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Piezoelectric ceramics with excellent piezoelectric properties and a high Curie temperature are important for numerous electromechanical devices in a broad range of temperature environments. In this work, the relaxor ferroelectric Pb(Yb1/2Nb1/2)O3 end member was selected to be introduced into a BiScO3-PbTiO3 high-temperature piezoelectric ceramic to reduce the dielectric loss and improve the piezoelectric properties while slightly reducing the Curie temperature. The phase structure and dielectric, ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties of 0.025Pb(Yb1/2Nb1/2)O3-(0.975−x)BiScO3-xPbTiO3 (0.60 ≤ x ≤ 0.63) ceramics were systematically analyzed, and the best electrical properties were observed in the morphotropic phase boundary region x = 0.61 with d33 = 370 pC/N, kp = 44%, Pr = 33.9 μC/cm2. Importantly, no significant depolarization was observed in the x = 0.61 ceramic from room temperature to 290 °C, demonstrating its good thermal stability and potential applications in a wide range of temperature environments.

Class II ceramics are a material with high permittivity but low reliability of their capacitance and bias voltage due to high the temperature sensitivity of their dielectric permittivity. In this work, a BST-based (Ba0.9−xSrxCa0.1)TiO3·0.03(Bi2O3·3TiO2) (x = 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, 0.35, 0.4) composition with Y5U characteristics was investigated through compositional control to develop high-permittivity and voltage-stable ceramic compositions. Sr doping can increase the breakdown strength (Eb) but decreases the Curie temperature (Tc). The composition at x = 0.3 can obtain optimal comprehensive electrical properties, with high permittivity of 4206, low dielectric loss of ~0.009, and moderate breakdown strength (Eb) of 77.6 kV/cm, which meets Y5U specifications. Typically, a low bias-voltage dependence of capacitance is confirmed with a variation rate of 7.64% under 20 kV/cm. This strategy provides a promising candidate for high-permittivity Class II ceramic dielectrics that can be used in this field.

Capacitor is an important part of many electronic devices, so the temperature stability as one key parameter of capacitor needs to be improved constantly for meeting the requirements of various application temperature. Here, combined with the X-ray diffraction (XRD), selected area electron diffraction (SAED) and Vienna Ab-initio Simulation Package (VASP) calculation, it was confirmed that Ca ion can substitute the Ti site in the BaTi1-xCaxO3-x [BTC100×] (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.05) ceramics synthesized by solid-phase method which greatly improved the low-temperature stability of dielectric constant. Moreover, introducing Bi3+ and Zn2+ into BTC4 to form (1-y)BaTi0·96Ca0·04O2.96-yBi(Zn0·5Ti0.5)O3 [(1-y)BTC4-yBZT] (0.1 ≤ y ≤ 0.2) ceramics can further improve the dielectric-temperature stability by means of diffused phase transition and core-shell structure. Most importantly, the 0.85BTC4-0.15BZT ceramics with a pseudocubic perovskite structure possessed a temperature coefficient of capacitance at 25 °C (TCC25°C) being less than ±15% over a wide temperature range of −55 °C–200 °C and a temperate dielectric constant (ε = 1060) and low dielectric loss (tanδ = 1.5%), which measure up to the higher standard in the current capacitor industry such as X9R requirements.

For dielectric energy storage materials, high polarization and high breakdown strengths are a long-standing challenge. A modulating crystalline/amorphous phase structure strategy is proposed by Mn-doping and annealing temperature to enhance the energy storage performance of pure BaTiO3 (BT) films. In this study, lead-free Mn-doped BT films were prepared on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates via the sol-gel method, and the effects of the crystalline/amorphous phase ratio on polarization and electric properties were analyzed. A small amount of Mn-doping in BT could reduce the annealing temperature and enhance polarization with an Mn content of 8%. In addition, the energy storage properties of BT-8%Mn films achieve the best energy storage performance in terms of energy density and efficiency of 72.4 J/cm3 and 88.5% by changing the annealing temperature to 640 °C. BT-8%Mn energy storage films also possess good stability over a wide temperature range of 20 °C–200 °C, which demonstrates that crystalline/amorphous engineering is a simple and effective way to enhance energy storage applications of dielectric films.

Relaxor-type ferroelectrics show important potential in energy storage fields due to their significantly enhanced energy performance and good temperature stability compared to normal ferroelectrics. Here, a novel, high-performance ternary composition, (0.4−x)BiFeO3-xBi(Mg1/2Ti1/2)O3–0.6BaTiO3 (x = 0.2, 0.25, 0.3, 0.35, 0.4), was designed by compositional modulation, which displays typical relaxor characteristics. The optimum energy storage properties can be attained at x = 0.35, accompanied by energy efficiency of 84.87%, a promising energy storage density of 2.3 J/cm3 and good temperature stability of less than 10% over 20–160 °C. Moreover, the samples provide stable cycling fatigue after 105 cycles and a fast discharge time of t0.9 < 0.1 μs, indicative of promising applications in energy units.

While the robotics techniques have not developed to full automation, robot following is common and crucial in robotic applications to reduce the need for dedicated teleoperation. To achieve this task, the target must first be robustly and consistently perceived. In this paper, a robust visual tracking approach is proposed. The approach adopts a scene analysis module (SAM) to identify the real target and similar distractors, leveraging statistical characteristics of cross-correlation responses. Positive templates are collected based on the tracking confidence constructed by the SAM, and negative templates are gathered by the recognized distractors. Based on the collected templates, response fusion is performed. As a result, the responses of the target are enhanced and the false responses are suppressed, leading to robust tracking results. The proposed approach is validated on an outdoor robot-person following dataset and a collection of public person tracking datasets. The results show that our approach achieved state-of-the-art tracking performance in terms of both the robustness and AUC score.

Modern range sensors generate millions of data points per second, making it difficult to utilize all incoming data effectively in real time for devices with limited computational resources. The Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is a convenient and essential tool commonly used in many research domains. In this paper, an environment representation approach based on the hierarchical GMM structure is proposed, which can be utilized to model environments with weighted Gaussians. The hierarchical structure accelerates training by recursively segmenting local environments into smaller clusters. By adopting the information-theoretic distance and shape of probabilistic distributions, weighted Gaussians can be dynamically allocated to local environments in an arbitrary scale, leading to a full adaptivity in the number of Gaussians. Evaluations are carried out in terms of time efficiency, reconstruction, and fidelity using datasets collected from different sensors. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach is superior with respect to time efficiency while maintaining the high fidelity as compared to other state-of-the-art approaches.

Grain boundary effect on BaTiO3 has been widely investigated for several decades. However, all of them tailored the grain boundary by grain size of BaTiO3. In this case, a direct way was introduced to modify the grain boundary by coating technique to investigate the role of grain boundary in ferroelectric materials. Nonferroelectric phase TiO2 was employed to investigate grain boundary effects on the electrical properties of BaTiO3 piezoelectric ceramics. TiO2 coating can result in the reduction of piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties and the annealing process in oxygen can increase piezoelectric behavior of pure BaTiO3 due to valence state of Ti ions while that remains for Ti-modified composition possibly due to the increased grain boundary effect by impedance analysis. Compared with ferroelectric grain, grain boundary plays a critical role to impact the electrical properties of perovskite-type ferroelectric materials.

A steady nano organic-inorganic perovskite hybrid with [H23-AMP]3/2Fe(CN)6 (3-AMP = 3-methylaminopyridine) was prepared in the air. The structure is an unusual layered organic-inorganic type. The resulting hybrid enveloped in paraffin to prepare [H23-AMP]3/2Fe(CN)6 paste electrode (HPE) shows good electrochemical activity and a couple of oxidation and reduction peaks with potential of cyclic voltammometry (CV) at around 440 mV and 30 mV. Compared with that on CPE, oxidation potential of Fe(CN)63- on HPE shifts negatively 259.7 mV and that of reduction shifts positively 338.7 mV, which exhibits that [H23-AMP]3/2Fe(CN)6 can accelerate the electron-transfer to improve the electrochemical reaction reversibility. Such characteristics of [H23-AMP]3/2Fe(CN)6 have been employed to prepare the DNA biosensor. The single-strand DNA (ssDNA) and double-strand DNA (dsDNA) immobilized on HPE, respectively, can improve the square wave voltammometry (SWV) current and SWV potential shifts positively. The effect of pH was evaluated. And there is hybridization peak on SWV curve using HPE immobilized ssDNA in the complementary ssDNA solution. And HPE immobilized ssDNA can be utilized to monitor the DNA hybridization and detect complementary ssDNA, covering range from 3.24×10−7 to 6.72×10−5 g/mL with detection limit of 1.57×10−7 g/mL. The DNA biosensor exhibits a good stability and reproducibility.