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Organic solar cells (OSCs) have achieved rapid progress, recently, due to the breakthrough of using fused-ring electron acceptors (FREAs), which show broad absorption and narrow bandgap compared to fullerene derivatives. To further improve the device performance of OSCs, it is highly desired to develop suitable donor polymers which feature complementary absorption and favorable energy levels to match the non-fullerene acceptors. We report here the synthesis of two phthalimide-based wide bandgap polymers TPhI-BDT and TffPhI-DBT. The TffPhI-BDT is based on a new electron acceptor unit, difluorophthalimide (ffPhI). The fluorine addition leads to TffPhI-DBT with comparable absorption but lower-lying frontier molecular orbitals versus the non-fluorinated analogue TPhI-BDT. When incorporated into non-fullerene OSCs, polymer TPhI-BDT shows a PCE of 8.31% with a Voc of 0.90 V, a Jsc of 14.07 mA cm-2, and a FF of 66.0%. The fluorine-containing analogue polymer TffPhI-BDT exhibits an improved PCE of 9.48% with a larger Voc of 0.93 V, a Jsc of 15.92 mA cm-2, and a FF of 63.9%. The performance improvement of TffPhI-BDT is mainly attributed to its lower-lying FMOs and improved charge transport characteristics. The results demonstrate that phthalimides are highly promising building blocks for enabling wide bandgap polymers, and fluorine addition leads to polymer TffPhI-DBT with further optimized electrical properties for applications in non-fullerene solar cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The formation of toxic nitrogenous disinfection byproducts (N-DBPs), such as nitrosamines, halonitromethanes and haloacetonitriles, from reactions between chlorine/chloramine and dissolved organic nitrogen in drinking water has caused great concern with regarding public health. This study revealed the occurrence of 17 aliphatic amines, some of which have been confirmed to be the precursors of N-DBPs, in source water across China. A sensitive method based on benzenesulfonyl chloride derivatization and liquid-liquid extraction followed by GC-MS analysis was established for the simultaneous analysis of the selected amines in aqueous samples. In total, 37 source water samples from the capital cities of 20 provinces were collected for the survey. Among the 17 amines, 14 were detected with an average frequency of detection of 36%. The most relevant amines in terms of frequency and maximum concentrations detected were dimethylamine (100%, 24.82 μg/L), methylamine (78%, 0.92 μg/L), N-methylethylamine (70%, 8.84 μg/L), propylamine (59%, 10.69 μg/L), diethylamine (54%, 3.76 μg/L), N-methylbutylamine (35%, 3.07 μg/L), N-ethylpropylamine (35%, 0.52 μg/L), and piperidine (32%, 2.35 μg/L). This is the first large scale survey of the aliphatic amines occurrence in source water in the world. The wide presence of nitrosamine precursors like dimethylamine, N-methylethylamine and diethylamine, and the precursors of haloacetonitriles and halonitromethanes like methylamine and propylamine suggests that better source water management is required to ensure the safety of drinking water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with extended π-conjugated cores (from naphthalene, anthracene, pyrene, to perylene) are incorporated into nonfullerene acceptors for the first time. Four different fused-ring electron acceptors (FREAs), i.e., DTN-IC-2Ph, DTA-IC-3Ph, DTP-IC-4Ph, and DTPy-IC-5Ph, are prepared via simple and facile synthetic procedures, yielding a remarkable platform to study the structure-property relationship for nonfullerene solar cells. With the PAH core being extended systematically, the gradually redshifted absorption with enhanced molar extinction coefficient (ε) is realized, the energy level of the highest occupied molecular orbital is up-shifted, and the electron mobility is greatly enhanced. Meanwhile, the solubility decreases and the molecular packing becomes strengthened. As a result, with an optimized combination of these characteristics, DTP-IC-4Ph attains good solubility, high molar extinction coefficient, complementary absorption, suitable morphology, well-matched energy levels, as well as efficient charge dissociation and transport in blend film. Consequently, the DTP-IC-4Ph-based solar cells with a donor polymer, poly[(2,6-(4,8-bis(5-(2-ethylhexyl) thiophen-2-yl)-benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b′]dithiophene))-alt-(5,5-(1′,3′-di-2-thienyl- 5′,7′-bis(2-ethylhexyl)benzo[1′,2′-c:4′,5′-c′]dithiophene-4,8-dione))] (PBDB-T) exhibit a promising power conversion efficiency of 10.37% without any additives, which is close to the best performance achieved in additive-free nonfullerene solar cells (NFSCs). The results demonstrate that the PAH building blocks have great potential for the construction of novel FREAs for efficient additive-free NFSCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of high-performance unipolar n-type organic semiconductors still remains as a great challenge. In this work, all-acceptor bithiophene imide-based ladder-type small molecules BTIn and semiladder-type homopolymers PBTIn (n = 1-5) were synthesized, and their structure-property correlations were studied in depth. It was found that Pd-catalyzed Stille coupling is superior to Ni-mediated Yamamoto coupling to produce polymers with higher molecular weight and improved polymer quality, thus leading to greatly increased electron mobility (μe). Due to their all-acceptor backbone, these polymers all exhibit unipolar n-type transport in organic thin-film transistors, accompanied by low off-currents (10-10-10-9 A), large on/off current ratios (106), and small threshold voltages (~15-25 V). The highest μe, up to 3.71 cm² V-1 s-1, is attained from PBTI1 with the shortest monomer unit. As the monomer size is extended, the μe drops by 2 orders to 0.014 cm² V-1 s-1 for PBTI5. This monotonic decrease of μe was also observed in their homologous BTIn small molecules. This trend of mobility decrease is in good agreement with the evolvement of disordered phases within the film, as revealed by Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction measurements. The extension of the ladder-type building blocks appears to have a large impact on the motion freedom of the building blocks and the polymer chains during film formation, thus negatively affecting film morphology and charge carrier mobility. The result indicates that synthesizing building blocks with more extended ladder-type backbone does not necessarily lead to improved mobilities. This study marks a significant advance in the performance of all-acceptor-type polymers as unipolar electron transporting materials and provides useful guidelines for further development of (semi)ladder-type molecular and polymeric semiconductors for applications in organic electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The parameterization of physical processes is one of the critical elements to properly simulate the regional climate over eastern China. It is essential to conduct detailed analyses on the effect of physical parameterization schemes on regional climate simulation, to provide more reliable regional climate change information. In this paper, we evaluate the 25-year (1983-2007) summer monsoon climate characteristics of precipitation and surface air temperature by using the regional spectral model (RSM) with different physical schemes. The ensemble results using the reliability ensemble averaging (REA) method are also assessed. The result shows that the RSM model has the capacity to reproduce the spatial patterns, the variations, and the temporal tendency of surface air temperature and precipitation over eastern China. And it tends to predict better climatology characteristics over the Yangtze River basin and the South China. The impact of different physical schemes on RSM simulations is also investigated. Generally, the CLD3 cloud water prediction scheme tends to produce larger precipitation because of its overestimation of the low-level moisture. The systematic biases derived from the KF2 cumulus scheme are larger than those from the RAS scheme. The scale-selective bias correction (SSBC) method improves the simulation of the temporal and spatial characteristics of surface air temperature and precipitation and advances the circulation simulation capacity. The REA ensemble results show significant improvement in simulating temperature and precipitation distribution, which have much higher correlation coefficient and lower root mean square error. The REA result of selected experiments is better than that of nonselected experiments, indicating the necessity of choosing better ensemble samples for ensemble. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural organic matter (NOM) represents the major source of precursors for disinfection byproducts (DBPs), such as trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs), formed during disinfection of drinking water, but the molecular composition and reactivity of NOM remain not well understood. In this study, electrospray ionization coupled to Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR MS) was used to characterize the molecular composition of NOM of 20 source waters taken across China for the purpose of determining the major precursors of THMs and HAAs at molecular level. It was found that there is a core of NOM compositions that are ubiquitous in different source waters, which is supposed to be more relevant for NOM quality. Formation potentials (FP) of THMs and HAAs were determined for NOM from different source waters during chlorination. Spearman's rank correlation was used to link THMFP and HAAFP with the individual molecular composition of NOM. Significant correlation (P < 0.001) was found between DBPFP and the NOM molecules with a high O/C ratio and low H/C ratio, indicating these molecules could contribute greatly to the formation of THMs and HAAs during chlorination. The link of THMFP and HAAFP with individual NOM molecules may allow us to develop more effective treatment strategies to achieve the drinking water safety objective: effective disinfection of waterborne pathogens while minimizing toxic DBPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In environments that are hostile to Global Navigation Satellites Systems (GNSS), the precision achieved by a mobile light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system (MLS) can deteriorate into the sub-meter or even the meter range due to errors in the positioning and orientation system (POS). This paper proposes a novel least squares collocation (LSC)-based method to improve the accuracy of the MLS in these hostile environments. Through a thorough consideration of the characteristics of POS errors, the proposed LSC-based method effectively corrects these errors using LiDAR control points, thereby improving the accuracy of the MLS. This method is also applied to the calibration of misalignment between the laser scanner and the POS. Several datasets from different scenarios have been adopted in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results from experiments indicate that this method would represent a significant improvement in terms of the accuracy of the MLS in environments that are essentially hostile to GNSS and is also effective regarding the calibration of misalignment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burst segmentation (BS) is a high-efficiency contention resolution scheme in bufferless optical burst switching (OBS) networks. A prioritized BS scheme for quality of service (QoS) support is developed. Unlike the existing work on the BS scheme, the proposed BS model considers path-correlated factors, such as path length, the adjoining paths carrying traffic on a given path, and the multipriority traffic coming from all paths. Byte loss probability for high-priority and low-priority bursts under the time-based assembly approach and the length-based assembly approach to estimate the performance of the proposed BS scheme by comparing the cumulative distribution function of a burst length in an OBS ingress node (source) with that in an egress node (destination) is introduced. A preemptive BS policy for different priority bursts is proposed to support the QoS of the OBS network. Finally, a simulation is given to validate the proposed analytical model in an existing OBS network with two priority bursts. It is shown that the proposed BS scheme can realize the service differentiation for multipriority traffic under the consideration of network topology-dependent parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural organic matter (NOM) can affect the performance of water treatment processes, and serves as a main precursor for the formation of disinfection byproduct (DBPs) during chlorination. To minimize such undesirable effects, a better understanding of its structural information and reactivity toward chlorine is necessary. In this study, electrospray ionization coupled to Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (ESI FT-ICR MS) was used to study the molecular composition of NOM in source water. More than four thousand NOM components were resolved in the sample. NOM molecules with a low degree of oxidation (low O/C ratio) were found to be more reactive toward chlorine than those with high O/C ratio. Totally, 659 one-chlorine containing products and 348 two-chlorine containing products were detected in the chlorinated sample at a high confidence level. The chlorinated products can be arranged into series, which indicate they were originated from precursor compounds in series related by the replacement of CH4 against oxygen. Of the 1007 chlorine-containing products observed in this study, only 7 molecular formulas can be found in previous studies, showing the distinct difference from previous studies. This study explored the reactivity of NOM toward chlorine on a molecular level, which was previously explained on the level of whole mixtures or fractions of NOM, and the identified chlorinated products may contribute to our knowledge of the unknown total organic halide (TOX). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concentrations of Cryptosporidium in the source water of several cities of Zhejiang Province, China were determined to be in the range of 0-17 oocysts/10 L in the rainy season in 2008, with a mean value of 7 oocysts/10 L. Based on the investigation data, comprehensive risk assessment of Cryptosporidium infection was performed by considering different water intake routes as well as water consumption. Intakes of unboiled tapwater (including drinking and tooth-brushing and food and dish washing) and source water (through swimming in rivers) were estimated to be 2.59-25.9 and 0.32-0.74 L/year-person, respectively. The mortality due to Cryptosporidium infection for people in this region, excluding HIV-infected patients, was calculated as 0-0.0146 per 105 persons using a conditional probability formula. Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were used to quantify the risk of Cryptosporidium infection, for which uncertainty was analyzed. For people who consumed conventionally treated water, the DALYs due to Cryptosporidium infection were 6.51 per 105 (95% CI: 2.16 × 10-5-22.35 × 10-5) persons, which were higher than a risk judged acceptable by some (1.97 × 10-5 DALYs per year), and the risk for those consuming ozone-treated water became 0.0689 × 10-5 DALYs per year. The major risk of infection resulted from swimming in the river. This study provides a method to establish the risk of Cryptosporidium infection and optimize the scheme for reducing the risk effectively, which is useful for the modification of water quality standards based on cost utility analysis given use of DALYs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an optical burst switching core node, each output port is equipped with a different network interface unit that can provide a specific data rate. Bursts will use different probabilities of select output ports, which is in accordance to the path-length metric-based routing optimal algorithm and wavelength resource situation. Previous studies ignore this issue. We establish a burst-outputted model considering the different service rate of output ports and different port-selected probabilities. We calculate burst-blocking probability and analyze the relationship between service rate and output-port-selected probability in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]