Uniform design for the optimization of Al2O3 nanofilms produced by electrophoretic deposition

Surface modification by means of nanostructures is of interest to enhance boiling heat transfer in various applications including the organic Rankine cycle (ORC). With the goal of obtaining rough and dense aluminum oxide (Al2O3) nanofilms, the optimal combination of process parameters for electrophoretic deposition (EPD) based on the uniform design (UD) method is explored in this paper. The detailed procedures for the EPD process and UD method are presented. Four main influencing conditions controlling the EPD process were identified as nanofluid concentration, deposition time, applied voltage and suspension pH. A series of tests were carried out based on the UD experimental design. A regression model and statistical analysis were applied to the results. Sensitivity analyses of the effect of the four main parameters on the roughness and deposited mass of Al2O3 films were also carried out. The results showed that Al2O3 nanofilms were deposited compactly and uniformly on the substrate. Within the range of the experiments, the preferred combination of process parameters was determined to be nanofluid concentration of 2 wt.%, deposition time of 15 min, applied voltage of 23 V and suspension pH of 3, yielding roughness and deposited mass of 520.9 nm and 161.6 × 10− 4 g/cm2, respectively. A verification experiment was carried out at these conditions and gave values of roughness and deposited mass within 8% error of the expected ones as determined from the UD approach. It is concluded that uniform design is useful for the optimization of electrophoretic deposition requiring only 7 tests compared to 49 using the orthogonal design method

Discovery of a Topological Charge Density Wave

Charge density waves (CDWs) appear in numerous condensed matter platforms, ranging from high-Tc superconductors to quantum Hall systems. Despite such ubiquity, there has been a lack of direct experimental study on boundary states that can uniquely stem from the charge order. Here, using scanning tunneling microscopy, we directly visualize the bulk and boundary phenomenology of CDW in a topological material, Ta2Se8I. Below the transition temperature (TCDW = 260 K), tunneling spectra on an atomically resolved lattice reveal a large insulating gap in the bulk and on the surface, exceeding 500 meV, surpassing predictions from standard weakly-coupled mean-field theory. Spectroscopic imaging confirms the presence of CDW, with LDOS maxima at the conduction band corresponding to the LDOS minima at the valence band, thus revealing a {\pi} phase difference in the respective CDW order. Concomitantly, at a monolayer step edge, we detect an in-gap boundary mode with modulations along the edge that match the CDW wavevector along the edge. Intriguingly, the phase of the edge state modulation shifts by {\pi} within the charge order gap, connecting the fully gapped bulk (and surface) conduction and valence bands via a smooth energy-phase relation. This bears similarity to the topological spectral flow of edge modes, where the boundary modes bridge the gapped bulk modes in energy and momentum magnitude but in Ta2Se8I, the connectivity distinctly occurs in energy and momentum phase. Notably, our temperature-dependent measurements indicate a vanishing of the insulating gap and the in-gap edge state above TCDW, suggesting their direct relation to CDW. The theoretical analysis also indicates that the observed boundary mode is topological and linked to CDW.Comment: Nature Physics (2024); in pres

Undersampling artifact reduction for free-breathing 3D stack-of-radial MRI based on a deep adversarial learning network.

PurposeStack-of-radial MRI allows free-breathing abdominal scans, however, it requires relatively long acquisition time. Undersampling reduces scan time but can cause streaking artifacts and degrade image quality. This study developed deep learning networks with adversarial loss and evaluated the performance of reducing streaking artifacts and preserving perceptual image sharpness.MethodsA 3D generative adversarial network (GAN) was developed for reducing streaking artifacts in stack-of-radial abdominal scans. Training and validation datasets were self-gated to 5 respiratory states to reduce motion artifacts and to effectively augment the data. The network used a combination of three loss functions to constrain the anatomy and preserve image quality: adversarial loss, mean-squared-error loss and structural similarity index loss. The performance of the network was investigated for 3-5 times undersampled data from 2 institutions. The performance of the GAN for 5 times accelerated images was compared with a 3D U-Net and evaluated using quantitative NMSE, SSIM and region of interest (ROI) measurements as well as qualitative scores of radiologists.ResultsThe 3D GAN showed similar NMSE (0.0657 vs. 0.0559, p = 0.5217) and significantly higher SSIM (0.841 vs. 0.798, p < 0.0001) compared to U-Net. ROI analysis showed GAN removed streaks in both the background air and the tissue and was not significantly different from the reference mean and variations. Radiologists' scores showed GAN had a significant improvement of 1.6 point (p = 0.004) on a 4-point scale in streaking score while no significant difference in sharpness score compared to the input.Conclusion3D GAN removes streaking artifacts and preserves perceptual image details

Electronic nature of chiral charge order in the kagome superconductor CsV₃Sb₅

Kagome superconductors with TC up to 7 K have been discovered for over 40 y. Recently, unconventional chiral charge order has been reported in kagome superconductor KV3Sb5, with an ordering temperature of one order of magnitude higher than the TC. However, the chirality of the charge order has not been reported in the cousin kagome superconductor CsV3Sb5, and the electronic nature of the chirality remains elusive. In this paper, we report the observation of electronic chiral charge order in CsV3Sb5 via scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). We observe a 2 × 2 charge modulation and a 1 × 4 superlattice in both topographic data and tunneling spectroscopy. 2 × 2 charge modulation is highly anticipated as a charge order by fundamental kagome lattice models at van Hove filling, and is shown to exhibit intrinsic chirality. We find that the 1 × 4 superlattices form various small domain walls, and can be a surface effect as supported by our first-principles calculations. Cru- cially, we find that the amplitude of the energy gap opened by the charge order exhibits real-space modulations, and features 2 × 2 wave vectors with chirality, highlighting the electronic nature of the chiral charge order. STM study at 0.4 K reveals a superconducting energy gap with a gap size 2 = 0.85 meV , which estimates a moderate superconductivity coupling strength with 2/kBTC = 3.9. When further applying a c-axis magnetic field, vortex core bound states are observed within this gap, indicative of clean-limit superconductivity.Nanyang Technological UniversityNational Research Foundation (NRF)Accepted versionThe work at Beijing Institute of Technology was sup- ported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2020YFA0308800), the Natural Science Foun- dation of China (Grants No. 92065109, No. 11734003, and No. 12061131002), the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. Z190006), and the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) Research Fund Program for Young Scholars (Grant No. 3180012222011). Z.W. thanks the Analysis & Testing Center at BIT for assistance in facility support. Experimental and theoretical work at Princeton University was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation [Grants No. GBMF4547 and No. GBMF9461 (M.Z.H.)]. Y.S. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. U2032204), and the K. C. Wong Education Foundation (Grant No. GJTD-2018-01). G.C. would like to acknowledge the support of the National Research Foundation, Singapore under its NRF Fellowship Award No. NRF-NRFF13-2021- 0010 and the Nanyang Assistant Professorship grant from Nanyang Technological University. P.D. is supported the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Basic Energy Sciences (BES), under Contract No. DE-SC0012311. S.S. and Y.W. were supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants No. 11822404 and No. 11774127

Evidence of a room-temperature quantum spin Hall edge state in a higher-order topological insulator

Room-temperature realization of macroscopic quantum phases is one of the major pursuits in fundamental physics1,2. The quantum spin Hall phase3-6 is a topological quantum phase that features a two-dimensional insulating bulk and a helical edge state. Here we use vector magnetic field and variable temperature based scanning tunnelling microscopy to provide micro-spectroscopic evidence for a room-temperature quantum spin Hall edge state on the surface of the higher-order topological insulator Bi4Br4. We find that the atomically resolved lattice exhibits a large insulating gap of over 200 meV, and an atomically sharp monolayer step edge hosts an in-gap gapless state, suggesting topological bulk-boundary correspondence. An external magnetic field can gap the edge state, consistent with the time-reversal symmetry protection inherent in the underlying band topology. We further identify the geometrical hybridization of such edge states, which not only supports the Z2 topology of the quantum spin Hall state but also visualizes the building blocks of the higher-order topological insulator phase. Our results further encourage the exploration of high-temperature transport quantization of the putative topological phase reported here