Fluidized Bed Chemical Vapor Deposition on Hard Carbon Powders to Produce Composite Energy Materials.

Herein, we report a general route for the uniform coating of hard carbon (HC) powders via fluidized bed chemical vapor deposition. Carbon-based fine powders are excellent substrate materials for many catalytic and electrochemical applications but intrinsically difficult to fluidize and prone to elutriation. The reactor was designed to achieve as much retention of powders as possible, supported by a computational fluid dynamics study to assess the hydrodynamic behavior for varying gaseous flow rates. Solutions of the tin seleno- and thio-ether complexes [SnCl4{nBuSe(CH2)3SenBu}] and [SnCl4{nBuS(CH2)3SnBu}] were used as single source precursors and injected at high temperature into a fluidized bed of HC powders under nitrogen flow. The method allowed for the synthesis of HC-SnSx-SnSe2 composites at the gram scale with potential applications in electrocatalysis and sodium-ion battery anodes.

Entropy of the Universe and Hierarchical Dark Matter.

We discuss the relationship between dark matter and the entropy of the universe, with the premise that dark matter exists in the form of primordial black holes (PBHs) in a hierarchy of mass tiers. The lightest tier includes all PBHs with masses below one hundred solar masses. The second-lightest tier comprises intermediate-mass PIMBHs within galaxies, including the Milky Way. Supermassive black holes at galactic centres are in the third tier. We are led to speculate that there exists a fourth tier of extremely massive PBHs, more massive than entire galaxies. We discuss future observations by the Rubin Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Turnaround in cyclic cosmology.

It is speculated how dark energy in a brane world can help reconcile an infinitely cyclic cosmology with the second law of thermodynamics. A cyclic model is described, in which dark energy with w<-1 equation of state leads to a turnaround at a time, extremely shortly before the would-be big rip, at which both volume and entropy of our Universe decrease by a gigantic factor, while very many independent similarly small contracting universes are spawned. The entropy of our model decreases almost to zero at turnaround but increases for the remainder of the cycle by a vanishingly small amount during contraction, empty of matter, then by a large factor during inflationary expansion.