Organic nonlinear optical (NLO) materials are very important for high-speed information processing in addressing the challenges of reduced energy consumption and enhanced speed and bandwidth. In ...particular, organic second-order NLO materials are very promising for meeting the combined requirements of ultra-low energy and ultra-high bandwidth in electro-optic (EO) modulation, while organic third-order NLO materials have good potential for applications in ultra-speed all-optical signal processing (AOSP). This review highlights the recent significant progress made in organic second- and third-order NLO materials. For second-order NLO materials, the recent advances in the efficient and cost-effective synthesis of dipolar polyene chromophores and thin-film engineering for efficient electric field poling are summarized. The applications and prospects of these high-performance EO materials are also discussed. For third-order NLO materials, we discuss the molecular design strategies of cyanine dyes for AOSP applications, particularly focusing on anionic tricyanofuran (TCF)-based cyanines. We aim to provide a better understanding of the structure-property relationships for cyanine-based AOSP materials. Finally, a summary and outlook for advancing high-performance organic NLO materials are provided.
The review reports the recent progress in organic second-order and third-order nonlinear optical materials in the Jen group.
We analyze and explore the potential of using a polymer horizontal slot waveguide as light-analyte interactive region to implement a low-cost and highly sensitive liquid refractive index sensor. ...Numerical analysis shows that the optimized polymer horizontal slot waveguide is able to realize high waveguide sensitivity. With the optimized horizontal slot waveguide, polymer liquid refractive index sensors based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and microring resonator (MRR) are then investigated numerically, and the results show that the MZI-based sensor can achieve high sensitivity of 17024nm/RIU and low limit of detection (LOD) of 1.76×10
−6
RIU while the MRR-based sensor can achieve the sensitivity of 177nm/RIU and the LOD of 1.69×10
−4
RIU with a very small footprint. Compared with the sensors employing conventional silicon or silicon nitride vertical slot waveguide, the sensors employing polymer horizontal slot waveguide exhibit comparable performances but simpler and lower fabrication costs.
We propose an ultra-broadband mode converter based on the structure of a length-apodized long-period grating, where π-phase shifts are introduced at strategic locations of the grating profile. Using ...a 3-section length-apodized grating structure, we design and fabricate an LP
-LP
and an LP
-LP
mode converter with a sidewall grating and a surface grating formed along a polymer channel waveguide, respectively. The fabricated LP
-LP
and LP
-LP
mode converters provide a conversion efficiency higher than 99% over a bandwidth of ~120 nm and ~150 nm, respectively, or a conversion efficiency higher than 90% over a bandwidth of ~180 nm and ~300 nm, respectively. The transmission characteristics of these devices are weakly sensitive to polarization and temperature variations. These mode converters can find applications in ultra-broadband mode-division-multiplexing transmission systems based on few-mode fibers and the design principle can be applied to general grating-based mode-coupling devices for a wide range of applications.
Unsupervised learning algorithms can effectively solve sample imbalance. To address battery consistency anomalies in new energy vehicles, we adopt a variety of unsupervised learning algorithms to ...evaluate and predict the battery consistency of three vehicles using charging fragment data from actual operating conditions. We extract battery-related features, such as the mean of maximum difference, standard deviation, and entropy of batteries and then apply principal component analysis to reduce the dimensionality and record the amount of preserved information. We then build models through a collection of unsupervised learning algorithms for the anomaly detection of cell consistency faults. We also determine whether unsupervised and supervised learning algorithms can address the battery consistency problem and document the parameter tuning process. In addition, we compare the prediction effectiveness of charging and discharging features modeled individually and in combination, determine the choice of charging and discharging features to be modeled in combination, and visualize the multidimensional data for fault detection. Experimental results show that the unsupervised learning algorithm is effective in visualizing and predicting vehicle core conformance faults, and can accurately predict faults in real time. The “distance+boxplot” algorithm shows the best performance with a prediction accuracy of 80%, a recall rate of 100%, and an F1 of 0.89. The proposed approach can be applied to monitor battery consistency faults in real time and reduce the possibility of disasters arising from consistency faults.
Water eutrophication has become one of the most serious aquatic environmental problems around the world. More and more research has indicated climate change as a major natural factor that will lead ...to the acceleration of eutrophication in rivers and lakes. However, understanding the mechanism of climate change’s effect on water eutrophication is difficult due to the uncertainties caused by its complex, non-linear process. There is considerable uncertainty about the magnitude of future temperature changes, and how these will drive eutrophication in water bodies at regional scales under the effect of human activities. This review collects the existing international and domestic literature from the last 10 years, discussing the most sensitive factors of climate change (i.e., temperature, precipitation, wind, and solar radiation) and analyzing their interaction with water eutrophication. Case studies of serious eutrophication and algal bloom problems in China are discussed to further demonstrate the conclusion. Finally, adaptation countermeasures and related implications are proposed in order to foster the development of sustainability strategies for water management in China.
This paper provides a review of the water environment problems faced in China and a comparison with the European experience in dealing with such issues, with an attempt to emphasize the challenges in ...China. The paper also summarizes various studies in China to highlight the severity of water pollution problems faced by regulators, polluters and the general public. China’s water situation can be characterized by insufficient quantities of water, uneven distribution of water spatially and temporally, as well as poor water quality. Water pollution in China has spread from point source to non-point source, from fresh water to coastal water, and from surface water to groundwater. From the management and technological experience from EU, including water framework directive, water price system, desalination and groundwater recharge technologies, and from the analysis of water environment problems and management system in two regions, we could come to the conclusion that water price, water market and water tax could be introduced to China for water environment regulations. Moreover, it is necessary to establish a reliable risk assessment system for water quality, human health and ecological safety.
Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) has been identified as a novel gasotransmitter and a substantial antioxidant that can activate various cellular targets to regulate physiological and pathological processes in ...mammals. However, under physiological conditions, it remains unclear whether it is involved in regulating cardiomyocyte (CM) proliferation during postnatal development in mice. This study mainly aimed to evaluate the role of H2S in postnatal CM proliferation and its regulating molecular mechanisms. We found that sodium hydrosulfide (NaHS, the most widely used H2S donor, 50-200 μM) increased neonatal mouse primary CM proliferation in a dose-dependent manner in vitro. Consistently, exogenous administration of H2S also promoted CM proliferation and increased the total number of CMs at postnatal 7 and 14 days in vivo. Moreover, we observed that the protein expression of SIRT1 was significantly upregulated after NaHS treatment. Inhibition of SIRT1 with EX-527 or si-SIRT1 decreased CM proliferation, while enhancement of the activation of SIRT1 with SRT1720 promoted CM proliferation. Meanwhile, pharmacological and genetic blocking of SIRT1 repressed the effect of NaHS on CM proliferation. Taken together, these results reveal that H2S plays a promotional role in proliferation of CMs in vivo and in vitro and SIRT1 is required for H2S-mediated CM proliferation, which indicates that H2S may be a potential modulator for heart development in postnatal time window.
The development of novel chemical nitro-explosive sensors with high sensitivity, low cost and a compact size is essential for homeland security, environmental protection and addressing military ...challenges. Polymeric optical waveguides based on refractive index sensing are widely used in biochemical detection due to their advantages of large-scale integration, low cost, high sensitivity and anti-electromagnetic interference. In this study, we designed and fabricated a polymer waveguide Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) sensor to detect 2,4-dinitrotoluene (DNT) in water. One phase shifter of the MZI waveguide was functionalized by coating a thin cladding layer of polycarbonate with dipolar chromophores and used as the sensing arm; the other arm was coated with passive epoxy resin cladding and used as the reference arm. The phase difference between the two arms of the MZI was modulated using the refractive index (RI) change in the polycarbonate cladding when dipolar chromophores interacted with electro-deficient DNT. The theoretical sensitivity of the designed MZI can reach up to 24,696 nm/RIU. When used for explosive detection, our fabricated sensor had a maximum wavelength shift of 4.465 nm and good linear relation, with an R2 of 0.96 between the wavelength shift and a concentration ranging from 3.5 × 10−5 to 6.3 × 10−4 mol/L. The sensitivity of our device was 6821.6 nm/(mol/L). The design of an unbalanced MZI sensor, together with the sensing material, provides a new approach to using low-cost, compact and highly sensitive devices for in-field explosive detection.
In this work, a compact sub-wavelength-pitch silicon waveguide array with low crosstalk is proposed and analyzed. The crosstalk is suppressed by periodic silicon nano-blocks symmetrically arranged ...along the silicon strip waveguides. The silicon nano-blocks are properly designed to work in the resonant region as a high-reflection boundary so that the evanescent fields of the silicon waveguide, which directly contribute to the coupling between waveguides, can be truncated. Meanwhile, the nano-blocks periodically perturb the evanescent fields to form a weak-radiating grating, leading to a millimeter-long effective radiation length required for highly directive optical phased arrays. Simulation results show that the crosstalk between the waveguides in the proposed design is at least 10 dB lower than traditional waveguide array with identical sizes within the 1500-1590 nm bandwidth. Furthermore, the proposed design achieves an effective radiation length up to 1.47 mm, resulting in a theoretical narrow beam width of 0.052°. Combining both the low crosstalk and the long effective radiating length, our design offers a promising platform for high-performance two-dimensional scanning optical phased array with a large field of view and a narrow beam width.
Metal-organic framework (MOF) nanomaterials are emerging porous coordinative polymers with large surface area and high porosity. Their application scenarios highly depend on adsorption/desorption ...dynamics of guest molecules in the framework. For representative ZIF-8 with framework flexibility, the study of molecule transportation in the pore channels of ZIF-8 will address the ambiguity of unclear application scenarios. In this study, the integration of lab-on-fiber technology and nanotechnology are demonstrated for real-time monitoring of adsorption/desorption dynamics of heterocyclic volatile compounds (VOCs) with kinetic diameters larger than the window aperture of ZIF-8. The in-line fiber interferometer with cascaded long-period gratings is used to monitor the real-time refractive index change of VOC adsorption/desorption. The structure-effect relationship between guest VOCs and framework flexibility is analyzed. It shows that the adsorption dynamics is highly related to the molecular geometry and kinetic diameter. The framework flexibility results in the trapping of guest VOCs toluene, pyridine, and tetrahydrofuran in the frameworks. The methanol adsorption/desorption is an effective strategy for the fast desorption of trapped residual VOCs in the framework. Finally, we conceptually demonstrated the real-time monitoring of trace toluene enrichment using ZIF-8 for indoor air purification. This study paves the way for the in-depth understanding of framework flexibility for MOF’s application.
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