1446 results about "Free energies" patented technology

A magnetic element is disclosed wherein first and second interfaces of a free layer with a Hk enhancing layer and tunnel barrier, respectively, produce enhanced surface perpendicular anisotropy to lower switching current or increase thermal stability in a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ). In a MTJ with a bottom spin valve configuration where the Hk enhancing layer is an oxide, the capping layer contacting the Hk enhancing layer is selected to have a free energy of oxide formation substantially greater than that of the oxide. The free layer may be a single layer or composite comprised of an Fe rich alloy such as Co₂₀Fe₆₀B₂₀. With a thin free layer, the interfacial perpendicular anisotropy may dominate the shape anisotropy to generate a magnetization perpendicular to the planes of the layers. The magnetic element may be part of a spintronic device or serve as a propagation medium in a domain wall motion device.

Production of synthetic liquid hydrocarbon fuel from carbon containing moieties such as biomass, coal, methane, naphtha as a carbon source and hydrogen from a carbon-free energy source is disclosed. The biomass can be fed to a gasifier along with hydrogen, oxygen, steam and recycled carbon dioxide. The synthesis gas from the gasifier exhaust is sent to a liquid hydrocarbon conversion reactor to form liquid hydrocarbon molecules. Unreacted CO & H₂ can be recycled to the gasifier along with CO₂ from the liquid hydrocarbon conversion reactor system. Hydrogen can be obtained from electrolysis of water, thermo-chemical cycles or directly by using energy from carbon-free energy sources.

A general computer-implement method and apparatus to optimize problem layout on a massively parallel supercomputer is described. The method takes as input the communication matrix of an arbitrary problem in the form of an array whose entries C(i, j) are the amount to data communicated from domain i to domain j. Given C(i, j), first implement a heuristic map is implemented which attempts sequentially to map a domain and its communications neighbors either to the same supercomputer node or to near-neighbor nodes on the supercomputer torus while keeping the number of domains mapped to a supercomputer node constant (as much as possible). Next a Markov Chain of maps is generated from the initial map using Monte Carlo simulation with Free Energy (cost function) F=Σ_i,jC(i,j)H(i,j)—where H(i,j) is the smallest number of hops on the supercomputer torus between domain i and domain j. On the cases tested, found was that the method produces good mappings and has the potential to be used as a general layout optimization tool for parallel codes. At the moment, the serial code implemented to test the method is un-optimized so that computation time to find the optimum map can be several hours on a typical PC. For production implementation, good parallel code for our algorithm would be required which could itself be implemented on supercomputer.

The invention belongs to the technical field of a new chemical material, and in particular relates to a high-durability super-hydrophobic self-cleaning coating material and a preparation method thereof. The coating material of the invention is prepared by curing and drying nanoparticles with photo-catalytic activity, a low-surface-free-energy polymer and a cross-linking agent at the room temperature, wherein the low-surface-free-energy polymer consists of one or more of polysiloxane fluoride, dimethyl silicone polymer and polyphenylene methyl siloxane, which contain active groups, such as hydroxyl alkoxy group, carbon-carbon double bond, silanol group, siloxy group, and the like; the cross-linking agent is hydrogen-containing silicone oil or aminosilane; and the mass content of the photo-catalytic nanoparticles in the coating ranges from 10 to 60 percent. The coating is formed into a micro-nanostructure by nanoparticle self-organization; a super-hydrophobic self-cleaning coating with lotus effect is prepared from the coating and a cross-linked filming matrix with low surface energy; the persistence of a lotus-shaped super-hydrophobic characteristic of the coating is realized by using the photo-catalytic decomposition characteristic of an organic pollutant for the nanoparticles; and thus the material is suitable for large-area construction and has high weathering resistance andprominent self-cleaning characteristic.

In at least one embodiment of the present invention, a method for producing liquid hydrocarbons from biomass is provided. The method comprises pyrolizing the biomass with hydrogen (H₂) to form bio-oil. The bio-oil comprises alkanes, alkenes, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, aromatics, hydrocarbons or mixtures thereof. The H₂ is formed from a carbon-free energy source.

The invention concerns a window including a window pane with one or more glass panes, a window frame in which the window pane is provided, at least one temperature sensor arranged in or at the periphery of the window pane, and an electric circuit connected to the temperature sensor mounted on or in the window frame. The electric circuit is configured to be connected to an operation unit which is configured to regulate the incident light through the window pane. The invention furthermore concerns a method for controlling a window wherein the electric circuit controls the means configured to regulate the incident light through the window pane based on a set of parameters. The parameters are determined on the basis of the orientation and geographical position of the window whereby the supply of free energy is optimised and the amount of energy supplied from energy sources in the room is reduced. In an embodiment the window can be controlled by means of an application configured to run on a mobile communication unit.

A process for producing an alumina coating composed mainly of a-type crystal structure especially excelling in heat resistance, comprising (1) providing a laminate coating including a hard coating composed of a metal component containing Al and Ti as unavoidable elements and a compound of B, C, N, O, etc., oxidizing the hard coating to thereby form an oxide-containing layer, and forming an alumina coating composed mainly of a-type crystal structure on the oxide-containing layer. Alternatively, the process comprises (2) forming a hard coating composed of a metal whose standard free energy for oxide formation is greater than that of aluminum and a compound of B, C, N, O, etc., oxidizing the surface of the hard coating to thereby form an oxide-containing layer, and forming an alumina coating while being accompanied by reduction of the oxide at the surface of the oxide-containing layer.

A stack of a high-k gate dielectric and a metal gate structure includes a lower metal layer, a scavenging metal layer, and an upper metal layer. The scavenging metal layer meets the following two criteria 1) a metal (M) for which the Gibbs free energy change of the reaction Si+2/y M_xO_y→2x/y M+SiO₂ is positive 2) a metal that has a more negative Gibbs free energy per oxygen atom for formation of oxide than the material of the lower metal layer and the material of the upper metal layer. The scavenging metal layer meeting these criteria captures oxygen atoms as the oxygen atoms diffuse through the gate electrode toward the high-k gate dielectric. In addition, the scavenging metal layer remotely reduces the thickness of a silicon oxide interfacial layer underneath the high-k dielectric. As a result, the equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) of the total gate dielectric is reduced and the field effect transistor maintains a constant threshold voltage even after high temperature processes during CMOS integration.

The invention belongs to the technical field of preparation of super-hydrophobic surfaces, and relates to a preparation method for a super-hydrophobic surface with a bionic micro-nano composite structure. From the angle of the super-hydrophobic surface, the super-hydrophobic surface is prepared by virtue of a mesoscale two-step etching method; etching treatment is carried out on a substrate surface twice; a micro-nano composite structure similar to a lotus leaf surface is constructed by utilizing a chemical or an electrochemical reaction etching substrate, and surface modification is carried out by virtue of a surface modifier to reduce surface free energy. The size of the micro-nano structure can be controlled by virtue of reaction time, a reaction temperature and concentration. A contact angle, on the surface of the micro-nano composite structure, of water drops is as high as 170 degrees while a rolling angle of the water drops is smaller than 5 degrees. According to electrochemical test results, corrosion resistance of a super-hydrophobic stainless steel sheet is 22 times that of common stainless steel. The method provided by the invention does not need special equipment, is low in cost, good in stability, excellent in super-hydrophobic property, good in corrosion resistance and can be applied to metal corrosion-resistant protection.

A thin-film transistor (TFT) substrate has improved electrical properties and reduced appearance defects and a method of fabricating the TFT substrate, are provided. The TFT substrate includes: gate wiring which is formed on a surface of an insulating substrate; oxide active layer patterns which are formed on the gate wiring and include an oxide of a first material; buffer layer patterns which are disposed on the oxide active layer patterns to directly contact the oxide active layer patterns and include a second material; and data wiring which is formed on the buffer layer patterns to insulatedly cross the gate wiring, wherein a Gibbs free energy of the oxide of the first material is lower than a Gibbs free energy of an oxide of the second material.

An negative active material for a rechargeable lithium battery includes a nano-composite including a Si phase, a SiO₂ phase, and a metal oxide phase of formulation M_yO, where M is a metal with an oxidation number x, a free energy of oxygen-bond formation ranging from −900 kJ/mol to −2000 kJ/mol, x, and x·y=2. The negative active material for a rechargeable lithium battery according to the present invention can improve initial capacity, initial efficiency, and cycle-life characteristics by suppressing its initial irreversible reaction.

Methods and apparatuses for obtaining position and energy information without pileup. Signal integration, which is triggered by a present event, stops when a subsequent event is detected. A weighted value for estimating the total energy in a scintillation is calculated, which includes the energy of the current event and a residual energy from previous events. Remnant correction is used to calculate a pile-up free energy from two consecutive weighted values. An analog filter may be applied to reduce noise. Dynamic digital weighting of integrated values, and/or digital integration may be used during data processing. Pileup can be avoided in conjunction with several types of applications, including multi-zone detector applications and coincidence detection applications. High-resolution timing techniques are also disclosed that facilitate one's ability to avoid pileup.

Noble metallic tips, made of a Pt alloy or an Ir alloy, are fixed to electrode base materials. The electrode base materials are an alloy containing a chief element selected from the group consisting of Ni, Fe, and Co and a plurality of additive elements. At least two kinds of additive elements contained in this alloy have a standard free energy of formation smaller than that of the chief element.

To provide a highly conductive Cu alloy which is advantageous in that an alloying element added to Cu is first reacted with oxygen contained in a gas atmosphere or solid in contact with the Cu member to form an oxide film which can prevent oxidation of Cu. The copper alloy comprises copper (Cu) containing an inevitable impurity, and an element added to the copper, wherein the added element is capable of being dissolved in the copper in an amount of 0.1 to 20 at. %, wherein the added element has an oxide formation free energy smaller than that of Cu and has a diffusion coefficient in Cu larger than the self-diffusion coefficient of Cu.

The present invention provides for the first time a quantum mechanics-based method for scoring protein-ligand interactions and binding affinity predictions, using quantum mechanical Hamiltonians and/or a combined quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical approach, and Poisson-Boltzmann (PB)-based solvation methods. Also provided is a method for using quantum mechanics to describe the enthalpic and solvation effects of binding. The method comprises comparing the calculated binding affinities to experimental values in order to measure the success of the method. The methods disclosed herein may further be used to score protein and drug or protein and inhibitor interactions. The present method can predict the free energy of binding of protein-ligand complexes with high accuracy so as to enable lead optimization, thus serving as a powerful tool in computational drug design.

The invention relates to a method for treating the surface of seawater corrosion resistant metallic aluminum or aluminum alloy. The method comprises the following steps: 1) sand pellets are used to carry out gritting blasting treatment for the surfaces of aluminum and aluminium alloy through a spray gun so as to bring about the concave and convex surface topography in the micron order for aluminium and aluminium alloy; 2 the aluminium and aluminium alloy is cleaned after degreasing and is taken as the anode of an electrolytic bath, and nickel is taken as a cathode; the electrolyte is prepared and is added into the electrolytic bath, and a DC power supply is connected with the anode and the cathode so as to form nanometer holes on the aluminium or aluminium alloy surface; and 3 silicon fluoride is taken to carry out the surface finish of aluminum or aluminium alloy so as to reduce the surface free energy of aluminium or aluminium alloy. The method for adopting silicone fluoride to carry out the surface finish of aluminum or aluminium alloy comprises the following steps: heating up the aluminium or aluminium alloy processed in step 2 to 90 to 120 DEG C, keeping the temperature for 30 to 40 minutes, taking the aluminium or aluminum alloy out and cooling down the aluminium or aluminum alloy to a room temperature, and then carrying out surface finish through a soak method or a vapor plating method. The processed aluminium metal or aluminum alloy has good resistance to seawater corrosion.