The rates and mechanisms of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) decomposition were examined in a series of soil suspensions at H2O2 concentrations comparable to those found in rainwaters. The formation of ...hydroxyl radical (OH) as a possible decomposition intermediate was investigated using a new, highly sensitive method. In surface soils with higher organic matter or manganese content, H2O2 usually decayed rapidly, with disproportionation to water and dioxygen dominating the decomposition, whereas the formation of the hydroxyl radical (OH) represented <10% of the total H2O2 decomposed. In contrast, for soils with lower organic matter content, H2O2 usually decayed much more slowly, but OH was a major product of the H2O2 decomposed. The decomposition was principally associated with soil particles, not the soil supernatant. Different sterilization techniques indicated that decomposition of H2O2 was at least partly due to biological activity. Because the loss of H2O2 can largely be accommodated by the production of O2 and OH within these soils, our results suggest that disproportionation through a catalase-type mechanism and the production of OH through a Haber-Weiss mechanism represent the principal routes through which H2O2 is lost.
In relativistic heavy-ion collisions, anisotropic collective flow is driven, event by event, by the initial eccentricity of the matter created in the nuclear overlap zone. Interpretation of the ...anisotropic flow data thus requires a detailed understanding of the effective initial source eccentricity of the event sample. In this paper, we investigate various ways of defining this effective eccentricity using the Monte Carlo Glauber (MCG) approach. In particular, we examine the participant eccentricity, which quantifies the eccentricity of the initial source shape by the major axes of the ellipse formed by the interaction points of the participating nucleons. We show that reasonable variation of the density parameters in the Glauber calculation, as well as variations in how matter production is modeled, do not significantly modify the already established behavior of the participant eccentricity as a function of collision centrality. Focusing on event-by-event fluctuations and correlations of the distributions of participating nucleons, we demonstrate that, depending on the achieved event-plane resolution, fluctuations in the elliptic flow magnitude v{sub 2} lead to most measurements being sensitive to the root-mean-square rather than the mean of the v{sub 2} distribution. Neglecting correlations among participants, we derive analytical expressions for the participant eccentricity cumulants as a function of the number of participating nucleons, N{sub part}, keeping nonnegligible contributions up to O(1/N{sub part}{sup 3}). We find that the derived expressions yield the same results as obtained from mixed-event MCG calculations which remove the correlations stemming from the nuclear collision process. Most importantly, we conclude from the comparison with MCG calculations that the fourth-order participant eccentricity cumulant does not approach the spatial anisotropy obtained assuming a smooth nuclear matter distribution. In particular, for the Cu+Cu system, these quantities deviate from each other by almost a factor of 2 over a wide range in centrality. This deviation reflects the essential role of participant spatial correlations in the interaction of two nuclei.
Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is a promising anode for high performance sodium‐ion batteries due to high specific capacity, abundance, and low cost. However, poor cycling stability, low rate capability ...and unclear electrochemical reaction mechanism are the main challenges for MoS2 anode in Na‐ion batteries. In this study, molybdenum disulfide/carbon (MoS2/C) nanospheres are fabricated and used for Na‐ion battery anodes. MoS2/C nanospheres deliver a reversible capacity of 520 mAh g−1 at 0.1 C and maintain at 400 mAh g−1 for 300 cycles at a high current density of 1 C, demonstrating the best cycling performance of MoS2 for Na‐ion batteries to date. The high capacity is attributed to the short ion and electron diffusion pathway, which enables fast charge transfer and low concentration polarization. The stable cycling performance and high coulombic efficiency (∼100%) of MoS2/C nanospheres are ascribed to (1) highly reversible conversion reaction of MoS2 during sodiation/desodiation as evidenced by ex‐situ X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and (2) the formation of a stable solid electrolyte interface (SEI) layer in fluoroethylene carbonate (FEC) based electrolyte as demonstrated by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) measurements.
MoS2/C nanospheres deliver a reversible capacity of 520 mAh g−1 at 0.1 C and can maintain at 400 mAh g−1 for 300 cycles at a high current density of 1 C, demonstrating the best cycling performance of MoS2 for Na‐ion batteries to date. The reversible conversion mechnism of MoS2 during sodiation/desodiation is confirmed.
Recently, multiparticle-correlation measurements of relativistic p/d/^{3}He+Au, p+Pb, and even p+p collisions show surprising collective signatures. Here, we present beam-energy-scan measurements of ...two-, four-, and six-particle angular correlations in d+Au collisions at sqrts_{NN}=200, 62.4, 39, and 19.6 GeV. We also present measurements of two- and four-particle angular correlations in p+Au collisions at sqrts_{NN}=200 GeV. We find the four-particle cumulant to be real valued for d+Au collisions at all four energies. We also find that the four-particle cumulant in p+Au has the opposite sign as that in d+Au. Further, we find that the six-particle cumulant agrees with the four-particle cumulant in d+Au collisions at 200 GeV, indicating that nonflow effects are subdominant. These observations provide strong evidence that the correlations originate from the initial geometric configuration, which is then translated into the momentum distribution for all particles, commonly referred to as collectivity.
This paper describes the conclusions that can be drawn from the data taken thus far with the PHOBOS detector at RHIC. In the most central Au
+
Au collisions at the highest beam energy, evidence is ...found for the formation of a very high energy density system whose description in terms of simple hadronic degrees of freedom is inappropriate. Furthermore, the constituents of this novel system are found to undergo a significant level of interaction. The properties of particle production at RHIC energies are shown to follow a number of simple scaling behaviors, some of which continue trends found at lower energies or in simpler systems. As a function of centrality, the total number of charged particles scales with the number of participating nucleons. When comparing Au
+
Au at different centralities, the dependence of the yield on the number of participants at higher
p
T
(
∼
4
GeV
/
c
) is very similar to that at low transverse momentum. The measured values of charged particle pseudorapidity density and elliptic flow were found to be independent of energy over a broad range of pseudorapidities when effectively viewed in the rest frame of one of the colliding nuclei, a property we describe as “extended longitudinal scaling”. Finally, the centrality and energy dependences of several observables were found to factorize to a surprising degree.
Tin disulfide (SnS2) has emerged as a promising anode material for sodium ion batteries (NIBs) due to its unique layered structure, high theoretical capacity, and low cost. Conventional SnS2 ...nanomaterials are normally synthesized using hydrothermal method, which is time-consuming and difficult to scale up for mass production. In this study, we develop a simple solid-state reaction method, in which the carbon-coated SnS2 (SnS2/C) anode materials were synthesized by annealing metallic Sn, sulfur powder, and polyacrylonitrile in a sealed vacuum glass tube. The SnS2/C nanospheres with unique layered structure exhibit a high reversible capacity of 660 mAh g–1 at a current density of 50 mA g–1 and maintain at 570 mAh g–1 for 100 cycles with a degradation rate of 0.14% per cycle, demonstrating one of the best cycling performances in all reported SnS2/C anodes for NIBs to date. The superior cycling stability of SnS2/C electrode is attributed to the stable nanosphere morphology and structural integrity during charge/discharge cycles as evidenced by ex situ characterization.
We present measurements of the pseudorapidity distribution of primary charged particles produced in Au+Au collisions at three energies, sqrts(NN)=19.6, 130, and 200 GeV, for a range of collision ...centrali-ties. The distribution narrows for more central collisions and excess particles are produced at high pseudorapidity in peripheral collisions. For a given centrality, however, the distributions are found to scale with energy according to the "limiting fragmentation" hypothesis. The universal fragmentation region described by this scaling grows in pseudorapidity with increasing collision energy, extending well away from the beam rapidity and covering more than half of the pseudorapidity range over which particles are produced. This approach to a universal limiting curve appears to be a dominant feature of the pseudorapidity distribution and therefore of the total particle production in these collisions.
We present measurements of the cross section and double-helicity asymmetry ALL of direct-photon production in p→+p→ collisions at s=510 GeV. The measurements have been performed at midrapidity (|η|
A reaction plane detector for PHENIX at RHIC Richardson, E.; Akiba, Y.; Anderson, N. ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
04/2011, Volume:
636, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
A plastic scintillator paddle detector with embedded fiber light guides and photomultiplier tube readout, referred to as the Reaction Plane Detector (RXNP), was designed and installed in the PHENIX ...experiment prior to the 2007 run of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The RXNP's design is optimized to accurately measure the reaction plane (RP) angle of heavy-ion collisions, where, for mid-central sNN=200GeV Au+Au collisions, it achieved a 2nd harmonic RP resolution of ∼0.75, which is a factor of ∼2 greater than PHENIX's previous capabilities. This improvement was accomplished by locating the RXNP in the central region of the PHENIX experiment, where, due to its large coverage in pseudorapidity (1.0<|η|<2.8) and ϕ(2π), it is exposed to the high particle multiplicities needed for an accurate RP measurement. To enhance the observed signal, a 2-cm Pb converter is located between the nominal collision region and the scintillator paddles, allowing neutral particles produced in the heavy-ion collisions to contribute to the signal through conversion electrons. This paper discusses the design, operation and performance of the RXNP during the 2007 RHIC run.
The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has measured the longitudinal double spin asymmetries, ALL, for charged pions at midrapidity (|η| < 0.35 ) in longitudinally polarized p + ...p collisions at √s = 510 GeV . These measurements are sensitive to the gluon spin contribution to the total spin of the proton in the parton momentum fraction x range between 0.04 and 0.09. One can infer the sign of the gluon polarization from the ordering of pion asymmetries with charge alone. The asymmetries are found to be consistent with global quantum-chromodynamics fits of deep-inelastic scattering and data at √s = 200 GeV , which show a nonzero positive contribution of gluon spin to the proton spin.