SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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The p-type Mg 2 Li x Si 0.4 Sn 0.6 were synthesized by a B 2 O 3 -encapsulation method using Li 2 CO 3 as doping agent and showed significant improvement in ZT .
Various methods for encapsulating enzymes in metal–organic frameworks are discussed and the catalytic activity of biocomposites prepared using these methods is highlighted.
The ever-increasing demands of the modern world continue to place substantial strain on the environment. To help alleviate the damage done to the natural world, the encapsulation of small molecules or ions (guests) into porous inorganic structural frameworks (hosts) provides a potential remedy for some of the environmental concerns facing us today. These concerns include the removal of harmful pollutants from water or air, the safe entrapment of nuclear waste materials, or the purification and storage of small molecules that act as alternative fuel sources. For this study, we review the trends in using inorganic materials as hostmedia for the removal or storage of various wastes and alternative fuels. In conclusion, we cover the treatment of water contaminated with dyes or heavy metals, air pollution alleviation via CO 2 , SO x , NO x , and volatile organic compound containment, nuclear waste immobilization, and storage for H 2 and methane as alternative fuels.
A new metal–organic framework enables a facile and scalable synthesis of transition metal phosphide and sulfide nanoparticle encapsulated by heteroatom-doped carbon as bifunctional electrocatalysts for water splitting.
Sodium ion batteries (SIBs) and lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries are considered as the most enticing next-generation energy storage devices to displace the widely used lithium ion batteries due to their inherent advantages. In this work, polypyrrole-encapsulated amorphous Bi 2 S 3 hollow spheres are prepared by the sulfuration of Bi–glycol spheres with a polypyrrole (PPy) coating. Benefiting from the unique hollow structure (Kirkendall effect) and the excellent conductivity and flexibility of the PPy coating, this material can be applied in both SIBs and Li–S batteries. For SIBs, the unconductive amorphous Bi 2 S 3 is electrochemically reduced to conductive metallic Bi, leading to a Bi–PPy core–shell structure. The resulting Bi acts as the main active material while the PPy coating accommodates the volume variation of Bi during sodiation/desodiation. For Li–S batteries, the outer double layer structure effectively prevents the dissolution and “shuttle effect” of polysulfides by physically containing and chemically adsorbing polysulfides, and tolerates the volume expansion of sulfur. Meanwhile, the residual polyvinyl pyrrolidone in the preparation process is chemically bonded with sulfur and exhibits the electrochemical properties, and results in additional discharging/charging capacity. Hence, this multifunctional electrode shows excellent rate capability and cycling life in SIBs and Li–S batteries. This research allows new insight into the design of multifunctional electrodes.
In situ X-ray absorbance spectroscopy measurements show that encapsulating cobalt phthalocyanine within coordinating polymers leads to axial ligation of Co and results in enhanced rates for electrocatalytic CO 2 reduction.
Targeted alpha therapy (TAT) offers great promise for treating recalcitrant tumors and micrometastatic cancers. One drawback of TAT is the potential damage to normal tissues and organs due to the relocation of decay daughters from the treatment site. As such, the present study evaluates La( 227 Th)PO 4 core (C) and core +2 shells (C2S) nanoparticles (NPs) as a delivery platform of 227 Th to minimize systemic distribution of decay daughters, 223 Ra and 211 Pb. In vitro retention of decay daughters within La( 227 Th)PO 4 C NPs was influenced by the concentration of reagents used during synthesis, in which the leakage of 223 Ra was between 0.4 ± 0.2% and 20.3 ± 1.1% in deionized water. Deposition of two nonradioactive LaPO 4 shells onto La( 227 Th)PO 4 C NPs increased the retention of decay daughters to >99.75%. The toxicity of the nonradioactive LaPO 4 C and C2S NP delivery platforms was examined in a mammalian breast cancer cell line, BT-474. No significant decrease in cell viability was observed for a monolayer of BT-474 cells for NP concentrations below 233.9 μg mL –1 , however cell viability decreased below 60% when BT-474 spheroids were incubated with either LaPO 4 C or C2S NPs at concentrations exceeding 29.2 μg mL –1 . La( 227 Th)PO 4 C2S NPs exhibit a high encapsulation and in vitro retention of radionuclides with limited contribution to cellular cytotoxicity for TAT applications.
This protein–iron oxide hybrid biomaterial aims to integrate the drug encapsulating potential of a coiled-coil protein with peptide-driven iron oxide biomineralization to serve as drug-carrying, MRI-detectable mesofiber.
Here we report the presence of small clusters of atoms (<1 nm) (SCs) and single atoms (SAs) in solutions containing 1–2 nm dendrimer-encapsulated nanoparticles (DENs). Au and Pd DENs were imaged using aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (ac-STEM), and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) was used to identify and quantify the SAs/SCs. Two main findings have emerged from this work. First, the presence or absence of SAs/SCs depends on both the terminal functional group of the dendrimer (–NH 2 or –OH) and the elemental composition of the DENs (Au or Pd). Second, dialysis can be used to remove the majority of SAs/SCs in cases where a high density of SAs/SCs are present. The foregoing conclusions provide insights into the mechanisms for Au and Pd DEN synthesis and stability. Ultimately, these results demonstrate the need for careful characterization of systems containing nanoparticles to ensure that SAs/SCs, which may be below the detection limit of most analytical methods, are taken into consideration (especially for catalysis experiments).
Encapsulated complexes have potential as model heterogeneous catalysts for gap-phase reactions.
Solid state UV-vis reflectance spectra reveal the distinct electronic structure of POM@MOF materials obtained by synthetic encapsulation of mono- and di-vanadium substituted Keggin polyoxotungstates in HKUST-1.
Experimental and theoretical study of [Ga 4 L 6 ] 12− and [In 4 L 6 ] 12− investigating guest encapsulation. Our study reveals that solvent composition, crucially affects entropy and guest binding, opening the door for tuning host–guest interactions.
We report the fabrication of lateral gate-all-around InAs nanowire field-effect transistors whose gate overlaps the source and drain electrodes and thus fully encapsulates the nanowire channel. They feature large drive current and transconductance that surpass those of conventional non-gate-overlap devices. The improved device characteristics can be attributed to the elimination of access resistance associated with ungated segments between the gate and source/drain electrodes. Our data also reveal a correlation between the normalized transconductance and the threshold voltage, which points to a beneficial effect of our wet-etching procedure performed prior to the atomic-layer-deposition of the gate dielectric.
N-type doping of graphene with long-term chemical stability in air represents a significant challenge for practical application of graphene electronics. This paper reports a reversible doping method to achieve highly stable n-type graphene nanomeshes, in which the SU-8 photoresist simultaneously serves as an effective electron dopant and an excellent encapsulating layer. The chemically stable n-type characteristics of the SU-8 doped graphene were evaluated in air using their Raman spectra, electrical transport properties, and electronic band structures. The SU-8 doping does minimum damage to the hexagonal carbon lattice of graphene and is completely reversible by removing the uncrosslinked SU-8 resist.
This work examines Si overgrowth to encapsulate 3C-SiC quantum dot arrays epitaxially grown on Si substrates. Using transmission electron microscopy, we show how the crystalline quality of the Si cap depends on the growth conditions. Overgrowth at 300 °C leads to a planar, epitaxial Si cap, but with small crystallographic rotations in the cap above each quantum dot. At 400 °C growth temperature, Si exhibits reduced sticking to the SiC, leading to a non-planar cap. However, a two-step process, with thin layer grown at 250 °C followed by growth at 500 °C, leads to a planar cap with a much-reduced density of defects.
We have investigated the inhomogeneous interior of confined spherical cavities as capsules containing encapsulated binary hard sphere mixtures for different compositions and cavity wall rigidity. Such a greatly simplified model manifests the effects of macromolecular crowding arising from excluded volume interactions in a tiny cell or a cellular nucleus. By fixing the number of large particles, the level of crowding is adjusted by changing the amount of small hard spheres in the cavity. For a rigid cavity, large spheres tend to pack in liquid-like order apart from the surface to the center of the cavity as the crowding level is increased. Whereas, for a soft cavity, larger spheres tend to blend with small spheres in the peripheral region at near the boundary of the cavity, and are susceptible to be depleted from the interior of the cavity as the cavity becomes more crowded. These results may help future elucidation of the thermodynamic pathways to stabilize the inhomogeneous structure of mixtures confined in cavities, such as the derepression of genome materials around the interior rim of the nucleus in a cancerous cell.
We demonstrate Fermi-level depinning in metal/Ge junctions and a significant reduction of specific contact resistivity of n-Ge by inserting an ultra-thin semiconducting Si-rich W silicide film (WSi{sub n}, n = 12–14) composed of W-encapsulating Si clusters. Dependence of the specific contact resistivity on the electron Schottky barrier height followed the ideal exponential relation for various contact metal species. This result indicates that the insertion of the WSi{sub n} film provides a negligible contribution to contact resistivity because its tunneling resistance is very low owing to the low offset of the conduction band edge of Ge.
We demonstrate nearly spherical, strain-free, self-assembled Ge quantum dots (QDs) fully encapsulated by AlAs, grown on (100) GaAs by molecular beam epitaxy. The QDs were formed without a wetting layer using a high temperature, in situ anneal. Subsequent AlAs overgrowth was free from anti-phase domains and threading dislocations in cross section transmission electron microscopy. The straddling band alignment for Ge in AlAs promises strong and tunable confinement for both electrons and holes. The reflection high-energy electron diffraction pattern changed from 2 × 3 to 2 × 5 with anneal, which can be explained by surface reconstructions based on the electron-counting model.