Scalability of the cooling die unit operation is critical to lowering the manufacturing cost of high moisture meat analogs(HMMA), but it is unclear what scale-up criteria are important. An experiment consisting of two cooling die cross-section geometries (tall and narrow or short and wide), two production rates (2.7 or 4.5 kg/hr) and 4 cooling media inlet temperatures (36, 48, 60, and 72 °C) was employed to study their effect on product texture, anisotropy, and extrusion system parameters. Comprehensive temperature measurements were made along the dies to observe the product temperature gradient and to quantify the energy balance associated with cooling. It was found that textural hardness had a positive relationship with axial temperature gradient (p < 0.05), while anisotropy had a negative and positive relationship with axial temperature gradient and die height, respectively (p < 0.05). Extruder motor torque and die inlet pressure were found to be functions of the cooling media inlet temperature and apparent Newtonian shear rate applied to the material in the die (p < 0.05). The energy balance indicated that enhanced anisotropy is associated with more exothermic in-situ phase changes, which are controlled by the product formulation and applied die conditions. There are likely 3 scalable variables most relevant to controlling the HMMA product quality: 2 critical phase transition temperatures, and the axial product temperature gradient. Therefore, scaling up HMMA cooling dies will require balancing the heat transfer rate away from the product such that an optimal product temperature profile can be maintained at scale.

Cavitation generated during injector jetting can significantly affect fuel atomization. Laser-induced cavitation bubble is an important phenomenon in laser induced plasma ignition technology. Limited by the difficulties in experimental measurements, numerical simulations have become an important tool in the study of laser-induced cavitation bubble, but most previous numerical models used to study the dynamics of laser-induced cavitation bubble usually ignore the effect of chemical reactions. In this study, the finite volume method is used to solve the compressible two-dimensional reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equation by considering the heat and mass transfer as well as the chemical reactions within the cavitation bubble. The effects of overall reaction and elementary reactions on the cavitation bubble are evaluated, respectively. It is found that by additionally considering chemical reactions within the numerical model, lower maximum temperatures and higher maximum pressures are predicted within the bubble. And the generated non-condensable gases produced by the chemical reactions enhance the subsequent expansion process of the cavitation bubble. Besides, the effect of the one-sided wall boundary condition on cavitation bubble is compared with the infinite boundary condition. Influenced by the wall boundary, the cavitation bubble forms a localized high pressure on the side of the bubble away from the wall during the collapse process, which causes the bubble to be compressed into a \"crescent\" shape. The maximum pressure and temperature inside the bubble are lower due to localized losses caused by the wall.

Nutrient pollutants serve as indicative pollutants in urban stormwater runoff, and usually coexist and transport in particulate and dissolved phase in runoff, which is complex and crucial for effective pollution control. In this study, nitrogen and phosphorus runoff samples were collected during various natural rainfall events to explore its transport process over urban road surface during rainfall runoff. The results showed that nitrogen mainly exists in the dissolved phase (mean proportion: 62.04 %), while phosphorus mainly exists in the particulate phase (mean proportion: 65.58 %). More nitrogen and phosphorus are present and transported in dissolved phase in initial rainfall runoff over urban roads. Nutrient concentration changes during rainfall events were influenced by factors such as rainfall intensity and surface runoff, resulting in multiple peaks. Transport rate peak and concentration peak did not coincide. The proportion of dissolved total nitrogen in the runoff process ranged mainly between 40 % and 80 %, and the proportion of dissolved ammonia was distributed between 60 % and 100 %. The proportion of dissolved phosphorus was more evenly distributed across each proportion interval. Influenced by the differences in phase proportions, first flush processes of nitrogen and phosphorus are not the same. Urban stormwater management measures should prioritize both the initial concentration peaks and the peaks in nutrient transport rates during rainfall. This approach is essential for enhancing the efficiency of stormwater pollutant collection and treatment.

To simulate a topological neural network handling weak signals via stochastic resonance (SR), it is necessary to introduce an inherent nonlinearity into nanoscale devices. We use the self-assembly method to successfully fabricate a phase-change quantum-dot string (PCQDS) crossing Pd/Nb:AlNO/AlNO/Nb:AlNO/Pd multilayer. The inherent nonlinearity of phase change couples with electron tunneling so that PCQDS responds to a long signal sequence in a modulated output style, in which the pulse pattern evolves to that enveloped by two sets of periodic wave characterized by neural action potential. We establish an SR mode consisting of several two-state systems in which dissipative tunneling is coupled to environment. Size oscillations owing to NbO QDs adaptively adjust barriers and wells, such that tunneling can be periodically modulated by either asymmetric energy or local temperature. When the external periodic signals are applied, the system first follows the forcing frequency. Subsequently, certain PCQDs oscillate independently and consecutively to produce complicated frequency and amplitude modulations.

Manipulating water evaporation dynamics is a prerequisite in various modern-day applications like DNA stretching, rapid disease diagnostics, and inkjet printing. One method to affect the evaporation dynamics of droplets is to externally apply electric fields. However, surfaces that bear an intrinsic surface charge have not yet been investigated with respect to their evaporation behavior. In this study, we investigate water droplet evaporation on lithium niobate (LN), a ferroelectric material with a very high spontaneous polarization of 0.7 C/m2. Our results show that a droplet deposited on a LN surface evaporates in three stages: (i) constant contact radius (ii) mixed phase (iii) stick-slip, which is likely originating from the intrinsic surface charge. The influences of the polarization direction of the LN surface as well as the relative humidity of the environment on various evaporation characteristics were studied. The results suggest that the specific adsorption layers forming on charged surfaces, e.g. from the humidity of the surrounding air, play a key role in the evaporation process. Furthermore, compared to other materials with similar contact angles, LN demonstrated a significantly large evaporation rate. This property might also be attributed to the intrinsic surface charge and could be exploited in heat transfer applications.

Slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPSs) have great potential to replace traditional antifouling coatings due to their efficient, green, and broad-spectrum antifouling performance. However, the lubricant dissipation problem of SLIPS severely restricts its further development and application, and the robust SLIPS continues to be extremely challenging. Here, a composite phase-change lubricant layer consisting of paraffin, silicone oil, and MXene is designed to readily construct a stable and NIR-responsive self-healing phase-change solid slippery surface (PCSSS). Collective results showed that PCSSS could rapidly achieve phase-change transformation and complete self-healing under NIR irradiation and keep stable after high-speed water flushing, centrifugation, and ultrasonic treatment. The antifouling performance of PCSSS evaluated by protein, bacteria, and algae antiadhesion tests demonstrated the adhesion inhibition rate was as high as 99.99%. Moreover, the EIS and potentiodynamic polarization experiments indicated that PCSSS had stable and exceptional corrosion resistance (|Z|0.01Hz = 3.87 × 108 Ω·cm2) and could effectively inhibit microbiologically influenced corrosion. The 90 day actual marine test reveals that PCSSS has remarkable antifouling performance. Therefore, PCSSS presents a novel, facile, and effective strategy to construct a slippery surface with the prospect of facilitating its application in marine antifouling and corrosion protection.

High-resolution thermometry is critical for probing nanoscale energy transport. Here, we demonstrate how high-resolution thermometry can be accomplished using vanadium oxide (VOx), which features a sizable temperature-dependence of its resistance at room temperature and an even stronger dependence at its metal-insulator-transition (MIT) temperature. We microfabricate VOx nanofilm-based electrical resistance thermometers that undergo a metal-insulator-transition at ∼337 K and systematically quantify their temperature-dependent resistance, noise characteristics, and temperature resolution. We show that VOx sensors can achieve, in a bandwidth of ∼16 mHz, a temperature resolution of ∼5 μK at room temperature (∼300 K) and a temperature resolution of ∼1 μK at the MIT (∼337 K) when the amplitude of temperature perturbations is in the microkelvin range, which, in contrast to larger perturbations, is found to avoid hysteric resistance responses. These results demonstrate that VOx-based thermometers offer a ∼10-50-fold improvement in resolution over widely used Pt-based thermometers.

Ultra-thin vapor chambers (UTVCs) are widely used to cool high-power electronics due to their excellent thermal conductivity. In this study, a UTVC of 82 mm × 58 mm × 0.39 mm with composite wick was prepared. The composite wick is composed of two layers of copper mesh and multiple spiral-woven meshes (SWMs), and the composite wick was applied in UTVC to improve liquid replenishment performance and temperature uniformity. Furthermore, the thermal performance of UTVCs with different support column diameters, filling ratios (FRs), and SWM structures was experimentally studied. The results found that the equivalent thermal conductivity (ETC) decreases as the diameter of the support column increases; the UTVC with 0.5 mm support column diameter has the highest ETC, at 3473 W/(m·K). Then, the effect of FR on the heat transfer performance of UTVCs with SWM numbers of 0, 1, 2, and 3 (0 SWMs, 1 SWM, 2 SWMs, 3 SWMs) is consistent, the 30% FR UTVC with 3 SWMs having the highest ETC, at 3837 W/(m·K). Finally, the increased number of SWMs can significantly improve the ultimate power of the UTVCs, the UTVC with 3 SWMs having the highest ultimate power, at 26 W. The above experimental studies indicate that the designed and manufactured UTVCs have great potential advantages in thermal dissipation for electronics.

Thermal bubble-driven micro-pumps are an upcoming micro-actuator technology that can be directly integrated into micro/mesofluidic channels, have no moving parts, and leverage existing mass production fabrication approaches. These micro-pumps consist of a high-power micro-resistor that boils fluid in microseconds to create a high-pressure vapor bubble which performs mechanical work. As such, these micro-pumps hold great promise for micro/mesofluidic systems such as lab-on-a-chip technologies. However, to date, no current work has studied the interaction of these micro-pumps with biofluids such as blood and protein-rich fluids. In this study, the effects of organic fouling due to egg albumin and bovine whole blood are characterized using stroboscopic high-speed imaging and a custom deep learning neural network based on transfer learning of RESNET-18. It was found that the growth of a fouling film inhibited vapor bubble formation. A new metric to quantify the extent of fouling was proposed using the decrease in vapor bubble area as a function of the number of micro-pump firing events. Fouling due to egg albumin and bovine whole blood was found to significantly degrade pump performance as well as the lifetime of thermal bubble-driven micro-pumps to less than 104 firings, which may necessitate the use of protective thin film coatings to prevent the buildup of a fouling layer.

Bulk PbSnSe has a two-phase region, or miscibility gap, as the crystal changes from a van der Waals-bonded orthorhombic 2D layered structure in SnSe-rich compositions to the related 3D-bonded rocksalt structure in PbSe-rich compositions. This structural transition drives a large contrast in the electrical, optical, and thermal properties. We realize low temperature direct growth of epitaxial PbSnSe thin films on GaAs via molecular beam epitaxy using an in situ PbSe surface treatment and show a significantly reduced two-phase region by stabilizing the Pnma layered structure out to Pb0.45Sn0.55Se, beyond the bulk limit around Pb0.25Sn0.75Se at low temperatures. Pushing further, we directly access metastable two-phase films of layered and rocksalt grains that are nearly identical in composition around Pb0.50Sn0.50Se and entirely circumvent the miscibility gap. We present microstructural and compositional evidence for an incomplete displacive transformation from a rocksalt to layered structure in these films, which we speculate occurs during the sample cooling to room temperature after synthesis. In situ temperature-cycling experiments on a Pb0.58Sn0.42Se rocksalt film reproduce characteristic attributes of a displacive transition and show a modulation in electronic properties. We find well-defined orientation relationships between the phases formed and reveal unconventional strain relief mechanisms involved in the crystal structure transformation using transmission electron microscopy. Overall, our work adds a scalable thin film integration route to harness the dramatic contrast in material properties in PbSnSe across a potentially ultrafast crystalline-crystalline structural transition.