Atomic layer deposition of Al_2O_3 on porous polypropylene hollow fibers for enhanced membrane performances

Porous polypropylene hollow fiber(PPHF) membranes are widely used in liquid purification. However, the hydrophobicity of polypropylene(PP) has limited its applications in water treatment. Herein, we demonstrate that, for the first time, atomic layer deposition(ALD) is an effective strategy to conveniently upgrade the filtration performances of PPHF membranes. The chemical and morphological changes of the deposited PPHF membranes are characterized by spectral, compositional, microscopic characterizations and protein adsorption measurements. Al_2O_3 is distributed along the cross section of the PP hollow fibers, with decreasing concentration from the outer surface to the inner surface. The pore size of the outer surface can be easily turned by altering the ALD cycles. Interestingly, the hollow fibers become much more ductile after deposition as their elongation at break is increased more than six times after deposition with 100 cycles. The deposited membranes show simultaneously enhanced water permeance and retention after deposition with moderate ALD cycle numbers.For instance, after 50 ALD cycles a 17% increase in water permeance and one-fold increase in BSA rejection are observed. Moreover, the PP membranes exhibit improved fouling-resistance after ALD deposition.

Theoretical study of the enhancement of saturable absorption of Kr under x-ray free-electron laser

The generation of hollow atoms will reduce the probability of light absorption and provide a high-quality diffraction image in the experiment. In this paper, we calculated the ionization rate of the Kr atom under x-ray free-electron laser(XFEL) using Hartree–Fock–Slater model and simulated the ionization model of Kr atom using Monte–Carlo method to determine the response of the hollow atom of Kr atom to the XFEL photon energy. Calculating the correlation between the total photoionization cross-section of the ground state of Kr atom and the photon energy, we determined three particular photon energies of 1.75 ke V, 1.90 ke V, and 14.30 ke V. The dynamics simulation under the experimental condition's17.50 ke V photon energy was achieved by implementing the Monte–Carlo method and calibrating the photon flux modeling parameters. Consequently, our calculated data are more consistent with experimental phenomena than previous theoretical studies. The saturable absorption of Kr at 1.75 ke V, 1.90 ke V, 14.30 ke V, and 17.50 ke V energies was further investigated by using the optimized photon flux model theory. We compared the statistics on main ionization paths under those four specific photon energies and calculated the population changes of various Kr hollow atoms with different configurations.The results demonstrate that the population of hollow atoms produced at the critical ionization photon energy is high. Furthermore, the change of population with respect to position is smooth, which shows a significant difference between the generation mode of ions with low and high photon energies. The result is important for the study of medium-and high-Z element hollow atoms, which has substantial implications for the study of hollow atoms with medium and high charge states, as well as for the scaling of photon energy of free electron lasers.

Relaxation of Ne^(1+)1s^(0)2s^(2)2p^(6)np produced by resonant excitation of an ultraintense ultrafast x-ray pulse

The creation and relaxation of double K-hole states 1s^(0)2s^(2)2p^(6)np(n≥3)of Ne^(1+)in the interaction with ultraintense ultrafast x-ray pulses are theoretically investigated.The x-ray photon energies are selected so that x-rays first photoionize1s^(22)s^(22)p^(6) of a neon atom to create a single K-hole state of 1s2s^(22)p^(6) of Ne^(1+),which is further excited resonantly to double K-hole states of ls^(0)2s^(2)2p^(6)np(n≥3).A time-dependent rate equation is used to investigate the creation and relaxation processes of 1s^(0)2s^(2)2p^(6)np,where the primary microscopic atomic processes including photoexcitation,spontaneous radiation,photoionization and Auger decay are considered.The calculated Auger electron energy spectra are compared with recent experimental results,which shows good agreement.The relative intensity of Auger electrons is very sensitive to the photon energy and bandwidth of x-ray pulses,which could be used as a diagnostic tool for x-ray free electron laser and atom experiments.

Neutralization process of Xe^q＋ ion grazing on Al（111） surface

A code has been developed to simulate the neutralization and grazing process of slow highly charged ion Xe^q＋ on Al（111） surface under the classical-over-the-barrier model. The image energy gain of Xeq＋ ions are calculated and compared with experiment data. The simulation results of image energy gain are in good agreement with the experiment data. Meanwhile, in the present work, the reflection coefficient of incident Xe^q＋ on Al（111） surface as a function of the incidence angle, energy and charge state is also studied.