Intercalative and non-intercalative photo-recharge using all-solid-state cells for solar energy conversion and storage

Yoshimoto, Masataka*; Tamura, Kazuhisa; Watanabe, Kenta*; Shimizu, Keisuke*; Horisawa, Yuhei*; Kobayashi, Takeshi*; Tsurita, Hanae*; Suzuki, Kota*; Kanno, Ryoji*; Hirayama, Masaaki*

Sustainable Energy & Fuels (Internet), 8(6), p.1236 - 1244, 2024/03

https://doi.org/10.1039/D3SE01636F

Photo-rechargeable systems, which can efficiently convert and store solar energy into chemical energy within single devices, are essential to harness sunlight effectively. Photo-(de)intercalation plays a pivotal role in the functionality of photorechargeable systems. Nevertheless, the photo-(de)intercalation process has not been conclusively confirmed owing to potential interference from side reactions, such as the decomposition of liquid electrolytes and the elution of electrode materials. In this study, we successfully demonstrated photo-responsive Li-deintercalation using an all-solid-state thin-film battery comprised of epitaxially-grown anatase TiO doped with Nb (a-TiO:Nb) as the cathode. Under light irradiation, Li-deintercalation occurred and was subsequently reversibly intercalated into a-TiO:Nb during discharge.

Annual report for FY2021 on the activities of Naraha Center for Remote Control Technology Development (April 1, 2021 - March 31, 2022)

Akiyama, Yoichi; Shibanuma, So; Yanagisawa, Kenichi*; Yamada, Taichi; Suzuki, Kenta; Yoshida, Moeka; Ono, Takahiro; Kawabata, Kuniaki; Watanabe, Kaho; Morimoto, Kyoichi; et al.

JAEA-Review 2023-015, 60 Pages, 2023/09

JAEA-Review-2023-015.pdf:4.78MB

Naraha Center for Remote Control Technology Development (NARREC) was established in Japan Atomic Energy Agency to promote a decommissioning work of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (Fukushima Daiichi NPS). NARREC consists of a Full-scale Mock-up Test Building and Research Management Building. Various test facilities are installed in these buildings for the decommissioning work of Fukushima Daiichi NPS. These test facilities are intended to be used for various users, such as companies engaged in the decommissioning work, research and development institutions, educational institutions and so on. The number of NARREC facility uses was 84 in FY2021. We participated booth exhibitions and presentations on the decommissioning related events. Moreover, we also contributed to the development of human resources by supporting the 6th Creative Robot Contest for Decommissioning. As a new project, "Narahakko Children's Classroom" was implemented for elementary school students in Naraha Town. This report summarizes the activities of NARREC in FY2021, such as the utilization of facilities and equipment of NARREC, the development of remote-control technologies for supporting the decommissioning work, arrangement of the remote-control machines for emergency response, and training for operators by using the machines.

Formation of high-quality SiO/GaN interfaces with suppressed Ga-oxide interlayer via sputter deposition of SiO

Onishi, Kentaro*; Kobayashi, Takuma*; Mizobata, Hidetoshi*; Nozaki, Mikito*; Yoshigoe, Akitaka; Shimura, Takayoshi*; Watanabe, Heiji*

Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, 62(5), p.050903_1 - 050903_4, 2023/05

https://doi.org/10.35848/1347-4065/acd1ca

While the formation of an GaO interlayer is key to achieving SiO/GaN interfaces with low defect density, it can affect the reliability and stability of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices if the annealing conditions are not properly designed. In the present study, we aimed to minimize the growth of the GaO layer on the basis of the sputter deposition of SiO on GaN. Synchrotron radiation X-ray photoelectron spectrometry measurements confirmed the suppressed growth of the GaO layer compared with a SiO/GaN structure formed by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Negligible GaO growth was also observed when subsequent oxygen annealing up to 600C was performed. A MOS device with negligible capacitance-voltage hysteresis, nearly ideal flat-band voltage, and low leakage current was demonstrated by performing oxygen and forming gas annealing at temperatures of 600C and 400C, respectively.

Development of nondestructive elemental analysis system for Hayabusa2 samples using muonic X-rays

Osawa, Takahito; Nagasawa, Shunsaku*; Ninomiya, Kazuhiko*; Takahashi, Tadayuki*; Nakamura, Tomoki*; Wada, Taiga*; Taniguchi, Akihiro*; Umegaki, Izumi*; Kubo, Kenya*; Terada, Kentaro*; et al.

ACS Earth and Space Chemistry (Internet), 7(4), p.699 - 711, 2023/04

https://doi.org/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.2c00303

The concentrations of carbon and other major elements in asteroid samples provide very important information on the birth of life on the Earth and the solar-system evolution. Elemental analysis using muonic X-rays is one of the best analytical methods to determine the elemental composition of solid materials, and notably, is the only method to determine the concentration of light elements in bulk samples in a non-destructive manner. We developed a new analysis system using muonic X-rays to measure the concentrations of carbon and other major elements in precious and expectedly tiny samples recovered from the asteroid Ryugu by spacecraft Hayabusa2. Here we report the development process of the system in 4 stages and their system configurations, The analysis system is composed of a stainless-steel analysis chamber, an acrylic glove box for manipulating asteroid samples in a clean environment, and Ge semiconductor detectors arranged to surround the analysis chamber. The performance of the analysis system, including the background level, which is crucial for the measurement, was greatly improved from the first stage to the later ones. Our feasibility study showed that the latest model of our muonic X-ray analysis system is capable of determining the carbon concentration in Hayabusa2's sample model with an uncertainty of less than 10 percent in a 6-day measurement.

Free-surface flow simulations with floating objects using lattice Boltzmann method

Watanabe, Seiya*; Kawahara, Jun*; Aoki, Takayuki*; Sugihara, Kenta; Takase, Shinsuke*; Moriguchi, Shuji*; Hashimoto, Hirotada*

Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics, 17(1), p.2211143_1 - 2211143_23, 2023/00

https://doi.org/10.1080/19942060.2023.2211143

In tsunami inundations or slope disasters of heavy rain, a lot of floating debris or driftwood logs are included in the flows. The damage to structures from solid body impacts is more severe than the damage from the water pressure. In order to study free-surface flows that include floating debris, developing a high-accurate simulation code of free-surface flows with high performance for large-scale computations is desired. We propose the single-phase free-surface flow model based on the cumulant lattice Boltzmann method coupled with a particle-based rigid body simulation. The discrete element method calculates the contact interaction between solids. An octree-based AMR (Adaptive Mesh Refinement) method is introduced to improve computational accuracy and time-to-solution. High-resolution grids are assigned near the free surfaces and solid boundaries. We conducted two kinds of tsunami flow experiments in the 15 and 70 m water tanks at Hachinohe Institute of Technology and Kobe University to validate the accuracy of the proposed model. The simulation results have shown good agreement with the experiments for the drifting speed, the number of trapped wood pieces, and the stacked angles.

Magnetic orderings from spin-orbit coupled electrons on kagome lattice

Watanabe, Jin*; Araki, Yasufumi; Kobayashi, Koji*; Ozawa, Akihiro*; Nomura, Kentaro*

Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, 91(8), p.083702_1 - 083702_5, 2022/08

https://doi.org/10.7566/JPSJ.91.083702

We investigate magnetic orderings on kagome lattice numerically from the tight-binding Hamiltonian of electrons, governed by the filling factor and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) of electrons. We find that even a simple kagome lattice model can host both ferromagnetic and noncollinear antiferromagnetic orderings depending on the electron filling, reflecting gap structures in the Dirac and flat bands characteristic to the kagome lattice. Kane-Mele- or Rashba-type SOC tends to stabilize noncollinear orderings, such a magnetic spirals and 120-degree antiferromagnetic orderings, due to the effective Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction from SOC. The obtained phase structure helps qualitative understanding of magnetic orderings in various kagome-layered materials with Weyl or Dirac electrons.

Nodal lines and boundary modes in topological Dirac semimetals with magnetism

Araki, Yasufumi; Watanabe, Jin*; Nomura, Kentaro*

Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, 90(9), p.094702_1 - 094702_9, 2021/09

https://doi.org/10.7566/JPSJ.90.094702

While nodal-line semimetals with magnetism have been theoretically predicted and experimentally observed in a few compounds, idea on the relation between the magnetic order and the electronic structure is still limited. We theoretically explore the electronic structure in bulk and boundary of such a magnetic nodal-line state by introducing magnetism in topological Dirac semimetal (TDSM). TDSMs, such as and ,are characterized by a pair of spin-degenerate Dirac points protected by rotational symmetries of crystals. By introducing local magnetic moments coupled to the electron spins in the lattice model of TDSM, we show that the TDSM can turn into either a Weyl semimetal or a nodal-line semimetal, which is determined by the orbital dependence in the exchange coupling and the direction of magnetization formed by the magnetic moments. In this magnetic nodal-line semimetal state, we find zero modes with drumhead-like band structure at the boundary that are characterized by the topological number of . Those zero modes are numerically demonstrated by introducing magnetic domain walls in the lattice model.

Recent progress of radiation physicochemical process (third part)

Kai, Takeshi; Yokoya, Akinari*; Fujii, Kentaro*; Watanabe, Ritsuko*

Hoshasen Kagaku (Internet), (106), p.21 - 29, 2018/11

It is thought to that the biological effects such as cell death or mutation are induced by complex DNA damage which are formed by several damage sites within a few nm. As the prediction of complex DNA damage at an electron track end, we report our outcomes. These results indicate that DNA damage sites comprising multiple nucleobase lesions with a single strand breaks can be formed by multiple collisions of the electrons within 1 nm. This multiple damage site cannot be processed by base excision repair enzymes. Pre-hydrated electrons can also be produced resulting in an additional base lesion over a few nm from the multi-damage site. This clustered damage site may be finally converted into a double strand break. These DSBs include another base lesion(s) at their termini that escape from the base excision process and which may result in biological effect. Our simulation is useful to reveal phenomena involved in radiation physico-chemistry as well as the DNA damage prediction.

SiO/AlON stacked gate dielectrics for AlGaN/GaN MOS heterojunction field-effect transistors

Watanabe, Kenta*; Terashima, Daiki*; Nozaki, Mikito*; Yamada, Takahiro*; Nakazawa, Satoshi*; Ishida, Masahiro*; Anda, Yoshiharu*; Ueda, Tetsuzo*; Yoshigoe, Akitaka; Hosoi, Takuji*; et al.

Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, 57(6S3), p.06KA03_1 - 06KA03_6, 2018/06

https://doi.org/10.7567/JJAP.57.06KA03

The advantage of SiO/AlON stacked gate dielectrics over SiO, AlON and AlO single dielectric layers was demonstrated. Our systematic research revealed that the optimized stacked structure with 3.3-nm-thick AlON interlayer is beneficial in terms of superior interface quality, reduced gate leakage current and C-V hysteresis for next-generation high frequency and high power AlGaN/GaN MOS-HFETs.

Control of Ga-oxide interlayer growth and Ga diffusion in SiO/GaN stacks for high-quality GaN-based metal-oxide-semiconductor devices with improved gate dielectric reliability

Yamada, Takahiro*; Watanabe, Kenta*; Nozaki, Mikito*; Yamada, Hisashi*; Takahashi, Tokio*; Shimizu, Mitsuaki*; Yoshigoe, Akitaka; Hosoi, Takuji*; Shimura, Takayoshi*; Watanabe, Heiji*

Applied Physics Express, 11(1), p.015701_1 - 015701_4, 2018/01

https://doi.org/10.7567/APEX.11.015701

A simple and feasible method for fabricating high-quality and highly reliable GaN-based metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices was developed on the basis of systematic physical and electrical characterizations. Chemical vapor deposition of SiO films directly onto GaN substrates forming Ga-oxide interlayers was used to fabricate SiO/GaO/GaN stacked structures. Although well-behaved hysteresis-free GaN-MOS capacitors with extremely low interface state density below 10cmeV were obtained by post-deposition annealing, Ga diffusion into overlying SiO layers severely degraded the insulating property and dielectric breakdown characteristics of the MOS devices. However, this problem was found to be solved by employing rapid thermal processing, leading to superior performance of the GaN-MOS devices in terms of interface quality, insulating property and gate dielectric reliability.