RESUMEN
The management and processing of synchrotron and neutron computed tomography data can be a complex, labor-intensive and unstructured process. Users devote substantial time to both manually processing their data (i.e. organizing data/metadata, applying image filters etc.) and waiting for the computation of iterative alignment and reconstruction algorithms to finish. In this work, we present a solution to these problems: TomoPyUI, a user interface for the well known tomography data processing package TomoPy. This highly visual Python software package guides the user through the tomography processing pipeline from data import, preprocessing, alignment and finally to 3D volume reconstruction. The TomoPyUI systematic intermediate data and metadata storage system improves organization, and the inspection and manipulation tools (built within the application) help to avoid interrupted workflows. Notably, TomoPyUI operates entirely within a Jupyter environment. Herein, we provide a summary of these key features of TomoPyUI, along with an overview of the tomography processing pipeline, a discussion of the landscape of existing tomography processing software and the purpose of TomoPyUI, and a demonstration of its capabilities for real tomography data collected at SSRL beamline 6-2c.
RESUMEN
Most research on polymer composites has focused on adding discrete inorganic nanofillers to a polymer matrix to impart properties not found in polymers alone. However, properties such as ion conductivity and mechanical reinforcement would be greatly improved if the composite exhibited an interconnected network of inorganic and polymer phases. Here, we fabricate bicontinuous polymer-infiltrated scaffold metal (PrISM) composites by infiltrating polymer into nanoporous gold (NPG) films. Polystyrene (PS) and poly(2-vinylpyridine) (P2VP) films are infiltrated into the â¼43 nm diameter NPG pores via capillary forces during thermal annealing above the polymer glass transition temperature (Tg). The infiltration process is characterized in situ using spectroscopic ellipsometry. PS and P2VP, which have different affinities for the metal scaffold, exhibit slower segmental dynamics compared to their bulk counterparts when confined within the nanopores, as measured through Tg. The more attractive P2VP shows a 20 °C increase in Tg relative to its bulk, while PS only shows a 6 °C increase at a comparable molecular weight. The infiltrated polymer, in turn, stabilizes the gold nanopores against temporal coarsening. The broad tunability of these polymer/metal hybrids represents a unique template for designing functional network composite structures with applications ranging from flexible electronics to fuel cell membranes.
RESUMEN
The development of three-dimensional aperiodic energy storage devices is in part impeded by the lack of appropriate aperiodic templates that can withstand the thermal conditions required to deposit energy storage materials within their void space. Herein, the feasibility of an aperiodic three-dimensional architecture for energy storage is demonstrated for the first time by constructing a tricontinuous conductor-insulator-conductor (CIC) nanocapacitor on an aperiodic nanoporous gold scaffold. To accomplish this, the scaffold was characterized using in situ small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) during exposure to a thermal environment, revealing that its microstructure eventually stabilizes after undergoing a phase of rapid coarsening, indicating a departure from the 1/4 time-dependent power-law coarsening behavior usually observed at the early stage of the coarsening process. Using this stability regime, we created the CIC by intentionally precoarsening and stabilizing the scaffold before depositing two dissimilar metal oxide films in its void space by atomic layer deposition. Current-voltage characteristics and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements revealed that the un-optimized 3D CIC outperformed its 2D counterpart by â¼4× in terms of capacitance. This proof-of-concept device will pave the way to the development of aperiodic three-dimensional energy storage systems with enhanced energy and power densities.