Toward Sustainable,Economic,and Tailored Production of Cellulose Nanomaterials

This paper introduces a concentrated di-carboxylic acid(DCA) hydrolysis process for the integrated production of thermally stable and carboxylated cellulose nanocrystals(CNCs) and cellulose nanofibrils(CNFs). The DCA hydrolysis process addressed several issues associated with mineral acid hydrolysis for CNC production, such as cellulose loss and acid recovery. The surface and morphological properties of the cellulose nanomaterials resulting from the DCA hydrolysis process can be tailored simply by controlling the severity of DCA hydrolysis. To further reduce cost, a lowtemperature(≤80℃) hydrotropic chemical process using p-toluenesulfonic acid(p-Ts OH) was also introduced to rapidly fractionate raw lignocelluloses for the production of lignin containing cellulose nanofibrils(LCNFs) and lignin nanoparticles(LNPs). The LCNF surface hydrophobicity and morphology can be tailored by controlling the fractionation severity, i.e., the extent of delignification. The lignin also improved the thermal stability of LCNFs. LNPs can be easily separated by diluting the spent acid liquor to below the p-Ts OH minimal hydrotropic concentration of approximately 10%. p-Ts OH can also be easily recovered by re-concentrating the diluted spent liquor after lignin precipitation. We believe that these two novel processes presented here have the potential to achieve true sustainable, economic, and tailored production of cellulose nanomaterials, suitable for a variety of applications.

Constitutive Model of Friction Stir Weld with Consideration of its Inhomogeneous Mechanical Properties

In practical engineering, finite element（FE） modeling for weld seam is commonly simplified by neglecting its inhomogeneous mechanical properties. This will cause a significant loss in accuracy of FE forming analysis, in particular, for friction stir welded（FSW） blanks due to the large width and good formability of its weld seam. The inhomogeneous mechanical properties across weld seam need to be well characterized for an accurate FE analysis. Based on a similar AA5182 FSW blank, the metallographic observation and micro-Vickers hardness analysis upon the weld cross-section are performed to identify the interfaces of different sub-zones, i.e., heat affected zone（HAZ）, thermal-mechanically affected zone（TMAZ） and weld nugget（WN）. Based on the rule of mixture and hardness distribution, a constitutive model is established for each sub-zone to characterize the inhomogeneous mechanical properties across the weld seam. Uniaxial tensile tests of the AA5182 FSW blank are performed with the aid of digital image correlation（DIC） techniques. Experimental local stress-strain curves are obtained for different weld sub-zones. The experimental results show good agreement with those derived from the constitutive models, which demonstrates the feasibility and accuracy of these models. The proposed research gives an accurate characterization of inhomogeneous mechanical properties across the weld seam produced by FSW, which provides solutions for improving the FE simulation accuracy of FSW sheet forming.

Effect of Chemical Doping on the Electronic Transport Properties of Tailoring Graphene Nanoribbons

The electronic transport properties of a molecular junction based on doping tailoring armchair-type graphene nanoribbons（AGNRs）with different widths are investigated by applying the non-equilibrium Green＇s function formalism combined with first-principles density functional theory.The calculated results show that the width and doping play significant roles in the electronic transport properties of the molecular junction.A higher current can be obtained for the molecular junctions with the tailoring AGNRs with W=11.Furthermore,the current of boron-doped tailoring AGNRs with widths W=7 is nearly four times larger than that of the undoped one,which can be potentially useful for the design of high performance electronic devices.

Tailored properties of a novelly-designed press-hardened 22MnMoB steel

A novel 22MnMoB hot stamping steel was designed. The continuous cooling transformation （CCT） measurement of the 22MnMoB steel showed that the ferrite-bainite microstructure could be obtained at cooling rates lower than 25 ℃/s, and the complete martensite structure required the cooling rate higher than 30 ℃/s. The experiments with non-uniform die temperatures were carried out to obtain tailored properties. The results showed that strength of 1 411 MPa and elon- gation of 6% could be obtained in the hard zone, and strength of 916 MPa and elongation of 9% could be obtained in the soft zone, which can be realized by controlling the die temperature at 400 ℃. The transition zone was found smooth and could be beneficial to reduce the stress concen tration and therefore improve the performance of components.

Characterization of geometry and depleting carrier dependence of active silicon waveguide in tailoring optical properties

Changes in refractive index and the corresponding changes in the characteristics of an optical waveguide in enabling propagation of light are the basis for many modern silicon photonic devices. Optical properties of these active nanoscale waveguides are sensitive to the little changes in geometry, external injection/biasing, and doping profiles, and can be crucial in design and manufacturing processes. This paper brings the active silicon waveguide for complete characterization of various distinctive guiding parameters, including perturbation in real and imaginary refractive index, mode loss, group velocity dispersion, and bending loss, which can be instrumental in developing optimal design specifications for various application-centric active silicon waveguides.