The time dependence of small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) curves for silver nanoparticle formation was followed in situ at a time resolution of 0.18 ms, which is 3 orders of magnitude higher than that used in previous reports (ca. 100 ms). The starting materials were silver nitrate solutions that were reacted with reducing solutions containing trisodium citrate. The SAXS analyses showed that silver nanoparticles were formed in three distinct periods from a peak diameter of ca. 0.7 nm (corresponding to the size of a Ag(13) cluster) during the nucleation and the early growth period. The Ag(13) clusters are most likely elementary clusters that agglomerate to form silver nanoparticles.

We report a numerical evidence of the discontinuous transition of a tethered membrane model which is defined within a framework of the membrane elasticity of Helfrich. Two kinds of phantom tethered membrane models are studied via the canonical Monte Carlo simulation on triangulated fixed connectivity surfaces of spherical topology. A surface model is defined by the Gaussian term and the bending energy term, and the other, which is tensionless, is defined by the bending energy term and a hard wall potential. The bending energy is defined by using the normal vector at each vertex. Both of the models undergo the first-order phase transition characterized by a gap of the bending energy. The phase structure of the models depends on the choice of discrete bending energy.

Current collectors (CCs) are an important and indispensable constituent of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and other batteries. CCs serve a vital bridge function in supporting active materials such as cathode and anode materials, binders, and conductive additives, as well as electrochemically connecting the overall structure of anodes and cathodes with an external circuit. Recently, various factors of CCs such as the thickness, hardness, compositions, coating layers, and structures have been modified to improve aspects of battery performance such as the charge/discharge cyclability, energy density, and the rate performance of a cell. In this paper, the details of interesting and useful attempts of preparing CCs for high battery performance in lithium-ion and post-lithium-ion batteries are reviewed. The advantages and disadvantages of these attempts are discussed.

A first-order phase transition separating the smooth phase from the crumpled one is found in a fixed connectivity surface model defined on a disk. The Hamiltonian contains the Gaussian term and an intrinsic curvature term.

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D = 2, N = 2 generalized Wess-Zumino theory is investigated by the dimensional reduction from D = 4, N = 1 theory. For each solitonic configuration (i, j) the classical static solution is solved by the Hamilton-Jacobi method of equivalent one-dimensional classical mechanics. It is easily shown that the Bogomol'nyi mass bound is saturated by these solutions and triangular mass inequality

We study two-dimensional triangulated surfaces of sphere topology by the canonical Monte Carlo simulation. The coordination number of surfaces is made as uniform as possible. The triangulation is fixed in MC so that only the positions X of vertices may be considered as the dynamical variable. The well-known Helfrich energy function S = S 1 + bS 2 is used for the definition of the model where S 1 and S 2 are the area and bending energy functions respectively and b is the bending rigidity. The discretizations of S 1 and S 2 are identical with that of our previous MC study for a model of fluid membranes. We find that the specific heats have peaks at finite bending rigidities and obtain the critical exponents of the phase transition by the finite-size scaling technique. It is found that our model of crystalline membranes undergoes an expected second order phase transition.

A model of fluid membrane, which is not self-avoiding, such as two-dimensional spherical random surface is studied by using Monte Carlo simulation. Spherical surfaces in R3 are discretized by piecewise linear triangle. Dynamical variables are the positions X of the vertices and the triangulation g. The action of the model is sum of area energy and bending energy times bending rigidity b. The bending energy and the specific heat are measured, and the critical exponents of the phase transitions are obtained by a finite-size scaling technique. We find that our model of fluid membrane undergoes a second order phase transition.