Spectroscopic Investigations of Complex Transition Metal Oxides

In this dissertation, I present spectroscopic studies of several model electronic and magnetic materials. Compounds of interest include VOx nanoscrolls, VOHPO4¢ 1 2H2O, and (La0:4Pr0:6)1:2Sr1:8Mn2O7. These materials are attractive systems for the investigation of optical gap tuning, lattice and charge dynamics, spin-lattice-charge coupling, and hydrogen bonding effects. I measured the optical properties of VOx nano- scrolls and the ion-exchanged derivatives to investigate the lattice and charge degrees of freedom. Selected V-O-V stretching modes sharpen and redshift with increasing amine size, which are microscopic manifestations of strain. We observed bound carrier localization in the metal exchanged nanoscrolls, indicating they are weakly metallic in their bulk form. I also investigated the variable temperature vibrational properties of single crystals of the S = 1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet VOHPO4¢ 1 2H2O. In order to explain the activation and polarization dependence of the singlet-to-triplet gap in the far-infrared response, we invoke a dynamic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya mechanism and we identify the low-energy phonons that likely facilitate this coupling. Vibrational mode splitting of VOHPO4¢ 1 2H2O also points toward a weak local symmetry breaking near 180 K, and the low-temperature redshift of V-O and H-O related modes demonstrates enhanced low-temperature hydrogen bonding. Finally, I measured the magneto-optical response of (La0:4Pr0:6)1:2Sr1:8Mn2O7 to investigate the microscopic aspects of the magnetic field driven spin-glass insulator to ferromagnetic metal transition. Application of a magnetic field recovers the ferromagnetic state with an overall redshift of the electronic structure, growth of the bound carrier localization associated with ferromagnetic domains, development of a pseudogap, and softening of the Mn-O stretching and bending modes that indicate a structural change. By exploiting the electronic mechanisms, we can induce large high energy magnetodielectric contrast in (La0:4Pr0:6)1:2Sr1:8Mn2O7. The dielectric contrast is over 100% near 0.8 eV at 4.2 K. Remnants of the transition also drive the high energy magnetodielectric effect at room temperature

Thermodynamics of Strained Vanadium Dioxide Single Crystals

Vanadium dioxide undergoes a metal-insulator transition, in which the strain condition plays an important role. To investigate the strain contribution, a phenomenological thermodynamic potential for the vanadium dioxide single crystal was constructed. The transformations under the uniaxial stress, wire, and thin film boundary conditions were analyzed, and the corresponding phase diagrams were constructed. The calculated phase diagrams agree well with existing experimental data, and show that the transformation temperature (and Curie temperature) strongly depends on the strain condition

Regulation of RhoA/ROCK1 signaling pathway by miR 26b in sepsis induced acute lung injury

Purpose: To investigate the role of miR-26b in the regulation of RhoA/ ROCK1 signaling pathway in acute lung injury (ALI) caused by sepsis. Methods: Thirty male rats were randomized into sham group (SG), cecal ligation and puncture (CLP) group (CG) and miR-26b mimic group (MG). Hematoxylin and eosin (H & E) staining assay was performed to determine the pathological characteristics of rat lung tissues in each group, while enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was conducted to determine TNF-α and IL-1β levels. The miR-26b expression was evaluated by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), while RhoA and Rock1 protein levels were assessed using western blotting. Results: The CG had significant lung injury in comparison with the SG. There were significant elevation in TNF-α and IL-1β levels (p < 0.05). RhoA and ROCK1 levels in lung tissue were noticeably elevated in CG (p < 0.05). After treatment, lung injury in MG was reduced in contrast to CG. The MG showed statistically significant decrease (p < 0.05) in the levels of TNF-α and IL-1β, while the lung tissue mRNA expression and the RhoA and ROCK1 expression levels were significantly reduced in MG (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The MiR-26b mimics plays an important role in the treatment of ALI induced by sepsis in rats by regulating RhoA/ROCK1 signaling pathway. Thus, the findings of this study provide a theoretical basis for clinical studies on the use of miR-26b in the therapy of sepsis

META-SELD: Meta-Learning for Fast Adaptation to the new environment in Sound Event Localization and Detection

For learning-based sound event localization and detection (SELD) methods, different acoustic environments in the training and test sets may result in large performance differences in the validation and evaluation stages. Different environments, such as different sizes of rooms, different reverberation times, and different background noise, may be reasons for a learning-based system to fail. On the other hand, acquiring annotated spatial sound event samples, which include onset and offset time stamps, class types of sound events, and direction-of-arrival (DOA) of sound sources is very expensive. In addition, deploying a SELD system in a new environment often poses challenges due to time-consuming training and fine-tuning processes. To address these issues, we propose Meta-SELD, which applies meta-learning methods to achieve fast adaptation to new environments. More specifically, based on Model Agnostic Meta-Learning (MAML), the proposed Meta-SELD aims to find good meta-initialized parameters to adapt to new environments with only a small number of samples and parameter updating iterations. We can then quickly adapt the meta-trained SELD model to unseen environments. Our experiments compare fine-tuning methods from pre-trained SELD models with our Meta-SELD on the Sony-TAU Realistic Spatial Soundscapes 2023 (STARSSS23) dataset. The evaluation results demonstrate the effectiveness of Meta-SELD when adapting to new environments.Comment: Submitted to DCASE 2023 Worksho

Demonstration of chronometric leveling using transportable optical clocks beyond laser coherence limit

Optical clock network requires the establishment of optical frequency transmission link between multiple optical clocks, utilizing narrow linewidth lasers. Despite achieving link noise levels of 10${^{-20}}$, the final accuracy is limited by the phase noise of the clock laser. Correlation spectroscopy is developed to transmit frequency information between two optical clocks directly, enabling optical clock comparison beyond the phase noise limit of clock lasers, and significantly enhancing the measurement accuracy or shorten the measurement time. In this letter, two compact transportable ${^{40}}$Ca${^+}$ clocks are employed to accomplish the correlation spectroscopy comparison, demonstrating an 10 cm level measurement accuracy of chronometric leveling using a mediocre clock laser with linewidth of 200 Hz. The relative frequency instability reaches $6.0\times10{^{-15}}/\sqrt{\tau/s}$, which is about 20 times better than the result with Rabi spectroscopy using the same clock laser. This research greatly reduces the harsh requirements on the performance of the clock laser, so that an ordinary stable-laser can also be employed in the construction of optical clock network, which is essential for the field applications, especially for the chronometric leveling

Large Kinetic Asymmetry in the Metal-Insulator Transition Nucleated at Localized and Extended Defects

Superheating and supercooling effects are characteristic kinetic processes in first-order phase transitions, and asymmetry between them is widely observed. In materials where electronic and structural degrees of freedom are coupled, a wide, asymmetric hysteresis may occur in the transition between electronic phases. Structural defects are known to seed heterogeneous nucleation of the phase transition, hence reduce the degree of superheating and supercooling. Here we show that in the metal-insulator transition of single-crystal VO 2, a large kinetic asymmetry arises from the distinct spatial extension and distribution of two basic types of crystal defects: point defects and twin walls. Nanometer-thick twin walls are constantly consumed but regenerated during the transition to the metal phase, serving as dynamical heterogeneous nucleation seeds and eliminating superheating. On the other hand, the transition back to the insulator phase relies on nucleation at point defects because twinning is structurally forbidden in the metal phase, leading to a large supercooling. By controlling the formation, location, and extinction of these defects, the kinetics of the phase transition might be externally modulated, offering possible routes toward unique memory and logic device technologies

Applications of MXenes in human-like sensors and actuators

Human beings perceive the world through the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, space, and balance. The first five senses are prerequisites for people to live. The sensing organs upload information to the nervous systems, including the brain, for interpreting the surrounding environment. Then, the brain sends commands to muscles reflexively to react to stimuli, including light, gas, chemicals, sound, and pressure. MXene, as an emerging two-dimensional material, has been intensively adopted in the applications of various sensors and actuators. In this review, we update the sensors to mimic five primary senses and actuators for stimulating muscles, which employ MXene-based film, membrane, and composite with other functional materials. First, a brief introduction is delivered for the structure, properties, and synthesis methods of MXenes. Then, we feed the readers the recent reports on the MXene-derived image sensors as artificial retinas, gas sensors, chemical biosensors, acoustic devices, and tactile sensors for electronic skin. Besides, the actuators of MXene-based composite are introduced. Eventually, future opportunities are given to MXene research based on the requirements of artificial intelligence and humanoid robot, which may induce prospects in accompanying healthcare and biomedical engineering applications. [Figure not available: see fulltext.