Temperature and Infill Density Effects on Thermal, Mechanical and Shape Memory Properties of Polylactic Acid/Poly(ε-caprolactone) Blends for 4D Printing.

Polylactic acid (PLA)/poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) blends have exhibited good shape memory properties and degradable characteristics in various 4D printing fields such as biomedicine, flexible electronics, and soft robotics, where the service temperature fluctuates easily by environment temperature and polymer characteristics. In this work, printed PLA/PCL 4D samples with different infill densities were prepared by material extrusion printing of pre-extruded filaments and characterized under different temperatures. The results show that the microstructures of printed samples are not influenced by printing process and have similar unique orientation as that of filaments. The thermal properties are stable and show obvious phase transition temperatures, while the mechanical properties decrease slightly in low temperature region and then decrease rapidly when temperature is over 60 °C. The increase in infill density can further improve the storage modulus more than 40% and have no significant influence on the thermal properties. The printed samples also exhibit good shape memory performances with fast recovery speeds less than 22 s. Furthermore, a two-step model is provided to predict the effective modulus of printed PLA/PCL samples and agrees well with experimental data. The results prove that temperature and infill density have different influences on the thermal, mechanical and shape memory properties of PLA/PCL blends.

Thermal, Mechanical and Electrical Properties of Carbon Fiber Fabric and Graphene Reinforced Segmented Polyurethane Composites.

Thermal conductive materials with reliable and high performances such as thermal interface materials are crucial for rapid heat transferring in thermal management. In this work, carbon fiber fabric and graphene reinforced segmented polyurethane composites (CFF-G/SPU) were proposed and prepared to obtain superior thermal, mechanical and electrical properties using the hot-pressing method. The composites exhibit excellent tensile strength and can withstand a tensile force of at least 350 N without breaking. The results show that, comparing with the SPU material, the thermal conductivity is increased by 28% for the CFF-G/SPU composite, while the in-plane electrical conductivity is increased by 8 orders of magnitude to 175 S·m-1. The application of CFF-G/SPU composite as a winding thermal interface material with electric-driven self-heating effect presents good performances of fluidity and interface wettability. The composite has great advantages in phase transition and filling the interfacial gap in the short time of few seconds under the condition of electrical field, with the interface temperature difference between two layers significantly reduced.

ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase large subunit 2 is essential for storage substance accumulation and subunit interactions in rice endosperm.

ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (AGPase) controls a rate-limiting step in the starch biosynthetic pathway in higher plants. Here we isolated a shrunken rice mutant w24. Map-based cloning identified OsAGPL2, a large subunit of the cytosolic AGPase in rice endosperm, as the gene responsible for the w24 mutation. In addition to severe inhibition of starch synthesis and significant accumulation of sugar, the w24 endosperm showed obvious defects in compound granule formation and storage protein synthesis. The defect in OsAGPL2 enhanced the expression levels of the AGPase family. Meanwhile, the elevated activities of starch phosphorylase 1 and sucrose synthase in the w24 endosperm might possibly partly account for the residual starch content in the mutant seeds. Moreover, the expression of OsAGPL2 and its counterpart, OsAGPS2b, was highly coordinated in rice endosperm. Yeast two-hybrid and BiFC assays verified direct interactions between OsAGPL2 and OsAGPS2b as well as OsAGPL1 and OsAGPS1, supporting the model for spatiotemporal complex formation of AGPase isoforms in rice endosperm. Besides, our data provided no evidence for the self-binding of OsAGPS2b, implying that OsAGPS2b might not interact to form higher molecular mass aggregates in the absence of OsAGPL2. Therefore, the molecular mechanism of rice AGPase assembly might differ from that of Arabidopsis.

[The Detection of Raman Spectra on Dissolved Gas in Transformer Oil and Its Spectral Linear Model Analysis].

Raman spectroscopy gas detection technology which uses a single wavelength laser detection of gas samples without contact and loss is suitable for dissolved gas detection in oil-immersed transformers. Combined with the features of Raman spectral lines, the analysis of the detection mechanism in Raman spectroscopy technology has been made. Raman spectral lines have been presented in the expression of the convolution of Lorentz function and Gaussian function, which shows preferable Raman spectrum peak linear outline basic characteristics. In this paper, the basic features of the peak height, the peak position and the half peak width, are the main targets of peak searching, and the fundamental purpose of this paper is to obtain qualitative and quantitative analysis of the sample. Therefore, the experimental data of Raman spectroscopy is designed based on the comparison method to realize the automatic peak seeking model to achieve the detection target. Therefore, according to the automatic peak searching model based on the comparison method is designed to achieve the detection target. The simulation results of using peak searching model in the Voigt linear model show that spectrum peak height and peak position are in conformity with the theory in the test experiment. Based on the establishment of Raman spectroscopy detection platform aiming at the dissolved gas in transformer oil, the analysis of the experimental data show that the actual values of the half peak height and width are (8.7，11.5)(cm-1)in the Voigt linear model with deviations. Setting the value as 10.257 cm-1 to modify the parameter, then compared with the research results, it shows that the modified Voigt linear model and the peak searching model have better adaptability and practicability. Combined with the gas detection in the experimental platform in the experimental platform of Raman spectroscopy,detection of seven kinds of transformer fault characteristic gas and analysis of peak searching have been completed effectively. In terms of methane gas, the linear relationship among the unit gas content, Raman characteristic peak intensity and the area has been obtained, which has laid a foundation for the quantitative analysis of the dissolved gas in transformer oil.