Remarkable Thermal Conductivity Reduction of Silicon Nanowires during the Bending Process.

The one-dimensional geometry of silicon nanowire helps to overcome the rigid and brittle nature of bulk silicon and enables it to withstand substantial bending stresses. This provides exciting opportunities for the development of flexible electronics. The bending strain introduces atomic displacement in the lattice structure, which inherently has a significant impact on the thermal conductivity. The strain-dependent thermal conductivity of silicon nanowire is crucial to the thermal management and performance of flexible electronic devices. However, in situ thermal conductivity measurement of bending silicon nanowires remains challenging and unreported due to the varying thermal contact resistances between the sample and sensor/heat sink. In this study, the Raman spectroscopy-assisted steady state thermal conductivity measurement method is coupled with a micromanipulation system to successively monitor the thermal conductivity variation of silicon nanowires during the bending process. The result shows that the thermal conductivity of silicon nanowires steeply decreases 55-78% owing to the strain-induced structural deformation during bending. Furthermore, the proposed in situ thermal conductivity measurement method can also be extended to other nanomaterials.

A novel detection technology for early gastric cancer based on Raman spectroscopy.

Despite universal endoscopic screening, early detection of gastric cancer is challenging, led researchers to seek for a novel approach in detecting. Raman spectroscopy measurements as a fingerprint of biochemical structure, enable accurate prediction of gastric lesions non-destructively. This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic power of Raman spectroscopy in early gastric cancer (EGC), and reveal dynamic biomolecular changes in vitro from normal to EGC. To clarify the biochemical alterations in Correa's cascade, Raman spectra of human normal gastric mucosa, intestinal metaplasia, dysplasia, and adenocarcinoma were compared at tissue and cellular levels based on a self-developed data processing program. For effectively identify EGC, Raman spectroscopy was used combined with multiple machine learning methods, including partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), support vector machine (SVM), and convolutional neural network (CNN) with leave-one-out (LOO) cross validation. A total of 450 Raman spectra were investigated in this study. The upregulation of νsym(O-P-O) backbone (p < 0.001) was identified as a favorable factor for the diagnosis of EGC, the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was up to 0.918. In addition, higher levels of lactic acid (p < 0.001), lipids (p < 0.001), phenylalanine (p = 0.002), and carotenoids (p < 0.001) were detected in EGC. Multivariate machine learning methods for diagnosis of EGC based on Raman spectroscopy, the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and AUC were 91.0%, 100%, 94.8%, and 95.8% for SVM, and 84.8%, 92.0%, 88.8%, and 95.5% for CNN, respectively. Raman spectroscopy can be used as a powerful tool for detecting EGC while elucidating biomolecular dynamics in tumorigenesis. (Chictr.org.cn, ChiCTR2200060720.).

In Situ Thermal Conductivity Measurement of Single-Crystal Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework-8 by Raman-Resistance Temperature Detectors Method.

The thermal conductivity measurement of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which plays an important role in thermal management of MOF-based gas separation, storage, and thermal energy conversion (e.g., adsorption heat pumps), has been a challenging task for decades. However, the direct thermal conductivity measurement of a single-crystal MOF is currently limited by their small crystal sizes, since no sophisticated approach has ever been reported. In this study, the Raman-resistance temperature detectors (Raman-RTDs) method was developed for in situ measuring of the thermal conductivity of single-crystal ZIF-8, whose system error resulting from the thermal contact resistance between sample and RTDs can be eliminated. According to the dependence of thermal resistance of MOF crystals on the laser spot location, the thermal conductivities of polycrystalline and single-crystal ZIF-8 were derived to be 0.21 ± 0.03 and 0.64 ± 0.09 W/(m·K), respectively. The proposed in situ thermal conductivity measurement method may be further extended to other types of microscale particles.

Laser Flash Raman Spectroscopy Method for Characterizing the Specific Heat of a Single Nanoparticle.

Nanoparticles are widely used in composite materials, nanoscale devices, biological detectors and medical treatment. The thermophysical properties of a single nanoparticle are, therefore, important for both nanotechnology and nanoscience applications. However, property measurements are limited by the spatial resolution of conventional measurement methods, so there are not yet any effective measurement methods to characterize the thermophysical properties of a single nanoparticle. This paper describes a laser flash Raman spectroscopy method for measuring the specific heat of a single nanoparticle supported on a free-standing substrate based on a lumped parameter model for the nanoparticle coupled with a transient 2D thermal conduction model for the suspended substrate. A series of square laser pulses are assumed to be used to heat the supported single nanoparticle in a vacuum. The temperature increases in the single nanoparticle and the suspended substrate are then measured based on their Raman band shifts. The laser absorption coefficients of the nanoparticle and the substrate are then eliminated by comparing the temperature increases measured using different laser pulse widths. The specific heat of the nanoparticle and the thermal contact conductance between the nanoparticle and the substrate can then be extracted by fitting the temperatures of both the nanoparticle and the substrate. Case studies show that the method can accurately measure the specific heat of a single nanoparticle about 100 nm in diameter using ~1 ns pulse widths. The influence of the nanoparticle geometry and the thermophysical properties of the substrate are also discussed.