Suchergebnisse

Hierarchical 1D carbon structures are attractive due to their mechanical, chemical and electrochemical properties however the synthesis of these materials can be costly and complicated. Here, through the combination of inexpensive acetylacetonate salts of Ni, Co and Fe with a solution of polyacrylonitrile (PAN), self-assembling carbon-metal fabrics (CMFs) containing unique 1D hierarchical structures can be created via easy and low-cost heat treatment without the need for costly catalyst deposition nor a dangerous hydrocarbon atmosphere. Microscopic and spectroscopic measurements show that the CMFs form through the decomposition and exsolution of metal nanoparticle domains which then catalyze the formation of carbon nanotubes through the decomposition by-products of the PAN. These weakly bound nanoparticles form structures similar to trichomes found in plants, with a combination of base-growth, tip-growth and peapod-like structures, where the metal domain exhibits a core(graphitic)-shell(disorder) carbon coating where the thickness is in-line with the metal-carbon binding energy. These CMFs were used as a cathode in a flexible zinc-air battery which exhibited superior performance to pure electrospun carbon fibers, with their metallic nanoparticle domains acting as bifunctional catalysts. This work therefore unlocks a potentially new category of composite metal-carbon fiber based structures for energy storage applications and beyond. ; This work was kindly supported by the EPSRC energy storage for low carbon grids project (EP/K002252/1), the EPSRC Joint UK-India Clean Energy Centre (JUICE) (EP/P003605/1), the EPSRC Multi-Scale Modelling project (EP/S003053/1), and the Innovate UK for Advanced Battery Lifetime Extension (ABLE) project, Soft Science Research Project of Guangdong Province (No. 2017B030301013), Shenzhen Science and Technology Research Grant (ZDSYS201707281026184). Swansea University College of Engineering Advanced Imaging of Materials (AIM) Facility, which was funded by the EPSRC (EP/M028267/1), the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government (80708), and the Ser Solar project via Welsh Government. CG acknowledges The Royal Society of London for an URF.

We measure a large set of observables in inclusive charged current muon neutrino scattering on argon with the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber operating at Fermilab. We evaluate three neutrino interaction models based on the widely used GENIE event generator using these observables. The measurement uses a data set consisting of neutrino interactions with a final state muon candidate fully contained within the MicroBooNE detector. These data were collected in 2016 with the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam, which has an average neutrino energy of MeV, using an exposure corresponding to 5.0x1019 protons-on-target. The analysis employs fully automatic event selection and charged particle track reconstruction and uses a data-driven technique to separate neutrino interactions from cosmic ray background events. We find that GENIE models consistently describe the shapes of a large number of kinematic distributions for fixed observed multiplicity. ; Public domain authored by a U.S. government employee

The MicroBooNE detector utilizes a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) with an 85 t active mass to study neutrino interactions along the Booster Neutrino Beam (BNB) at Fermilab. With a deployment location near ground level, the detector records many cosmic muon tracks in each beam-related detector trigger that can be misidentified as signals of interest. To reduce these cosmogenic backgrounds, we have designed and constructed a TPC-external Cosmic Ray Tagger (CRT). This sub-system was developed by the Laboratory for High Energy Physics (LHEP), Albert Einstein center for fundamental physics, University of Bern. The system utilizes plastic scintillation modules to provide precise time and position information for TPC-traversing particles. Successful matching of TPC tracks and CRT data will allow us to reduce cosmogenic background and better characterize the light collection system and LArTPC data using cosmic muons. In this paper we describe the design and installation of the MicroBooNE CRT system and provide an overview of a series of tests done to verify the proper operation of the system and its components during installation, commissioning, and physics data-taking. ; Public domain authored by a U.S. government employee