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The observation of single mode propagation in an air-clad single crystal sapphire optical fiber at wavelengths at and above 783 nm is presented for the first time. A high-temperature wet acid etching method was used to reduce the diameter of a 10 cm length of commercially-sourced sapphire fiber from 125 micrometers to 6.5 micrometers, and far-field imaging provided modal information at intervals as the fiber diameter decreased. Modal volume was shown to decrease with decreasing diameter, and single mode behavior was observed at the minimum diameter achieved. While weakly-guiding approximations are generally inaccurate for low modal volume optical fiber with high core-cladding refractive index disparity, consistency between these approximations and experimental results was observed when the effective numerical aperture was measured and substituted for the theoretical numerical aperture in weakly-guiding approximation calculations. With the demonstration of very low modal volume in sapphire at fiber diameters much larger than anticipated by legacy calculations, the resolution of sapphire fiber distributed sensors may be increased and other sensing schemes requiring very low modal volume, such as fiber Bragg gratings, may be realized in extreme environment applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two different interlayers were introduced in lithium-sulfur batteries to improve the cycling stability with sulfur loading as high as 80% of total mass of cathode. Melamine was recommended as a nitrogen-rich (N-rich) amine component to synthesize a modified polyacrylic acid (MPAA). The electrospun MPAA was carbonized into N-rich carbon nanofibers, which were used as cathode interlayers, while carbon nanofibers from PAA without melamine was used as an anode interlayer. At the rate of 0.1 C, the initial discharge capacity with two interlayers was 983 mAh g-1, and faded down to 651 mAh g-1 after 100 cycles with the coulombic efficiency of 95.4%. At the rate of 1 C, the discharge capacity was kept to 380 mAh g-1 after 600 cycles with a coulombic efficiency of 98.8%. It apparently demonstrated that the cathode interlayer is extremely effective at shutting down the migration of polysulfide ions. The anode interlayer induced the lithium ions to form uniform lithium metal deposits confined on the fiber surface and in the bulk to strengthen the cycling stability of the lithium metal anode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State of charge (SOC) estimation is of great significance for the safe operation of lithium-ion battery (LIB) packs. Improving the accuracy of SOC estimation results and reducing the algorithm complexity are important for the state estimation. In this paper, a zeroaxial straight line, whose slope changes along with SOC, is used to map the predictive SOC to the predictive open circuit voltage (OCV), and thus only one parameter is used to linearize the SOC-OCV curve near the present working point. An equivalent circuit model is used to simulate the dynamic behavior of a LIB, updating the linearization parameter in the measurement equation according to the present value of the state variables, and then a standard Kalman filter is used to estimate the SOC based on the local linearization. This estimation method makes the output equation of the nonlinear battery model contain only one parameter related to its dynamic variables. This is beneficial to simplify the algorithm structure and to reduce the computation cost. The linearization method do not essentially lose the main information of the dynamic model, and its effectiveness is verified experimentally. Fully and a partially charged battery experiments indicate that the estimation error of SOC is better than 0.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]