Largescale Preparation of Organic-Dispersible Lanthanide Fluorides Nanocrystals via Colloid-Extraction Route

Organic-dispersible lanthanide fluorides nanocrystals were synthesized at a large scale using colloid-extraction method, in the presence of dialkyl-dithiophosphinic acid (DDPA) as the extraction agent. The products were characterized by means of X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Fourier transformation infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. It was found that the synthesized lanthanide fluorides nanoparticles had high purity and crystallinity, and could be well dispersed in organic solvents such as chloroform, toluene etc., which could be closely related to the surface-capping of the nanocrystals by the DDPA molecules. Moreover, the nanocrystals before and after extraction by DDPA showed few differences in the microscopic morphologies. It was implied that DDPA as the extraction agent had good protection to the nanocrystals as well, which could be essential to the commercial application of the titled rare earth nanocrystals as novel multifunctional additives in the fields of lubrication.

Recent Progress in Emerging Two‑Dimensional Transition Metal Carbides

As a new member in two-dimensional materials family,transition metal carbides(TMCs)have many excellent properties,such as chemical stability,in-plane anisotropy,high conductivity and flexibility,and remarkable energy conversation efficiency,which predispose them for promising applications as transparent electrode,flexible electronics,broadband photodetectors and battery electrodes.However,up to now,their device applications are in the early stage,especially because their controllable synthesis is still a great challenge.This review systematically summarized the state-of-the-art research in this rapidly developing field with particular focus on structure,property,synthesis and applicability of TMCs.Finally,the current challenges and future perspectives are outlined for the application of 2D TMCs.

Statistical Guidance on Seasonal Forecast of Korean Dust Days over South Korea in the Springtime

This study aimed to develop the seasonal forecast models of Korean dust days over South Korea in the springtime. Forecast mode was a ternary forecast （below normal, normal, above normal） which was classified based on the mean and the standard deviation of Korean dust days for a period of 30 years （1981-2010）. In this study, we used three kinds of monthly data： the Korean dust days observed in South Korea, the National Center for Environmental Prediction in National Center for Atmospheric Research （NCEP/NCAR） reanalysis data for meteorological factors over source regions of Asian dust, and the large-scale climate indices offered from the Climate Diagnostic Center and Climate Prediction Center in NOAA. Forecast guidance consisted of two components; ordinal logistic regression model to generate trinomial distributions, and conversion algorithm to generate ternary forecast by two thresholds. Forecast guidance was proposed for each month separately and its predictability was evaluated based on skill scores.

Nonmonotone adaptive trust region method based on simple conic model for unconstrained optimization

We propose a nonmonotone adaptive trust region method based on simple conic model for unconstrained optimization. Unlike traditional trust region methods, the subproblem in our method is a simple conic model, where the Hessian of the objective function is approximated by a scalar matrix. The trust region radius is adjusted with a new self-adaptive adjustment strategy which makes use of the information of the previous iteration and current iteration. The new method needs less memory and computational efforts. The global convergence and Q-superlinear convergence of the algorithm are established under the mild conditions. Numerical results on a series of standard test problems are reported to show that the new method is effective and attractive for large scale unconstrained optimization problems.