Gate-Tunable Critical Current of the Three-Dimensional Niobium Nano-Bridge Josephson Junction

Recent studies have shown that the critical currents of several metallic superconducting nanowires and Dayem bridges can be locally tuned using a gate voltage {V_g}. Here, we report a gate-tunable Josephson junction structure constructed from a three-dimensional (3D) niobium nano-bridge junction (NBJ) with a voltage gate on top. Measurements up to 6 K showed that the critical current of this structure can be tuned to zero by increasing {V_g}. The critical gate voltage Vgc was reduced to 16 V and may possibly be reduced further by reducing the thickness of the insulation layer between the gate and the NBJ. Furthermore, the flux modulation generated by Josephson interference of two parallel 3D NBJs can also be tuned using {V_g} in a similar manner. Therefore, we believe that this gate-tunable Josephson junction structure is promising for superconducting circuit fabrication at high integration levels.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Geometric Scaling of the Current-Phase Relation of Niobium Nano-Bridge Junctions

The nano-bridge junction (NBJ) is a type of Josephson junction that is advantageous for the miniaturization of superconducting circuits. However, the current-phase relation (CPR) of the NBJ usually deviates from a sinusoidal function which has been explained by a simplified model with correlation only to its effective length. Here, we investigated both measured and calculated CPRs of niobium NBJs of a cuboidal shape with a three-dimensional bank structure. From a sine-wave to a saw-tooth-like form, we showed that deviated CPRs of NBJs can be described quantitatively by its skewness {\Delta}{\theta}. Furthermore, the measured dependency of {\Delta}{\theta} on the critical current {I_0} from 108 NBJs turned out to be consistent with the calculated ones derived from the change in geometric dimensions. It suggested that the CPRs of NBJs can be tuned by their geometric dimensions. In addition, the calculated scaling behavior of {\Delta}{\theta} versus {I_0} in three-dimensional space was provided for the future design of superconducting circuits of a high integration level by using niobium NBJs.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure

The Ninth Visual Object Tracking VOT2021 Challenge Results

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Book Review: Teaching business discourse

Business discourse teaching has become one of the primary aspects of business discourse research due to its pedagogy-oriented tradition. The book under review, Teaching Business Discourse, is the first monograph that is dedicated to this important perspective in a systematic manner, though it has been generally discussed in some related works, including Bargiela-Chiappini, Nickerson, and Planken, and Bhatia and Bremner. Drawing on the authors’ wide-ranging experience of business discourse studies, the monograph provides readers with a comprehensive and critical review of business discourse teaching research by covering its theories, methodologies, projects, teaching materials, resources and future directions with ten chapters distributed across four parts

A Comprehensive Characterization of Pyrolysis Oil from Softwood Barks

Pyrolysis of raw pine bark, pine, and Douglas-Fir bark was examined. The pyrolysis oil yields of raw pine bark, pine, and Douglas-Fir bark at 500 °C were 29.18%, 26.67%, and 26.65%, respectively. Both energy densification ratios (1.32–1.56) and energy yields (48.40–54.31%) of char are higher than pyrolysis oils (energy densification ratios: 1.13–1.19, energy yields: 30.16–34.42%). The pyrolysis oils have higher heating values (~25 MJ/kg) than bio-oils (~20 MJ/kg) from wood and agricultural residues, and the higher heating values of char (~31 MJ/kg) are comparable to that of many commercial coals. The elemental analysis indicated that the lower O/C value and higher H/C value represent a more valuable source of energy for pyrolysis oils than biomass. The nuclear magnetic resonance results demonstrated that the most abundant hydroxyl groups of pyrolysis oil are aliphatic OH groups, catechol, guaiacol, and p-hydroxy-phenyl OH groups. The aliphatic OH groups are mainly derived from the cleavage of cellulose glycosidic bonds, while the catechol, guaiacol, and p-hydroxy-phenyl OH groups are mostly attributed to the cleavage of the lignin β–O-4 bond. Significant amount of aromatic carbon (~40%) in pyrolysis oils is obtained from tannin and lignin components and the aromatic C–O bonds may be formed by a radical reaction between the aromatic and aliphatic hydroxyl groups. In this study, a comprehensive analytical method was developed to fully understand and evaluate the pyrolysis products produced from softwood barks, which could offer valuable information on the pyrolysis mechanism of biomass and promote better utilization of pyrolysis products

Pyrolytic Behavior of Major Biomass Components in Waste Biomass

The pyrolytic behavior of several biomass components including cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, and tannin, from two sources of waste biomass (i.e., pine bark and pine residues) were examined. Compared to the two aromatic-based components in the biomass, carbohydrates produced much less char but more gas. Surprisingly, tannin produced a significant amount of water-soluble products; further analysis indicated that tannin could produce a large amount of catechols. The first reported NMR chemical shift databases for tannin and hemicellulose pyrolysis oils were created to facilitate the HSQC analysis. Various C⁻H functional groups (>30 different C⁻H bonds) in the pyrolysis oils could be analyzed by employing HSQC-NMR. The results indicated that most of the aromatic C⁻H and aliphatic C⁻H bonds in the pyrolysis oils produced from pine bark and pine residues resulted from the lignin and tannin components. A preliminary study for a quantitative application of HSQC-NMR on the characterization of pyrolysis oil was also done in this study. Nevertheless, the concepts established in this work open up new methods to fully characterize the whole portion of pyrolysis oils produced from various biomass components, which can provide valuable information on the thermochemical mechanisms