First-principles study of native point defects in Bi2Se3

Using first-principles method within the framework of the density functional theory, we study the influence of native point defect on the structural and electronic properties of Bi$_2$Se$_3$. Se vacancy in Bi$_2$Se$_3$ is a double donor, and Bi vacancy is a triple acceptor. Se antisite (Se$_{Bi}$) is always an active donor in the system because its donor level ($\varepsilon$(+1/0)) enters into the conduction band. Interestingly, Bi antisite(Bi$_{Se1}$) in Bi$_2$Se$_3$ is an amphoteric dopant, acting as a donor when $\mu$$_e$$<$0.119eV (the material is typical p-type) and as an acceptor when $\mu$$_e$$>$0.251eV (the material is typical n-type). The formation energies under different growth environments (such as Bi-rich or Se-rich) indicate that under Se-rich condition, Se$_{Bi}$ is the most stable native defect independent of electron chemical potential $\mu$$_e$. Under Bi-rich condition, Se vacancy is the most stable native defect except for under the growth window as $\mu$$_e$$>$0.262eV (the material is typical n-type) and $\Delta$$\mu$$_{Se}$$<$-0.459eV(Bi-rich), under such growth windows one negative charged Bi$_{Se1}$ is the most stable one.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Body-centred cubic packing of spheres-the ultimate thermotropic assembly mode for highly divergent dendrons

We have synthesized sodium tris(alkoxy)benzoates in which one of the three alkyl chains branches further into three C 18 H 37 chains. These AB5 hyperbranched minidendrons melt directly into a body-centred cubic (BCC) mesophase formed by spherical "micelles". In contrast, their non-branched counterparts display various mesophases before they turn into BCC upon heating. This agrees with the predictions from a numerical geometric model that relates the shape of the molecular wedge to the type of mesophase they adopt. The spheres were found to shrink in volume upon heating and expand upon cooling, as molecules, in some cases nearly half of them, are ejected and reintegrated in the spheres. The ejection of dendrons is caused by their lateral thermal expansion. The BCC appears to be the ultimate mesophase for the extremely divergent wedges such as the hyperbranched minidendrons. In dendrons with chains of unequal length, the sphere size is fixed by the shorter chains, the longer ones back-folding or interdigitating to effectively widen the wedge. This new understanding of their assembly will help in designing new dendrons, e.g. for better encapsulation of guest molecules

Implementing topological quantum manipulation with superconducting circuits

A two-component fermion model with conventional two-body interactions was recently shown to have anyonic excitations. We here propose a scheme to physically implement this model by transforming each chain of two two-component fermions to the two capacitively coupled chains of superconducting devices. In particular, we elaborate how to achieve the wanted operations to create and manipulate the topological quantum states, providing an experimentally feasible scenario to access the topological memory and to build the anyonic interferometry.Comment: 4 pages with 3 figures; V2: published version with minor updation

Processing of TiO2 from titanium-bearing blast furnace slag as titanium source

The titanium dioxide(TiO2) was prepared by efficient decomposition of titanium- bearing blast furnace slag (TBBFS) in molten salt system. The as-prepared TiO2 were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Almost complete leaching of Ti was achieved when TBBFS was carried out at 500 °C for about 3 h with NaOH/TBBFS mass ratio of 3:1 and NaOH to NaF molar ratio of 3:1. The XRD pattern showed that the containing titanium product obtained under optimal conditions was Na2TiO3. The average size of the rutile TiO2 obtained was about 1.0μm and the content was up to 99,23 %

Bi-Stream Pose-Guided Region Ensemble Network for Fingertip Localization From Stereo Images

In human-computer interaction, it is important to accurately estimate the hand pose, especially fingertips. However, traditional approaches to fingertip localization mainly rely on depth images and thus suffer considerably from noise and missing values. Instead of depth images, stereo images can also provide 3-D information of hands. There are nevertheless limitations on the dataset size, global viewpoints, hand articulations, and hand shapes in publicly available stereo-based hand pose datasets. To mitigate these limitations and promote further research on hand pose estimation from stereo images, we build a new large-scale binocular hand pose dataset called THU-Bi-Hand, offering a new perspective for fingertip localization. In the THU-Bi-Hand dataset, there are 447k pairs of stereo images of different hand shapes from ten subjects with accurate 3-D location annotations of the wrist and five fingertips. Captured with minimal restriction on the range of hand motion, the dataset covers a large global viewpoint space and hand articulation space. To better present the performance of fingertip localization on THU-Bi-Hand, we propose a novel scheme termed bi-stream pose-guided region ensemble network (Bi-Pose-REN). It extracts more representative feature regions around joints in the feature maps under the guidance of the previously estimated pose. The feature regions are integrated hierarchically according to the topology of hand joints to regress a refined hand pose. Bi-Pose-REN and several existing methods are evaluated on THU-Bi-Hand so that benchmarks are provided for further research. Experimental results show that our Bi-Pose-REN has achieved the best performance on THU-Bi-Hand

Exraction and separation of CERIUM(IV)/FLUORINE in fluoride-bearing cerium sulfate solution with fluoride coordination agent

In this paper the extraction and separation of cerium/fluorine in fluoride-bearing cerium sulfate solution with fluoride coordination agent has been studied. The UV-vis spectra suggest that Zr6+ and Al3+ can scrub the F- from [CeF2] 2+ complex. The separation and conductivity studies show that aluminum salt is the most suitable fluoride coordination agent, and an ion-exchange reaction is involved between Ce4+/ [CeF2] 2+ and hydrogen ion

Removal of fluoride from fluoride-bering cerium sulfate solution by hydrous zirconium oxide

In this paper the removal of fluoride from fluoride-bearing cerium sulfate solution by amorphous hydrous zirconium oxide was studied. The FTIR, SEM, EDS and UV-vis spectra show that fluoride is successfully adsorbed on hydrous zirconium oxide, and cerium exists as Ce4+ in solution. The study indicates that it is feasible to separate fluorine and cerium from fluorine-bearing rare earth sulfate solution using hydrous zirconium oxide, and eliminate the influence of fluoride on the extraction separation of rare earths