Ultralow thermal conductivity from transverse acoustic phonon suppression in distorted crystalline -MgAgSb

Li, X.*; Liu, P.-F.*; Zhao, E.*; Zhang, Z.*; Guide, T.*; Le, M. D.*; Avdeev, M.*; Ikeda, Kazutaka*; Otomo, Toshiya*; Kofu, Maiko; et al.

Nature Communications (Internet), 11(1), p.942_1 - 942_9, 2020/02

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14772-5

In high-performance thermoelectric materials, there are two main low thermal conductivity mechanisms: the phonon anharmonic and phonon scattering resulting from the dynamic disorder, which have been successfully revealed by inelastic neutron scattering. Using neutron scattering and ab initio calculations, we report here a mechanism of static local structure distortion combined with phonon-anharmonic-induced ultralow lattice thermal conductivity in -MgAgSb. Since the transverse acoustic phonons are almost fully scattered by the intrinsic distorted rocksalt sublattice in this compound, the heat is mainly transported by the longitudinal acoustic phonons. The ultralow thermal conductivity in -MgAgSb is attributed to its atomic dynamics being altered by the structure distortion, which presents a possible microscopic route to enhance the performance of similar thermoelectric materials.

Comparison of heavy-ion transport simulations; Collision integral with pions and resonances in a box

Ono, Akira*; Xu, J.*; Colonna, M.*; Danielewicz, P.*; Ko, C. M.*; Tsang, M. B.*; Wang, Y,-J.*; Wolter, H.*; Zhang, Y.-X.*; Chen, L.-W.*; et al.

Physical Review C, 100(4), p.044617_1 - 044617_35, 2019/10

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.100.044617

International comparison of heavy-ion induced reaction models were discussed in the international conference "Transport2017" held in April 2017. Owing to their importance for safety assessment of heavy-ion accelerators and dosimetry of astronauts, various models to simulate heavy-ion induced reaction models are developed. This study is intended to clarify the difference among them to pinpoint their problems. In the comparison study, 320 protons and neutrons were packed in a 20-fm-large cube to calculate the number and energies of collisions during the time evolution. The author contributed to this study by running calculation using JQMD (JAERI Quantum Molecular Dynamics). This study showed that time step in the calculation is one of the biggest causes of the discrepancies. For example, the calculation by JQMD comprises 1-fm/c time steps, each of which is composed of transport, scattering and decay phases. Therefore a sequence of scattering, and decay followed by another scattering in 1 fm/c cannot be considered. Moreover, in JQMD particles are labeled by sequential numbers and scattering reactions are simulated by the order. Therefore scattering between low ID numbers, that between high ID numbers and that between the first (low ID) pair is overlooked in JQMD. Above indications obtained in this study must be kept in our mind for future JQMD upgrades.

Inverted-parabolic and weak strain dependencies on the critical current in practical 110 and 100 oriented REBCO tapes

Osamura, Kozo*; Machiya, Shutaro*; Kajiwara, Kentaro*; Kawasaki, Takuro; Harjo, S.; Zhang, Y.*; Fujita, Shinji*; Iijima, Yasuhiro*; Hampshire, D. P.*

AIP Advances (Internet), 9(7), p.075216_1 - 075216_11, 2019/07

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5092248

Passive sweat collection and colorimetric analysis of biomarkers relevant to kidney disorders using a soft microfluidic system

Zhang, Y.*; Guo, H.*; Kim, S. B.*; Wu, Y.*; Ostojich, D.*; Park, S. H.*; Wang, X.*; Weng, Z.*; Li, R.*; Bandodkar, A. J.*; et al.

Lab on a Chip, 19(9), p.1545 - 1555, 2019/05

https://doi.org/10.1039/C9LC00103D

This paper introduces two important advances in recently reported classes of soft, skin-interfaced microfluidic systems for sweat capture and analysis: (1) a simple, broadly applicable means for collection of sweat that bypasses requirements for physical/mental exertion or pharmacological stimulation and (2) a set of enzymatic chemistries and colorimetric readout approaches for determining the concentrations of creatinine and urea in sweat, across physiologically relevant ranges. The results allow for routine, non-pharmacological capture of sweat across patient populations, such as infants and the elderly, that cannot be expected to sweat through exercise, and they create potential opportunities in the use of sweat for kidney disease screening/monitoring.

Flow-electrode CDI removes the uncharged Ca-UO-CO ternary complex from brackish potable groundwater; Complex dissociation, transport, and sorption

Ma, J.*; Zhang, Y.*; Collins, R. N.*; Tsarev, S.*; Aoyagi, Noboru; Kinsela, A. S.*; Jones, A. M.*; Waite, T. D.*

Environmental Science & Technology, 53(5), p.2739 - 2747, 2019/03

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.8b07157

Colossal barocaloric effects in plastic crystals

Li, B.*; Kawakita, Yukinobu; Kawamura, Seiko; Sugahara, Takeshi*; Wang, H.*; Wang, J.*; Chen, Y.*; Kawaguchi, Saori*; Kawaguchi, Shogo*; Ohara, Koji*; et al.

Nature, 567(7749), p.506 - 510, 2019/03

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1042-5

Refrigeration is of vital importance for modern society for example, for food storage and air conditioning- and 25 to 30% of the world's electricity is consumed for refrigeration. Current refrigeration technology mostly involves the conventional vapour compression cycle, but the materials used in this technology are of growing environmental concern because of their large global warming potential. As a promising alternative, refrigeration technologies based on solid-state caloric effects have been attracting attention in recent decades. However, their application is restricted by the limited performance of current caloric materials, owing to small isothermal entropy changes and large driving magnetic fields. Here we report colossal barocaloric effects (CBCEs) (barocaloric effects are cooling effects of pressure-induced phase transitions) in a class of disordered solids called plastic crystals. The obtained entropy changes in a representative plastic crystal, neopentylglycol, are about 389 joules per kilogram per kelvin near room temperature. Pressure-dependent neutron scattering measurements reveal that CBCEs in plastic crystals can be attributed to the combination of extensive molecular orientational disorder, giant compressibility and highly anharmonic lattice dynamics of these materials. Our study establishes the microscopic mechanism of CBCEs in plastic crystals and paves the way to next-generation solid-state refrigeration technologies.

Recent progress on practical materials study by Bragg edge imaging at J-PARC

Oikawa, Kenichi; Su, Y.; Kiyanagi, Ryoji; Kawasaki, Takuro; Shinohara, Takenao; Kai, Tetsuya; Hiroi, Kosuke; Harjo, S.; Parker, J. D.*; Matsumoto, Yoshihiro*; et al.

Physica B; Condensed Matter, 551, p.436 - 442, 2018/12

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physb.2017.12.038

Evidence of a structural quantum critical point in (CaSr)RhSn from a lattice dynamics study

Cheung, Y. W.*; Hu, Y. J.*; Imai, Masaki*; Tanioku, Yasuaki*; Kanagawa, Hibiki*; Murakawa, Joichi*; Moriyama, Kodai*; Zhang, W.*; Lai, K. T.*; Yoshimura, Kazuyoshi*; et al.

Physical Review B, 98(16), p.161103_1 - 161103_5, 2018/10

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.98.161103

A Fluorometric skin-interfaced microfluidic device and smartphone imaging module for quantitative analysis of sweat chemistry

Sekine, Yurina; Kim, S. B.*; Zhang, Y.*; Bandodkar, A. J.*; Xu, S.*; Choi, J.*; Irie, Masahiro*; Ray, T. R.*; Kohli, P.*; Kozai, Naofumi; et al.

Lab on a Chip, 18(15), p.2178 - 2186, 2018/08

http://doi.org/10.1039/c8lc00530c

The rich composition of solutes and metabolites in sweat and its relative ease of collection upon excretion from skin pores make this class of biofluid an attractive candidate for point of care analysis. Here, we present a complementary approach that exploits fluorometric sensing modalities integrated into a soft, skin-interfaced microfluidic system which, when paired with a simple smartphone-based imaging module, allows for in-situ measurement of important biomarkers in sweat. A network array of microchannels and a collection of microreservoirs pre-filled with fluorescent probes that selectively react with target analytes in sweat (e.g. probes), enable quantitative, rapid analysis. Field studies on human subjects demonstrate the ability to measure the concentrations of chloride, sodium and zinc in sweat, with accuracy that matches that of conventional laboratory techniques.

Comparison of heavy-ion transport simulations; Collision integral in a box

Zhang, Y.-X.*; Wang, Y,-J.*; Colonna, M.*; Danielewicz, P.*; Ono, Akira*; Tsang, M. B.*; Wolter, H.*; Xu, J.*; Chen, L.-W.*; Cozma, D.*; et al.

Physical Review C, 97(3), p.034625_1 - 034625_20, 2018/03

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.97.034625

International comparison of heavy-ion induced reaction models were discussed in the international conference "Transport2017" held in April 2017. Owing to their importance for safety assessment of heavy-ion accelerators and dosimetry of astronauts, various models to simulate heavy-ion induced reaction models are developed. This study is intended to clarify the difference among them to pinpoint their problems. In the comparison study, 320 protons and 320 neutrons were packed in a 20-fm-large cube to calculate the number of particle-particle collisions as well as the energies of collisions during the time evolution. In addition to the calculation, their algorithms were compared. The author contributed to this study by running calculation using JQMD (JAERI Quantum Molecular Dynamics). The results were compared with those calculated by the other 15 codes from over the world. Algorithm comparison showed that JQMD calculates collision probabilities from protons at first and collisions by neutrons are simulated later, which might be unreasonable. On the other hand, it was clarified that the calculation by JQMD agrees with those by the others. Despite the fact that some codes deviate from the average by a factor of 2, JQMD exhibited stable performance.