviour of rock mass. Such discontinuities can be modelled by introducing the damage tensor of Murakami et al. which was originally proposed for creep failure of metal-like materials. In this paper, the concept is extended to the rate-insensitive rock mass behaviour involving joint sets. An in-situ observation method of the damage tensor is proposed.