Broadband near-infrared (NIR)-emitting phosphors are key for next-generation smart NIR light sources based on blue LEDs. To achieve excellent NIR phosphors, we propose a strategy of enhancing the crystallinity, modifying the micromorphology, and maintaining the valence state of Cr3+ in Ca3Sc2Si3O12 garnet (CSSG). By adding fluxes and sintering in a reducing atmosphere, the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) is greatly enhanced to 92.3%. The optimized CSSG:6%Cr3+ exhibits excellent thermal stability. At 150 °C, 97.4% of the NIR emission at room temperature can be maintained. The fabricated NIR-LED device emits a high optical power of 109.9 mW at 520 mA. The performances of both the achieved phosphor and the NIR-LED are almost the best results until now. The mechanism for the optimization is investigated. An application of the NIR-LED light source is demonstrated.

Y3Al5O12:Ce3+ (YAG:Ce3+) transparent ceramic phosphors (TCPs) are regarded as the most promising luminescent converter for laser‐driven (LD) lighting. High‐quality YAG:Ce3+ TCPs are still urgent for high efficiency LD lighting devices. YAG:Ce3+ TCPs in a vacuum ambience by using nano‐sized raw materials are prepared. Controlling defects by adding nano‐sized MgO and SiO2 simultaneously enables a high transmittance nearly 80%. After annealing in air furthermore, the luminous efficiency is enhanced greatly from 106 to 223 lm W−1, which is the best result reported now for LD lighting. These results demonstrate that the optimizing YAG:Ce3+ TCPs in a fitting strategy will brighten once again in the next‐generation LD lighting. Based on scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with a cathodoluminescence system, defects and Ce3+ distributions in grains are identified directly for the first time.

The SPWT is presented as a feasible and reproducible criterion measure of walking capacity for use with LSS patients. Although a strong relationship was demonstrated between the treadmill protocol and the SPWT, a systematic bias was observed with patients walking significantly further in the SPWT (36% in mean).

This study described a preparation procedure for BSA NPs with controllable particle size, and such polymer-coated BSA NPs are promising delivery agents for local and systemic administration of BMP-2 in bone regeneration.

The booming growth of flexible and stretchable electronic devices with increasing power and multifunctionalities calls for novel highly efficient thermal interface materials (TIMs) with versatile functions, such as high deformability and self-healing ability, whereas traditional metallic-based or grease-based ones could hardly provide. Herein, we report a highly flexible and self-healable dual-cross-linked hydrogel-based nanocomposite filled with hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) nanosheets fabricated by in situ polymerization of acrylic acid (AA). The thermal conductivity of the composites can be tuned by adjusting both fraction of BNNSs and water content. Although a solid, the highly flexible characteristic of the developed TIMs enables a perfect ability to replicate the texture of a rough surface, which may greatly enhance thermal transfer between adjacent surfaces. By increasing the water content to soften the material, it can be recycled and reused for different kinds of rough surface. In addition, benefiting from the dual-cross-linked structure, the composites are capable of recovering both mechanical strength and thermal conductivity even from severe structural breakdowns, for example, three consecutive cutting and healing cycles. This study may pave the way to fabrication of multifunctional highly flexible TIMs, which may promote the development of heat dissipation materials.

SnCdxTe materials were synthesized by the zone-melting method for the thermoelectric performance study. The X-ray diffraction results show that the lattice parameter decreases with increasing x, following the Vegard's law of rock-salt structure SnTe and CdTe. Besides, the room temperature Seebeck coefficients of the SnCdxTe system enhance to > 60 μV/K, larger than those of Cd-doped SnTe synthesized by spark plasma sintering. A large power factor of ~ 25 μW/cmK is achieved in SnCd0.12Te at 820 K, which rivals those of high performance PbTe-based materials. As a result, the highest ZT of ~1.03 at 820 K was achieved for SnCd0.12Te.

A large number of differential equation problems which admit traveling waves are usually defined on very large or infinite domains. To numerically solve these problems on smaller subdomains of the original domain, artificial boundary conditions must be defined for these subdomains. One type of artificial boundary condition which can minimize the size of such subdomains is the absorbing boundary condition. The imposition of absorbing boundary conditions is a technique used to reduce the necessary spatial domain when numerically solving partial differential equations that admit traveling waves. Such absorbing boundary conditions have been extensively studied in the context of hyperbolic wave equations. In this paper, general absorbing boundary conditions will be developed for the Schrödinger equation with one spatial dimension, using group velocity considerations. Previously published absorbing boundary conditions will be shown to reduce to special cases of this absorbing boundary condition. The well-posedness of the initial boundary value problem of the absorbing boundary condition, coupled to the interior Schrödinger equation, will also be discussed. Extension of the general absorbing boundary condition to higher spatial dimensions will be demonstrated. Numerical simulations using initial single Gaussian, double Gaussian, and a narrow Gaussian pulse distributions will be given, with comparision to exact solutions, to demonstrate the reflectivity properties of various orders of the absorbing boundary condition.

Transparent ceramics (TCs) are promising for high-power (hp) white light-emitting diode (WLED) and laser diode (LD) lighting. However, comfortable warm white light has not been achieved only using a single TC in hp-WLEDs/ LDs. Herein, highly transparent Gd 3 Al 4 GaO 12 :Ce 3+ (GAGG:Ce 3+ ) TCs (transmittance, T = 55.9−80.2%) were prepared via a solid-state reaction. Ce 3+ as a doped activator center in grains plays a positive role in luminescence based on the microstructural investigations by scanning electron microscopy and the cathodoluminescence system. T decreases upon increasing the Ce 3+ concentration and/or the ceramic thickness, whereas the luminous efficacy of hp-WLEDs/LDs goes up. For blue hp-LEDs driven at 350 mA or LDs of 2 W, warm white light with a low correlated-color temperature of ∼3000 K was achieved by a single GAGG:Ce 3+ TC, benefiting from its broad emission band (full width at half maximum, FWHM = 133−137 nm) and abundant red components (peaking at about 568−574 nm). The color-rendering index of hp-WLEDs reaches 78.9. These results are much better than the performance of the traditional Y 3 Al 5 O 12 :Ce 3+ (YAG:Ce 3+ ) TC, indicating that GAGG:Ce 3+ TCs are promising color converters for hp-WLEDs/LDs with a comfortable warm white light. KEYWORDS: Gd 3 Al 4 GaO 12 :Ce 3+ , transparent ceramic, high-power white LEDs, laser-driven lighting, warm white light