Sharif Digital Repository

PbS quantum dots (QDs) have been extensively studied for photovoltaic applications, thanks to their facile and low-cost fabrication processing and interesting physical properties such as size dependent and tunable band gap. However, the performance of PbS QD-based solar cells is highly sensitive to the humidity level in the ambient air, which is a serious obstacle toward its practical applications. Although it has been previously revealed that oxygen doping of the hole transporting layer can mitigate the cause of this issue, the suggested methods to recover the device performance are time-consuming and relatively costly. Here, we report a low-power oxygen plasma treatment as a rapid and... 

Here, we study the influence of guanidinium (GUA) ions on the open-circuit voltage (Voc) in the (GUA)x(MA)1-xPbI3 based perovskite solar cells. We demonstrate that incorporation of GUA forms electronic and ionic accumulation regions at the interface of the electron transporting layer and perovskite absorber layer. Our electrochemical impedance spectroscopy results prove that the formed accumulation region is associated with the enhanced surface charge capacitance and photovoltage. Furthermore, we also demonstrate the influence of the GUA ions on the enhanced interfacial and bulk electronic properties due to more efficient charge transfer between the bulk and interfaces and the reduced... 

In this paper, fundamental concepts of ultrasonics and characteristics of distinctive microstructures have been used to simply explain the effect of microstructure on the attenuation mechanism of ultrasonic waves in carbon steels. In addition, it has been shown that application of the second medium hardness instead of the bulk hardness is more appropriate to correlate the sound velocity and the microstructure  

The importance of the model to predict the aggregation behavior of asphaltene molecules at the molecular level was well established in different studies. Elucidation of the relationship between the interaction energy and the structural characteristics of asphaltene molecules to their aggregation behavior still needs further investigation. For this purpose, we combined the quantum mechanics and molecular dynamics approaches and analyzed the interaction energy of asphaltene to find out the effect of structural features on the aggregation behavior. The interaction energy of asphaltene is used in this study to evaluate the potential of aggregation. We found that asphaltene molecules with smaller... 

Herein, a new dopant-free organic material, PV2000, as a stable hole transporting layer (HTL) for the fabrication of stable and efficient perovskite solar cells (PSCs) is introduced. For this purpose, planar PSCs using a triple-A cation perovskite composition are fabricated and the commonly used 2,2′,7,7′-tetrakis[N,N-di(4-methoxyphenyl)amino]-9,9′-spirobifluorene (spiro-OMeTAD) HTL is replaced by dopant-free PV2000 polymer. The characterization results disclose that the PV2000 has a great thermal stability, good hole mobility, and suitable band alignment that matches well with the valence band of triple-A cation perovskite. After proper optimization of PV2000 film thickness, a planar PSC... 

An efficient gradient-based method to solve the volume constrained topology optimization problems is presented. Each iterate of this algorithm is obtained by the projection of a Barzilai-Borwein step onto the feasible set con- sisting of box and one linear constraints (volume constraint). To ensure the global convergence, an adaptive nonmonotone line search is performed along the direction that is given by the current and projection point. The adaptive cyclic reuse of the Barzilai-Borwein step is applied as the initial stepsize. The minimum memory requirement, the guaranteed convergence property, and al- most only one function and gradient evaluations per iteration make this new method very... 

A simple and appropriate procedure for the synthesis of quinazoline-2,4(1H,3H)-dione derivatives from isocyanides, aniline and isocyanate via the Cu-catalyzed intramolecular C-H activation reaction is reported. The advantages of this method are one-pot conditions, accessible starting materials-catalyst, high yield of products, and short reaction times. The structures are confirmed spectroscopically (1H-and13C-NMR, IR and EI-MS) and by elemental analyses. © 2020 Bentham Science Publishers  

The linear behavior of fission chamber (FC) neutron detectors in Isfahan miniature neutron source reactor (MNSR) was investigated experimentally. FC neutron detectors are installed near the reactor core to measure the produced neutron flux in the core. The linearity of the response of these detectors is important because the measured neutron flux by them is one of the important methods in determining and controlling the reactor power and therefore affects the safety of the reactor. For this purpose, the measured neutron fluxes by these detectors at different reactor powers were compared with the measured neutron flux at the output of the external beam tubes by different methods. In this... 

This paper resolve the salinity-dependent interactions of polar components of crude oil at calcite-brine interface in atomic resolution. Molecular dynamics simulations carried out on the present study showed that ordered water monolayers develop immediate to a calcite substrate in contact with a saline solution. Carboxylic compounds, herein represented by benzoic acid (BA), penetrate into those hydration layers and directly linking to the calcite surface. Through a mechanism termed screening effect, development of hydrogen bonding between –COOH functional groups of BA and carbonate groups is inhibited by formation of a positively-charged Na+ layer over CaCO3 surface. Contrary to the common... 

A one-pot synthesis of functionalized benzo thiazine derivatives via a Cu-catalyzed, multicomponent reaction of isocyanides, aniline, and heterocumulenes in acetonitrile at room temperature was developed. Transition metal-catalyzed activation of C-H bonds under mild copper-catalytic reaction conditions, using simple and available starting materials, also obtaining a pure product with high yield without applying column chromatography are the major advantages of the applied method among the other ones used for this purpose. The structures are confirmed spectroscopically (1H- and 13C-NMR, IR, and EI-MS) and through elemental analyses. © 2019 The Chemical Society Located in Taipei & Wiley-VCH... 

Colloidal quantum dot solar cells have recently attracted significant attention due to their low-processing cost and surging photovoltaic performance. In this paper, a novel, reproducible, and simple solution-based process based on supercritical fluid toluene is presented for in situ growth and deposition PbS nanocrystals with oleic-acid passivation. A lead precursor containing sulfur was mixed with oleic acid in toluene and processed in a supercritical fluid condition at different temperatures of 140, 270 and 330 °C for 20 min. The quantum dots were deposited on a fluorine-doped tin oxide glass substrate inside the supercritical reactor. Transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction,... 

Continuous fixed-bed column studies were carried out by using Amberlite CG-400 anion exchange resin for the recovery of uranium from aqueous solutions (synthetic solutions and uranium conversion facility (UCF) liquid waste). Effects of operating parameters such as flow rate and bed height were studied. The breakthrough capacity decreases with increasing flow rate, but this dependence was not significant with a long column. The maximum breakthrough capacity of uranium ions were achieved by CG-400 resin at a flow rate of 0.2 mL min-1 and bed height 9.1 cm (4 g resin). The elution behavior of uranium from CG-400 resin by various eluents have been investigated and the results show that 0.5 mol... 

A new nonlinear adaptive impedance-based trilateral controller is proposed to ensure the absolute stability of multi-degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) dual-user haptic teleoperation systems subjected to communication delays. Using this strategy, reference impedance models are realized for the trilateral teleoperation system represented by a three-port network to facilitate cooperation of two human operators in order to perform a remote physical task. For this purpose, an impedance model defines the desired haptic interaction between the two human operators, while another impedance model specifies the desired behavior of the slave robot in terms of tracking the mater robots' trajectories during... 

In this paper, an approach to physical collaboration between a patient and a therapist is proposed using a bilateral impedance control strategy developed for delayed tele-robotic systems. The patient performs a tele-rehabilitation task in a resistive virtual environment with the help of online assistive forces from the therapist being provided through teleoperation. Using this strategy, the patient's involuntary hand tremors can be filtered out and the effort of severely impaired patients can be amplified in order to facilitate their early engagement in physical tasks. The response of the first desired impedance model is tracked by the master robot (interacting with the patient), and the... 

A nonlinear model reference adaptive bilateral impedance controller is proposed that can accommodate various cooperative tele-rehabilitation modes for patient–therapist interaction using a multi-DOF tele-robotic system. In this controller, two reference impedance models are implemented for the master and slave robots using new model reference adaptive control laws for the nonlinear bilateral teleoperation system. “Hand-over-hand” and “adjustable-flexibility” are two modes of patient–therapist cooperation that are realized using the proposed strategy. The Lyapunov-based stability proof guarantees the patient's and the therapist's safety during the cooperation and interaction with robots, even... 

A non-linear robust adaptive bilateral impedance controller is proposed to provide the absolute stability of multi-DOF teleoperation systems with communication delays, in addition to the force and position tracking performance. The proposed controller realises two desired (or reference) impedance models for the master and slave robots using a new non-linear robust version of the model reference adaptive control scheme. Using the absolute stability criterion, the robustness condition of the teleoperation system against communication delays is obtained, resulting in suitable adjustments of parameter values in the desired impedance models. In addition, using the Lyapunov stability theorem, the... 

A bilateral impedance controller is presented to enable robot-assisted surgery of a beating heart. For this purpose, two desired impedance models are designed and realized for the master and slave robots interacting with the operator (surgeon) and the environment (heart tissue), respectively. The impedance models are designed such that (a) the slave robot complies with the oscillatory motion of the beating heart and (b) the surgeon perceives the non-oscillatory portion of the slave/heart contact force at the master robot implying arrested-heart surgery. These performance goals are achieved via appropriate adjustment of the impedance model parameters without any measurement or estimation of... 

A novel impedance-controlled teleoperation system is developed for robot-assisted tele-echography of moving organs such as heart, chest and breast during their natural motions (beating and/or breathing). The procedure of devising the two impedance models for the master and slave robots is developed such that (a) the slave robot holding the ultrasound (US) probe follows the master trajectory but complies with the oscillatory interaction force of the moving organ, and (b) the sonographer receives feedback from the non-oscillatory portion of the slave-organ interaction force via the master robot similar to the haptic feedback received in echography of a stationary organ. These goals are...