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Abstract Effectively suppressing nonradiative recombination at the SnO2/perovskite interface is imperative for perovskite solar cells. Although the capabilities of alkali salts at the SnO2/perovskite interface have been acknowledged, the effects and optimal selection of alkali metal cations remain poorly understood. Herein, a novel approach for obtaining the optimal alkali metal cation (A‐cation) at the interface is investigated by comparatively analyzing different alkali carbonates (A2CO3; Li2CO3, Na2CO3, K2CO3, Rb2CO3, and Cs2CO3). Theoretical calculations demonstrate that A2CO3 coordinates with undercoordinated Sn and O on the surface, effectively mitigating oxygen vacancy (VO) defects with increasing A‐cation size, whereas Cs2CO3 exhibits diminished preferability owing to enhanced steric hindrance. The experimental results highlight the crucial role of Rb2CO3 in actively passivating VO defects, forming a robust bond with SnO2, and facilitating Rb+ diffusion into the perovskite layer, thereby enhancing charge extraction, alleviating deep‐level trap states and structural distortion in the perovskite film, and significantly suppressing nonradiative recombination. X‐ray absorption spectroscopy analyses further reveal the effect of Rb2CO3 on the local structure of the perovskite film. Consequently, a Rb2CO3‐treated device with aperture area of 0.14 cm2 achieves a notable efficiency of 22.10%, showing improved stability compared to the 20.11% achieved for the control device.

Abstract Interest has grown in services that consume a significant amount of energy, such as large language models (LLMs), and research is being conducted worldwide on synaptic devices for neuromorphic hardware. However, various complex processes are problematic for the implementation of synaptic properties. Here, synaptic characteristics are implemented through a novel method, namely side chain control of conjugated polymers. The developed devices exhibit the characteristics of the biological brain, especially spike‐timing‐dependent plasticity (STDP), high‐pass filtering, and long‐term potentiation/depression (LTP/D). Moreover, the fabricated synaptic devices show enhanced nonvolatile characteristics, such as long retention time (≈102 s), high ratio of Gmax/Gmin, high linearity, and reliable cyclic endurance (≈103 pulses). This study presents a new pathway for next‐generation neuromorphic computing by modulating conjugated polymers with side chain control, thereby achieving high‐performance synaptic properties.

Summary: By mimicking the synergistic interplay of primary and secondary coordination spheres within native peroxidases, we demonstrate a scaffold-free, yet highly effective molecular-level cooperation between an iron(III)-containing hemin cofactor and exogenous histamine in accelerating a peroxidase-like reaction. Density functional theory computations predict that, among structurally similar molecules, the histamine is the most interactive partner of hemin to elicit a spontaneous peroxidation by electrostatically attracting the proton of hydrogen peroxide to its own imidazole and thermodynamically stabilizing a transition-state intermediate. Although the molecular weight of hemin-histamine pair is 763, 1.7% of the horseradish peroxidase, cooperative catalysis of two natural molecules exhibits 17.3 times greater catalytic efficiency (17.93 M−1s−1) and 57.8 times larger specific activity (36.45 μmol/min·mg) than the hemin alone (1.04 M−1s−1 and 0.63 μmol/min·mg). Despite no scaffold or covalent linkage, the self-assembly with hemin is highly histamine-specific in complex environments, leading rapid color changes by substrate oxidation within 10 s.

Halide perovskite has been applied for resistive switching memory devices, but there are challenges remained to achieve practical application. By using high-throughput screening based on first-principles calculations, the authors discover that lead-free dimer-Cs3Sb2I9 meets the requirements, which exhibits switching speed of 20 ns.

The research to utilize chemical potential mismatch for materials synthesis has been limited across the oxide interface. Here, the authors show that directional ionic transport from the VO2 layers stabilizes the rutile TiO2 phase at extremely low temperatures, at which epitaxy is difficult, by effectively lowering the activation barrier for crystallization.

Abstract We modified perovskite/Spiro‐OMeTAD interface by using two novel phosphonium salts containing PF6− counter anion (i.e., ClTPPPF6 and BrTPPPF6). The cation and anion in phosphonium salts possess not only ionic bonds but also coordination bonds with perovskites. The anion and cation vacancies at the surface and GBs of perovskite films can be filled by phosphonium cations and PF6− anions, respectively, resulting in reduced defect density and prolonged carrier lifetimes. The stronger chemical interaction and accordingly better defect passivation were certified for BrTPPPF6 than ClTPPPF6. As a result, the devices modified by ClTPPPF6 and BrTPPPF6 deliver a PCE of 21.73% and 22.15%, respectively, which far exceed 20.6% of the control device. The unsealed BrTPPPF6 modified device maintains 98.2% of its initial efficiency value after thermal aging of 1320 h whereas merely 84.7% for the control device. 96.4% of its original efficiency was retained for BrTPPPF6‐modified device after ambient exposure of 2016 h.

Among various sensors used to recognize obstacles in marine environments, vision sensors are the most basic. Vision sensors are significantly affected by the surrounding environment and cannot recognize distant objects. However, despite these drawbacks, they can detect objects that radars cannot detect in nearby regions. They can also recognize small obstacles such as boats that are not equipped with an automatic identification system (AIS) or buoys. Thus, vision sensors and radar can be used in a complementary manner. This paper proposes a vision sensor-based model, called Skip-ENet, for recognizing obstacles in real time. Compared with ENet, the amount of computation is not significantly higher. Further, Skip-ENet can segment complex marine obstacles effectively by increasing the values for the class accuracy and mean Intersection of Union (mIoU). Moreover, this model enables even low-cost embedded systems to compute 10 or more frames per second (fps). The superiority of the proposed model was verified by comparing its performance with that of the conventional segmentation models, MobileNet, ENet, and DeeplabV3+.

Abstract Memory devices have been advanced so much, but still it is highly required to find stable and reliable materials with low‐power consumption. Halide perovskites (HPs) have been recently adopted for memory application since they have advantages of fast switching based on ionic motion in crystal structure. However, HPs also suffer from poor stability, so it is necessary to improve the stability of HPs. In this regard, combined first‐principles screening and experimental verification are performed to design HPs that have high environmental stability and low‐operating voltage for memory devices. First‐principles screening identifies 2D layered AB2X5 structure as the best candidate switching layer for memory devices, because it has lower formation energy and defect formation energy than 3D ABX3 or other layered structures (A3B2X7, A2BX4). To verify results, all‐inorganic 2D layered CsPb2Br5 is synthesized and used in memory devices. The memory devices that use CsPb2Br5 show much better stability and lower operating voltages than devices that use CsPbBr3. These findings are expected to provide new opportunity to design materials for reliable device applications based on calculation, screening, and experimental verification.

The mid-infrared (mid-IR) continuum generation based on broadband second harmonic generation (SHG) (or difference frequency generation) is of great interest in a wide range of applications such as free space communications, environmental monitoring, thermal imaging, high-sensitivity metrology, gas sensing, and molecular fingerprint spectroscopy. The second-order nonlinear optic (NLO) crystals have been spotlighted as a material platform for converting the wavelengths of existing lasers into the mid-IR spectral region or for realizing tunable lasers. In particular, the spectral coverage could be extended to ~19 µm with non-oxide NLO crystals. In this paper, we theoretically and numerically investigated the broadband SHG properties of non-oxide mid-IR crystals in three categories: chalcopyrite semiconductors, defect chalcopyrite, and orthorhombic ternary chalcogenides. The technique is based on group velocity matching between interacting waves in addition to birefringent phase matching. We will describe broadband SHG characteristics in terms of beam propagation directions, spectral positions of resonance, effective nonlinearities, spatial walk-offs between interacting beams, and spectral bandwidths. The results will show that the spectral bandwidths of the fundamental wave allowed for broadband SHG to reach several hundreds of nm. The corresponding SH spectral range spans from 1758.58 to 4737.18 nm in the non-oxide crystals considered in this study. Such broadband SHG using short pulse trains can potentially be applied to frequency up-conversion imaging in the mid-IR region, in information transmission, and in nonlinear optical signal processing.

The generation and detection of nonclassical light of about 2 μm has good potential in an emerging field of high-sensitivity metrology, especially gravitational wave detection, as well as free-space quantum communication. A pair of photons is generated through a spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) process in a nonlinear optic crystal, which can be properly entangled in a spatial region where two beams with each polarization overlap or in a Sagnac-loop interferometer configuration. We investigated theoretically and numerically Type II SPDC in a potassium niobate (KNbO3, KN) crystal, which is useful as a material platform for generating photon pairs of high spectral purity in the 2-μm range. The technique is based on the frequency degenerate SPDC under Type II extended phase matching (EPM). We described the EPM characteristics of KN and showed that it is practically feasible for a 1064-nm pumped SPDC under moderate temperature conditions. The effective nonlinear optic coefficient of KN is at least four-times larger than those of other crystals using the Type II EPM approach, which implies a significant improvement in SPDC efficiency. The joint spectral analysis showed that a pair of photons can be generated with a high purity of 0.995 through proper pump filtering.

Biofilms play a crucial role in the development of Candida-associated denture stomatitis. Inhibition of microbial adhesion to poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and phosphate containing PMMA has been examined in this work. C. albicans and mixed salivary microbial biofilms were compared on naked and salivary pre-conditioned PMMA surfaces in the presence or absence of antimicrobials (Cetylpyridinium chloride [CPC], KSL-W, Histatin 5 [His 5]). Polymers with varying amounts of phosphate (0–25%) were tested using four C. albicans oral isolates as well as mixed salivary bacteria and 24 h biofilms were assessed for metabolic activity and confirmed using Live/Dead staining and confocal microscopy. Biofilm metabolism was reduced as phosphate density increased (15%: p = 0.004; 25%: p = 0.001). Loading of CPC on 15% phosphated disks showed a substantial decrease (p = 0.001) in biofilm metabolism in the presence or absence of a salivary pellicle. Salivary pellicle on uncharged PMMA enhanced the antimicrobial activity of CPC only. CPC also demonstrated remarkable antimicrobial activity on mixed salivary bacterial biofilms under different conditions displaying the potent efficacy of CPC (350 µg/mL) when combined with an artificial protein pellicle (Biotene half strength).

Recent advances of high-quality lithium niobate (LN) on insulator technology have revitalized the progress of novel chip-integrated LN-based photonic devices and accelerated application research. One of the promising technologies of interest is the generation of entangled photon pairs based on spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) in LNs. In this paper, we investigated, theoretically and numerically, Type II SPDC in two kinds of LNs—undoped and 5-mol% MgO doped LNs. In each case, both non-poled and periodically poled crystals were considered. The technique is based on the SPDC under Type II extended phase matching, where the phase matching and the group velocity matching are simultaneously achieved between interacting photons. The proposed approach has not yet been reported for LNs. We discussed all factors required to generate photon pairs in LNs, in terms of the beam propagation direction, the spectral position of photons, and the corresponding effective nonlinearities and walk-offs. We showed that the spectral positions of the generated photon pairs fall into the mid-infrared region with high potential for free-space quantum communication, spectroscopy, and high-sensitivity metrology. The joint spectral analyses showed that photon pairs can be generated with high purities of 0.995–0.999 with proper pump filtering.

We investigated the high-purity entangled photon-pair generation in five kinds of “non-poled” potassium titanyl phosphate (KTP) isomorphs (i.e., KTiOPO4, RbTiOPO4, KTiOAsO4, RbTiOAsO4, and CsTiOAsO4). The technique is based on the spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) under Type II extended phase matching (EPM), where the phase matching and the group velocity matching are simultaneously achieved between the interacting photons in non-poled crystals rather than periodically poled (PP) KTPs that are widely used for quantum experiments. We discussed both theoretically and numerically all aspects required to generate photon pairs in non-poled KTP isomorphs, in terms of the range of the beam propagation direction (or the spectral range of photons) and the corresponding effective nonlinearities and beam walk-offs. We showed that the SPDC efficiency can be increased in non-poled KTP isomorphs by 29% to 77% compared to PPKTP cases. The joint spectral analyses showed that photon pairs can be generated with high purities of 0.995–0.997 with proper pump filtering. In contrast to the PPKTP case, where the EPM is achieved only at one specific wavelength, the spectral position of photon pairs in the non-poled KTP isomorphs can be chosen over the wide range of 1883.8–2068.1 nm.

We investigate the high-purity entangled photon pair generation in a recently developed borate crystal, Ba3Mg3(BO3)3F3. The technique is based on the spontaneous parametric down-conversion under the extended phase matching (EPM), where the phase matching and the group velocity matching between the interacting photons are satisfied simultaneously in bulk crystals with point symmetry of orthorhombic mm2 (thus showing biaxial birefringence). We will discuss all the theoretical aspects required for the generation of photon pairs in mm2 biaxial crystals, which are much more complex than the cases of uniaxial crystals (e.g., β-BaB2O4 and LiNbO3) and periodically poled crystals that are widely used in the field. Our study includes theoretical and numerical investigations of two types of EPM and their corresponding effective nonlinearities and spatial walk-offs. The results show that two types of EPM are satisfied over the specific range in the direction of pump wave vector, corresponding to its spectral ranges of 876.15–1052.77 nm for Type I and 883.92–914.33 nm for Type II. The joint spectral analyses show that photon-pairs can be generated with high purities of 0.997 with a proper pump filtering (for Type II), and 0.833 even without pump filtering (for Type I).

Image-based localization is one of the most widely researched localization techniques in the robotics and computer vision communities. As enormous image data sets are provided through the Internet, many studies on estimating a location with a pre-built image-based 3D map have been conducted. Most research groups use numerous image data sets that contain sufficient features. In contrast, this paper focuses on image-based localization in the case of insufficient images and features. A more accurate localization method is proposed based on a probabilistic map using 3D-to-2D matching correspondences between a map and a query image. The probabilistic feature map is generated in advance by probabilistic modeling of the sensor system as well as the uncertainties of camera poses. Using the conventional PnP algorithm, an initial camera pose is estimated on the probabilistic feature map. The proposed algorithm is optimized from the initial pose by minimizing Mahalanobis distance errors between features from the query image and the map to improve accuracy. To verify that the localization accuracy is improved, the proposed algorithm is compared with the conventional algorithm in a simulation and realenvironments

Localization is an essential issue for robot navigation, allowing the robot to perform tasks autonomously. However, in environments with laser scan ambiguity, such as long corridors, the conventional SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) algorithms exploiting a laser scanner may not estimate the robot pose robustly. To resolve this problem, we propose a novel localization approach based on a hybrid method incorporating a 2D laser scanner and a monocular camera in the framework of a graph structure-based SLAM. 3D coordinates of image feature points are acquired through the hybrid method, with the assumption that the wall is normal to the ground and vertically flat. However, this assumption can be relieved, because the subsequent feature matching process rejects the outliers on an inclined or non-flat wall. Through graph optimization with constraints generated by the hybrid method, the final robot pose is estimated. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, real experiments were conducted in an indoor environment with a long corridor. The experimental results were compared with those of the conventional GMappingapproach. The results demonstrate that it is possible to localize the robot in environments with laser scan ambiguity in real time, and the performance of the proposed method is superior to that of the conventional approach.

The magnetic stability of E′ centers and the peroxy radical on the surface of α-quartz is investigated with first-principles calculations to understand their role in magnetic flux noise in superconducting qubits (SQs) and superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) fabricated on amorphous silica substrates. Paramagnetic E′ centers are common in both stoichiometric and oxygen deficient silica and quartz, and we calculate that they are more common on the surface than the bulk. However, we find the surface defects are magnetically stable in their paramagnetic ground state and thus will not contribute to 1/f noise through fluctuation at millikelvin temperatures.

In this study, we propose a solution to the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem in low dynamic environments by using a pose graph and an RGB-D (red-green-blue depth) sensor. The low dynamic environments refer to situations in which the positions of objects change over long intervals. Therefore, in the low dynamic environments, robots have difficulty recognizing the repositioning of objects unlike in highly dynamic environments in which relatively fast-moving objects can be detected using a variety of moving object detection algorithms. The changes in the environments then cause groups of false loop closing when the same moved objects are observed for a while, which means that conventional SLAM algorithms produce incorrect results. To address this problem, we propose a novel SLAM method that handles low dynamic environments. The proposed method uses a pose graph structure and an RGB-D sensor. First, to prune the falsely grouped constraints efficiently, nodes of the graph, that represent robot poses, are grouped according to the grouping rules with noise covariances. Next, false constraints of the pose graph are pruned according to an error metric based on the grouped nodes. The pose graph structure is reoptimized after eliminating the false information, and the corrected localization and mapping results are obtained. The performance of the method was validated in real experiments using a mobile robot system.

Determining the origin of the insulating gap in the monoclinic V O2(M1) is a long-standing issue. The difficulty of this study arises from the simultaneous occurrence of structural and electronic transitions upon thermal cycling. Here, we compare the electronic structure of the M1 phase with that of single crystalline insulating V O2(A) and V O2(B) thin films to better understand the insulating phase of VO2. As these A and B phases do not undergo a structural transition upon thermal cycling, we comparatively study the origin of the gap opening in the insulating VO2 phases. By x-ray absorption and optical spectroscopy, we find that the shift of unoccupied t2g orbitals away from the Fermi level is a common feature, which plays an important role for the insulating behavior in VO2 polymorphs. The distinct splitting of the half-filled t2g orbital is observed only in the M1 phase, widening the bandgap up to ∼0.6 eV. Our approach of comparing all three insulating VO2 phases provides insight into a better understanding of the electronic structure and the origin of the insulating gap in VO2.