Synthesis Strategies about 2D Materials

In recent years, more and more attentions have been paid to two-dimensional (2D) materials due to the excellent electrical, optical, thermal and mechanical properties. To characterize the layer-dependent changes in properties and to provide pathways for their integration into a multitude of applications, it is essential to explore the reliable syntheses of single- and few-layer 2D materials. Therefore, many strategies, such as micromechanical exfoliation, ultrasonic exfoliation, hydrothermal method, topochemical transformation, chemical vapor deposition method and so on, have been developed to synthesize high-quality and ultrathin nanosheets showing their own merits and demerits in preparing 2D nanomaterials. Herein, an overview of the recent progress in the synthetic techniques is presented for 2D materials, in which we would introduce their experimental scheme, advantages and disadvantages, and applications of these synthetic strategies. Eventually, the potential trends and future directions for synthesizing technology for 2D materials are proposed

Enhancing Photocatalytic Performance through Tuning the Interfacial Process between -Assembled and Pt-Loaded Microspheres

This work reports on a simple two-step approach to rutile TiO2-assembled microspheres loaded by Pt with an aim to tune semiconductor-metal interfacial processes for enhancing the photocatalytic performance. Systematic sample characterizations and structural analysis indicate that Pt loading did not produce any significant influences on the lattice structure of TiO2-assembled microspheres. Instead, upon Pt loading, Schottky barrier was formed in the interfaces between microspheres and Pt nanoparticles, which inhabited efficiently the recombination of photo-generated electron-hole pairs essential for the photocatalytic activities. In addition, TiO2 microspheres also showed a capacity of electrons storage and releasing as represented by a high dielectric constant, which increased the utility rate of photogenerated electrons. All these structural advantages contribute to the excellent photocatalytic activity under ultraviolet light irradiation. The interfacial process between microspheres and Pt nanoparticles was further tuned through adjusting the loading Pt content of metal Pt. As a consequence, the best photocatalytic activity on TiO2 was obtained at 0.85 wt% Pt loading, above or below which photocatalytic activity was apparently decreased

Inherent Redundancy in Spiking Neural Networks

Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are well known as a promising energy-efficient alternative to conventional artificial neural networks. Subject to the preconceived impression that SNNs are sparse firing, the analysis and optimization of inherent redundancy in SNNs have been largely overlooked, thus the potential advantages of spike-based neuromorphic computing in accuracy and energy efficiency are interfered. In this work, we pose and focus on three key questions regarding the inherent redundancy in SNNs. We argue that the redundancy is induced by the spatio-temporal invariance of SNNs, which enhances the efficiency of parameter utilization but also invites lots of noise spikes. Further, we analyze the effect of spatio-temporal invariance on the spatio-temporal dynamics and spike firing of SNNs. Then, motivated by these analyses, we propose an Advance Spatial Attention (ASA) module to harness SNNs' redundancy, which can adaptively optimize their membrane potential distribution by a pair of individual spatial attention sub-modules. In this way, noise spike features are accurately regulated. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can significantly drop the spike firing with better performance than state-of-the-art SNN baselines. Our code is available in \url{https://github.com/BICLab/ASA-SNN}.Comment: Accepted by ICCV202

Replacing fossil fuels wtih solar energy in an SME in UK and Kurdistan, Iraq: Kansas fried chicken case study

Energy management and analysis are more common in large companies since they have the resources and commitment to assign such tasks to employee compared to SMEs. Only a very small proportion of the overall business costs pertains to energy requirements and therefore SMEs pay little attention to energy analysis and management. Fossil fuels, which cause issues related to global warming, can viably be replaced with renewable energy sources such as solar energy. Trends in solar cell development are likely to yield a potential solution to problems generated by an over reliance on fossil fuels. Solar solutions are relatively simple to implement in SMEs than in large corporation and the combined impact small businesses is likely to be much greater. A micro-business has been utilized as a cases study for the purposes of illustration in the UK and Kurdistan-Iraq. Even though Kurdistan-Iraq is abundant in oil and gas, its climatic favour the implementation of solar cells which can replace the existing use of non-renewable fossil fuel. Our comparative study suggests that solar can replaced a reasonable amount of the energy needs even in the UK and a much higher amount in Kurdistan-Iraq. Using 20% efficient solar, can replace 23% and 70% of the energy requirements of the microbusiness in UK and Kurdistan-Iraq respectively