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Exploring the efficient bifunctional catalysts and binder-free electrode materials for both oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is receiving continuous interest. Herein, we report the fabrication of hierarchical copper phosphide nanoarrays (Cu3P) on three-dimensional (3D) nickel foam (NF) through a template-directed synthetic strategy as electrocatalysts for overall water splitting. Specifically, the Cu3P/NF electrode demonstrates a remarkably low overpotential of ∼331 mV to approach the current density of 50 mA cm−2 in the OER, and an overpotential of ∼115 mV to achieve −10 mA cm−2 current density in the HER. Meanwhile the Cu3P/NF catalyst could hold a great stability for both reactions in alkaline condition, reflected in 37 h for OER and 24 h for HER of consistent galvanostatic electrolysis. As revealed by TEM, STEM and XPS characterizations, the high catalytic OER activity can be ascribed to the 3D open structure of Cu3P/NF and the abundant CuO active sites in hierarchical CuO/Cu3P/NF structure after in-situ activation. Furthermore, the overall water splitting is conducted in a two-electrode cell, which requires only a cell voltage of 1.63 V to approach 10 mA cm−2 with a good stability of 20 h. This protocol of Cu3P/NF electrode affords a general strategy to construct hierarchically structured metal phosphides for clean energy-related application.

Due to the advantages of large workspace, low cost and the integrated vision/force sensing, robotic milling has become an important way for machining of complex parts. In recent years, many scholars have studied the problems existing in the applications of robotic milling, and lots of results have been made in the dynamics, pose planning, deformation control etc., which provides theoretical guidance for high precision and high efficiency of robotic milling. From the perspective of complex parts robotic milling, this paper focuses on machining process planning and control techniques including the analysis of the robot-workspace, robot trajectory planning, vibration monitoring and control, deformation monitoring and compensation. As well as the principles of these technologies such as robot stiffness characteristics, dynamic characteristics, chatter mechanisms, and deformation mechanisms. The methods and characteristics related to the theory and technology of robotic milling of complex parts are summarized systematically. The latest research progress and achievements in the relevant fields are reviewed. It is hoped that the challenges, strategies and development related to robotic milling could be clarified through the carding work in this paper, so as to promote the application of related theories and technologies in high efficiency and precision intelligent milling with robot for complex parts.

Ultrathin metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) nanosheets have been considered as one of promising electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction due to their unique structures. However, the preparation process is subject to the low-yield exfoliation and time-consuming synthetic methods. And it still requires to be explored to develop an efficient strategy for regulation of surface electronic states of MOFs to enhance their electrocatalytic activities. Herein, we report a facile microwave-assisted synthesis of NiCoFe-based trimetallic metal-organic framework (MOF) nanosheets, which can achieve simultaneously rapid synthesis and activation of MOF for OER. The as-prepared Ni4Co4Fe2-MOF nanosheets exhibit excellent OER activity and electrochemical stability, which can deliver a current density of 10 mA cm−2 at a low overpotential of 243 mV with a small Tafel slope of 48.1 mV dec-1. This work provides a facile method for the rapid synthesis of MOF nanosheets and also demonstrates an effective approach for regulating the electronic structure of MOFs for electrocatalysis.

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline porous materials, and some of them have been used as photocatalysts for H2 production in the presence of Pt and sacrificial reagents. Herein we report a significantly enhanced production of H2 on mixed CdS and MOF, measured under a 420 nm LED lamp in a N2-saturated aqueous solution containing Na2S and Na2SO3. MIL-125-NH2, UiO-66-NH2, and PCN-415-NH2, which are Ti-, Zr-, and Ti, Zr-based MOFs, respectively, were prepared, followed by a two-step precipitation of CdS. All MOFs were nearly not active, but CdS-loaded MOFs were not only active, but also more active than either CdS or Pt/CdS. Moreover, at 40% CdS loading, the MOF activity was PCN-415-NH2 > MIL-125-NH2 > UiO-66-NH2. N2 adsorption showed that CdS nanoparticles were present in the micropores of MOFs. Then the solid photoluminescence, band parameters, and (photo)electrochemical reactions were measured. Accordingly, a possible mechanism is proposed, involving the electron transfer from CdS to PCN-415-NH2, and the hole transfer from PCN-415-NH2 to CdS. In the reaction process, both CdS and MOF act as photocatalysts, other than co-catalysts. This work shows a simply strategy for enhancing H2 production under visible light.

A Trunk Line Based Geographic Routing(TLBGR) protocol in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) is proposed in this paper to solve the problem of data acquisition in the traditional trunk coordinated control system. Because of the characteristics of short communication time and high packet loss among vehicles, the vehicles entering the trunk lines can not transmit their information to the trunk coordinated control system stably. To resolve this problem, the proposed protocol uses the trunk lines’ traffic flow and the surrounding road network to provide a real-time data transmission routing scheme. It takes into account the data congestion problem caused by the large traffic flow of the main roads, which leads to the corresponding increase of the information flow of the section and the package loss, and the link partition problem caused by the insufficient traffic flow, which makes the vehicles have to carry and relay information thus increasing the transmission delay. The proposed TLBGR protocol can be divided into two stages: the next-intersection selection, and the next-hop selection in the chosen path between the current and next intersections. Simulation results show that, compared with other IoT routing protocols including Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR), Ad-hoc On Demand Vector (AODV), and Q-AODV, the TLBGR protocol has better performance in aspects of end-to-end delay, delivery rate, and routing cost under the scenario of urban traffic trunk lines. The TLBGR protocol can effectively avoid data congestion and local optimum problems, increase the delivery rate of data packets, and is therefore suitable for the routing requirements in this application scenario.

The 6G space-air-ground integrated network can achieve global full-area three-dimensional coverage and ultrawide-area broadband access capabilities anytime and anywhere. Through the integration of satellite networks and terrestrial networks, it can provide a better user experience and has become the core development direction of 6G networks. Inspired by the potential of service differentiation ability of 6G IEEE 802.11ax protocols, say 6G Wi-Fi 6, a Data-driven Fair-Hierarchical Scheduling (DFHS) is proposed in this paper to schedule packets from diversified applications in dense IoT networks, which allows data streams to fairly share the spectrum and at the same time satisfy deadline requirements. Our DFHS is divided into the outer-layer and inner-layer schedulers. First, diversified packets of IoT services are classified into categories according to delay requirement and transmission frequency. After that, the outerlayer scheduler assign classified packets to different Access Categories with differentiated channel competition capabilities. Next, the inner-layer scheduler optimally schedules the AC queues according to access response ratio of packets. A Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm is further introduced to solve the optimal scheduling problem of packets. Numerical results demonstrate that DFHS outperforms classic FCFS, the latest EARS and Tians schemes in terms of Service Missing Ratio, queueing delay and fair index.

Users’ trust relations have a significant influence on their choice towards different products. However, few recommendation or prediction algorithms both consider users’ social trust relations and item-related knowledge, which makes them difficult to cope with cold start and the data sparsity problems. In this paper, we propose a novel trust-ware recommendation method based on heterogeneous multi-relational graphs fusion, termed as T-MRGF. In contrast with other traditional methods, it fuses the user-related and item-related graphs with the user–item interaction graph and fully utilizes the high-level connections existing in heterogeneous graphs. Specifically, we first establish the user–user trust relation graph, user–item interaction graph and item–item knowledge graph, and the user feature and item feature, which have been obtained from the user–item graph, are used as the input of the user-related graph and the item-related graph respectively. The fusion is achieved through the cascade of feature vectors before and after feature propagation. In this way, the heterogeneous multi-relational graphs are fused for the feature propagation, which largely refines the user and item representation for model prediction. Simulation results show that the proposed method significantly improve the recommendation performance compared to the state-of-the-art KG-based algorithms both in accuracy and training efficiency.

Rain streaks in the air show diverse characteristics with different shapes, directions, densities, even the complex overlapped phenomenon, causing great challenges for the deraining task. Recently, deep learning based image deraining methods have been extensively investigated due to their excellent performance. However, most of the existing algorithms still have limitations in removing rain streaks while preserving rich textural details under complicated rain conditions. To this end, we propose to decompose rain streaks into multiple rain layers and individually estimate each of them along the network stages to cope with the increasing abstracts. To better characterize rain layers, an improved non-local block is designed to exploit the self-similarity of rain information by learning the holistic spatial feature correlations while reducing the calculation complexity. Moreover, a mixed attention mechanism is applied to guide the fusion of rain layers by focusing on the local and global overlaps among these rain layers. Extensive experiments on both synthetic rainy/rain-haze/raindrop datasets, real-world samples, the haze, and low-light scenarios show substantial improvements both on quantitative indicators and visual effects over the current state-of-the-art technologies. The source code is available at https://github.com/kuihua/IADN .

High oxygen evolution overpotential and low corrosion resistance are the main challenges for oxygen evolution materials in acidic media. In this study, a novel composite material, Ti/TiO2-NTs/PbO2–CNTs–MnO2, with high oxygen evolution electrocatalytic activity was successfully prepared. First, TiO2 nanotubes (TiO2-NTs) were synthesized in situ on a Ti sheet via anodization and used as an intermediate layer. Subsequently, the adhesion and conductivity of the TiO2-NTs layer were increased through additional anodization, annealing, and electrochemical reduction. Finally, PbO2 was electrodeposited with a constant current in a lead acetate medium and doped with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and MnO2. The surface morphology, phase composition, and electrochemical performance of the composite materials were investigated. Notably, in an acidic electrolyte (150 g/L H2SO4), Ti/TiO2-NTs/PbO2–CNTs–MnO2 exhibited good stability (30 h) and a low oxygen evolution overpotential of 410 mV at 50 mA/cm2, which is almost equivalent to that of precious metals (RuO2 and IrO2) and 499 mV lower than that of the industrial Pb–0.76 wt% Ag alloy. The outstanding performance is mainly attributed to the high aspect ratio of the TiO2-NT structure, synergistic effects of the active particles, and inherently good electrochemical properties of the active particles. Therefore, this study provides a new synthetic route for oxygen evolution materials in acidic media.

The using of an elliptical nozzle has been considered as a potential method for improving the air-fuel mixing and atomization quality. The present paper focuses on the transverse jet breakup behaviors and droplet size distribution for circular and elliptical orifices in supersonic crossflow on a pulse wind tunnel test platform, and the laser based pulsed laser background imaging method and high-speed spray particle size analyzer were adopted. The results show that the jet penetration depth of elliptical 4 (Aspect ratio of 4) orifice is always smaller than that of the circular orifice. Another interesting finding is that the difference of the jet penetration depth between the circular and elliptical 4 orifices decreases with the increase of injection pressure. Moreover, the jet surface wave number of the elliptical orifice is more than that of the circular jet, and the elliptical jet surface wave length is smaller than that of circular one. Additionally, the spray Sauter Mean Diameter (SMD) of elliptical 4 nozzle is 14.5% smaller than the circular spray at injection pressure of 5 MPa, and the elliptical 4 spray also has the smallest Dv50 and Dv90 among other orifices. Because elliptical 4 jet held larger windward surface area, which is helpful to increase the shear action of supersonic crossflow. Furthermore, the elliptical 4 spray produces the smallest droplet diameter at the largest volume fraction, and also the elliptical 4 spray has the smallest span of droplet diameter distribution than other orifices.

Highly efficient and ultrastable nonprecious metal-based electrocatalysts are promising alternatives to platinum (Pt)-based catalysts in electrocatalyzing oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) process. In the present work, nitrogen and sulfur dual-doped hierarchically porous carbon with trapped Mn species (MnNSC-950) was fabricated, which integrates the modulation of the electronic structure for boosted intrinsic activity with the engineering of hierarchical porosity for enriched active sites. The MnNSC-950 shows a positive onset potential of 0.95 V and a large limiting current density of 5.4 mA cm−2, which can rival that of the commercial Pt/C catalyst in 0.1 M KOH, together with a robust long-term stability. Moreover, the MnNSC-950 as ORR catalyst in Zn-air battery achieves a high power density of 107 mW cm−2 and robust cycling performance over 150 h, exceeding that driven by Pt/C cathode. The excellent electrochemical performance is also shown in both neutral and acidic media. This work provides an enabling route to prepare non-noble metal-based catalysts featuring well-engineered geometric and component peculiarities for practical application of energy conversion systems.

In this study, a magnetic iron-zirconium modified zeolite (FeZrMZ) was synthesized. Through sediment culture experiments, the influence of the addition of modified materials on the migration and transformation of phosphorus in river sediments was investigated. The results showed that the modified zeolite could not only effectively reduce the phosphorus concentration in the overlying water, but also significantly reduce the phosphorus concentration in the pore water of sediments. The addition of modified zeolite makes the unstable weakly adsorbed phosphorus (NH4Cl-P) and redox phosphorus (BD-P) transform into the more stable metal oxide-bound phosphorus (NaOH-P) and very stable residual phosphorus (Res-P). The four types of bioavailable phosphorus (BAP), including water-soluble phosphorus (WSP), readily desorbable phosphorus (RDP), algae-available phosphorus (AAP), and NaHCO3 extractable phosphorus (Olsen-P). Under anoxic conditions, they were reduced by 53.5%, 14.1%, 23.8%, and 49.9% respectively. Under aerobic conditions, they were reduced by 23.2%, 16.6%, 32.1%, and 50.0%. The addition of magnetic iron-zirconium modified zeolite could clearly reduce the release potential of phosphorus in sediment, and it could be recovered through the action of an external magnetic field, so it could be used as an effective sediment modifier to control the sediment release of phosphorus. HIGHLIGHTS Synthesize and characterize FeZrMZ, which has a good magnetic separation ability.; FeZrMZ can effectively reduce the concentration of phosphorus in overlying water and interstitial water.; FeZrMZ can convert unstable phosphorus in sediments into stable phosphorus.

In the present paper, hot compression tests on a super austenitic stainless steel (SASS) containing 7Mo–0.46N–0.02Ce were performed at temperatures of 900 °C-1200 °C and strain rates of 0.01–10 s−1. The effect of angle between solidification direction of columnar crystal and loading direction (0°, 30°, 60°, and 90°) on the flow behavior and microstructure evolution of SASS was studied. Results showed that, samples with different columnar crystal characteristics and test conditions displayed various flow behaviors due to the difference in dynamic restoration softening mechanism, flow localization, and shear band formation. With the decrease of the angle between the solidification direction of columnar crystal and loading direction, the deformation activation energy (Q) and the ln Z value of SASS decreased at the true strain of 0.7. It indicates that dynamic recovery (DRV) and dynamic recrystallization (DRX) are more likely to happen in the samples with low angles. The location and range of high efficiency of power dissipation (η) region and instability region of the samples differed much with different columnar crystal characteristics. This means obviously different hot workability and microstructure evolution behaviors. At the true strain of 0.7, no negative η-value region was observed in the 0° sample, and the range of instability region was relatively small. On the whole, SASS presented the optimum hot workability when the angle between the solidification direction of columnar crystal and loading direction was 0°.

TiFe0.5Ni0.5Sb-based half-Heusler compounds have the intrinsic low lattice thermal conductivity and the adjustable band structure. Inspired by the previously reports to achieve both p- and n-type components by tuning the ratio of Fe and Ni based on the same parent TiFe0.5Ni0.5Sb, we selected Co as the amphoteric dopants to prepare both n-type and p-type pseudo-ternary Ti(Fe, Co, Ni)Sb-based half-Heusler alloys. The carrier concentration, as well as the density of states effective mass was significantly increased by Co doping, contributing to the enhanced power factor of 1.80 mW m−1 K−2 for n-type TiFe0.3Co0.2Ni0.5Sb and 2.21 mW m−1 K−2 for p-type TiFe0.5Co0.15Ni0.35Sb at 973 K. Combined with the further decreased lattice thermal conductivity due to the strain field and mass fluctuation scattering induced by alloying Hf on the Ti site, peak ZTs of 0.65 in n-type Ti0.8Hf0.2Fe0.3Co0.2Ni0.5Sb and 0.85 in p-type Ti0.8Hf0.2Fe0.5Co0.15Ni0.35Sb were achieved at 973 K, which is of great significance for the thermoelectric power generation applications.

The presence of potassium oxide (K2O) and sodium oxide (Na2O) causes high reduction swelling of pellets of Bayan Obo iron concentrate during reduction and thus affects the permeability of blast gases during blast furnace operations. The influencing mechanism of K2O and Na2O on the swelling behavior of reduction reactions (1) Fe2O3 → Fe3O4, (2) Fe3O4 → Fe x O, and (3) Fe x O → Fe was researched by adding (K2O + Na2O) to Australian fine ore briquettes. The mineral composition and structure of the briquettes, as well as the reduction swelling after the three reactions coupled with the morphology and lattice parameters of the reduced products, were studied. From the results, the swelling index with 0.6% (K2O + Na2O) added was 8.52%, 7.91%, and 33.81%, respectively, and without were 12.36%, 3.27%, and 12.61%, respectively, for the three reactions. The swelling index of the first reaction (Fe2O3 → Fe3O4) is reduced because alkali metal suppresses crystal cracking. The swelling mainly occurs at the third stage (Fe x O → Fe), because K2O and Na2O enhance the oriented growth of iron whiskers, as well as make them smaller. Crystal transformation does not occur at the second stage (Fe3O4 → Fe x O) and the reduction swelling is small, but the swelling index of the briquettes with added with K2O and Na2O increases (7.91% compared to 3.27%). The main reason is that the alkali metal reduces the melting point of the slag phase and promotes the cascade crystallization of FeO. Therefore, the abnormal swelling of briquettes caused by K and Na is mainly caused by the growth of iron whiskers at the third stage.

Self-assembly of colloidal nanoparticles (NPs) into well-defined superstructures has been recognized as one of the most promising ways to fabricate rationally-designed functional materials for a variety of applications. Introducing hierarchical mesoporosity into NP superstructures will facilitate mass transport while simultaneously enhancing the accessibility of constituent NPs, which is of critical importance for widening their applications in catalysis and energy-related fields. Herein, we develop a colloidal co-assembly strategy to construct mesostructured, carbon-coated Co0.5Fe2.5O4 NP superstructures (M-C@CFOSs), which show great promise as highly efficient electrocatalysts for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Specifically, organically-stabilized SiO2 NPs are employed as both building blocks and sacrificial template, which co-assemble with Co0.5Fe2.5O4 NPs to afford binary NP superstructures through a solvent drying process. M-C@CFOSs are obtainable after in situ ligand carbonization followed by the selective removal of SiO2 NPs. The hierarchical mesoporous structure of M-C@CFOSs, combined with the conformal graphitic carbon coating derived from the native organic ligands, significantly improves their electrocatalytic performance as OER electrocatalysts when compared with nonporous Co0.5Fe2.5O4 NP superstructures. This work establishes a new and facile approach for designing NP superstructures with hierarchical mesoporosity, which may find wide applications in energy storage and conversion.

With the spatial flexibility exchange across the network, mobile energy storage systems (MESSs) offer promising opportunities to elevate power distribution system resilience against emergencies. Despite the remarkable growth in integration of renewable energy sources (RESs) in power distribution systems (PDSs), most recovery and restoration strategies do not unlock the full potential in such resources due to their inherent uncertainty and stochasticity. This paper develops a novel restoration mechanism in PDSs for routing and scheduling of MESSs integrated with stochastic RESs to achieve agile system response and recovery in facing the aftermath of high-impact low-probability (HILP) incidents. The proposed integrated model is presented as a non-convex non-linear stochastic optimization formulation with joint probabilistic constraints (JPCs). The problem is equivalently reformulated to a tractable mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model that can be solved by commercial off-the-shelf solvers. Case studies on the IEEE 33-node and 123-node test systems demonstrate the effectiveness and scalability of the proposed framework in boosting the system resilience. This is achieved via effective routing and scheduling of MESSs jointly managed with dynamic network reconfiguration in presence of stochastic RESs.

A novel strategy of fabricating compositionally complex MAX phases was successfully developed. Multicomponent 413 MAX phase solid solutions (Ti0.36Nb0.27Ta0.37)4AlC2.8 and (Ti0.28Nb0.26Ta0.28V0.18)4AlC2.9 simultaneously containing 3 and 4 transition-metal elements at M site were experimentally synthesized via hot pressing equimolar mixture of 211 type MAX phase powders. By elemental analysis and structural characterization, it can be verified that those uniform compositionally complex solid solutions can be obtained only in the presence of Cr2AlC in raw powders. Those compositionally complex MAX phase solid solutions exhibit typical layered structures with distinct elongated grains. This discovery further enriches the MAX phases family and provide a new avenue for tailoring the properties of these materials. MAX phase composites containing around 87.5 vol.% (Ti0.36Nb0.27Ta0.37)4AlC2.8 exhibit a high flexural strength of 720 MPa and a high fracture toughness of 9.5 MPa m0.5.

Carbon-based microassemblies (CMs) have attracted significant attention in numerous applications due to their unique hierarchical structures and delicate building blocks, especially when hollow carbon spheres (HCSs) are reasonably introduced into the construction. Herein, a new design for novel HCSs-combined CMs is proposed. Remarkably, the HCSs are linear carbon bubbles linked one-by-one, arranging into necklaces decorating on the graphene microfolds. Detailed thermal analysis confirm that high temperatures straighten the linked carbon bubbles into bamboo-like carbon nanofibers, evidently due to the attenuation of doping degree. Benefiting from the abundant active sites of carbon bubbles, the obtained CMs exhibit satisfactory electrocatalytic activity for oxygen reduction reactions. This work establishes a bridge to precisely control the synthesis of carbon-based hierarchical architectures.

The mechanical properties and microstructure of the A356-T6 wheel hub based on low pressure die casting-hot flow forming process were analyzed by means of optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and tensile tests. Results showed that the size of the eutectic region and the morphology of the Si phase were the main factors affecting the mechanical properties and fracture morphology of the wheel hub. There was a uniform distribution of eutectic area and fine Si phase morphology in the microstructure of the upper rim and lower rim, moreover, the ultimate tensile strength and yield strength of the upper rim reached 282.4MPa and 185.1MPa, respectively. The fractures were mainly composed of fine quasi-cleavage platform and dimple. The microstructure of the rim showed a long strip along the deformation direction and the eutectic structure and Si particles were uniformly distributed. Irregular polygonal eutectic regions and coarse rod-like Si particles were accumulating in the spoke, causing a serious decrease in mechanical properties, especially in the spoke center and spoke R angle.

Many IoT technologies have been applied in the logistics industry in recent years, and they have had a substantial impact on many sectors such as shipping, air freight, warehousing, inventory, etc. Exploring technology opportunities and carrying out technological trend analysis are essential for IoT’s evolution, and there are many techniques or methods for doing so. In this paper, data analysis and text mining techniques, technology opportunity analysis (TOA) and technology-service evolution analysis (TSEA) have been applied to analyze and observe IoT technologies’ and services’ evolution. Academic journals, market reports, and patents have been collected and reviewed on the topic of IoT in the logistics field in this paper. Moreover, by using TOA, technology opportunities have been analyzed to explore IoT-related logistics services. The results of TOA, for example, show that cloud technology is essential to develop smart logistics services, and communication RFID technologies are key to developing information logistics services. Finally, TSEA enables the observation of IoT technology and logistics service evolution by combining unstructured and semi-structured data from text documents. Observing the results of TSEA, the evolution of IoT in logistics is identified, and the results of TSEA also confirm those of TOA using unstructured or semi-structured text data from documents only. The results of this paper are discussed and compared with those of some previous review studies. In summary, the results of this paper provide methodological guidelines on this topic for a comprehensive understanding of IoT-related logistics services.

In this article, we study the application of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for data collection with wireless charging, which is crucial for providing seamless coverage and improving system performance in the next-generation wireless networks. To this end, we propose a reinforcement learning-based approach to plan the route of UAV to collect sensor data from sensor devices scattered in the physical environment. Specifically, the physical environment is divided into multiple grids, where one spot for UAV hovering as well as the wireless charging of UAV is located at the center of each grid. Each grid has a spot for the UAV to hover, and moreover, there is a wireless charger at the center of each grid, which can provide wireless charging to UAV when it is hovering in the grid. When the UAV lacks energy, it can be charged by the wireless charger at the spot. By taking into account the collected data amount as well as the energy consumption, we formulate the problem of data collection with UAV as a Markov decision problem, and exploit $Q$ -learning to find the optimal policy. In particular, we design the reward function considering the energy efficiency of UAV flight and data collection, based on which $Q$ -table is updated for guiding the route of UAV. Through extensive simulation results, we verify that our proposed reward function can achieve a better performance in terms of the average throughput, delay of data collection, as well as the energy efficiency of UAV, in comparison with the conventional capacity-based reward function.

Two kinds of π-conjugated macrocycles with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) properties were investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to elucidate their self-assembly behaviors and interaction with C60 on a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surface. Both TPEMC and TPEMCS could self-assemble into orderly cavity structures. However, C60 guest molecules could only successfully enter the cavity of TPEMC to form a stable TPEMC + C60 host-guest coassembly structure. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were also used to interpret the assembly mechanisms. This work disclosed the assembly characteristic of these new types of conjugated macrocyclic compounds, which was helpful to develop new structural porous luminescent materials.

In this paper, the structural performance of the prestressed concrete T-girder bridge with a newly proposed diaphragm transverse connections (DTCs) have been investigated. The DTCs are composed of diagonal braces and horizontal brace, and the braces are structural steel with square cross section. A series of simulations have been carried out to study the effectiveness of the proposed DTCs on enhancing the transverse connection of the prestressed concrete T-girder bridge. Load Model 1 in accordance with Eurocode 1 is considered in the simulations, which consists of tandem system and uniformly distributed loads (UDL system). The Von Mises stress of the DTCs has been checked and corresponding steel grade has been given. The force on the surface between the T-girder bridge and the proposed DTCs has been studied and detailed connection design has been given for both new bridge construction and existing bridge retrofitting. The simulation results show that the maximum deflection arises when the deck is fully loaded with the UDL system and with lane 1 centrally located on exterior girder, and the tandem systems are applied at midspan simultaneously. It is revealed that with the proposed DTCs installed at midspan, the maximum deflection of the prestressed concrete T-girder bridge reduces 12.8% in the most unfavorable load case. In all the discussed load cases, the Von Mises stress of the proposed DTCs is within the reasonable range and can be borne by normal steel material. Additionally, connection methods have been given for the DTCs’ application to new bridge and existing bridge. For the use of chemical anchor in existing bridge, the concrete and prestress tendons should be checked in case of any additional damage during the installing of the DTCs.

In order to study the radar characteristics of blunt-hub rotor, a dynamic scattering method (DSM) based on physical optics and physical theory of diffraction is presented. Important influencing factors are analyzed and discussed, including rotor disk inclination, azimuth, elevation angle, and radar wave frequency. The radar cross section (RCS) of the blunt-hub rotor is used for comparison with conventional-hub rotor and sharp-hub rotor. The RCS performance of the blunt-hub rotor at different radar wave frequencies is close to that of the sharp-hub rotor. At larger positive elevation angles, the RCS∼azimuth performance of the blunt-hub rotor is not as good as the other two rotors, while the RCS performance of the blunt-hub rotor has an advantage under the larger negative elevation angle and the inclination of the rotor disk. The presented DSM is feasible and effective for learning the electromagnetic scattering characteristics of the blunt-hub rotor.

The current transmission algorithms for fifth generation (5G) mobile data fail to consider the mapping between signal pre-transmission and channel encryption, making it difficult to eliminate Rice noise, improve data transmission, or ensure the quality of source transmission. To solve the problem, this paper proposes an anti-noise transmission algorithm for 5G mobile data based on constellation optimization and channel joint mapping. Firstly, a constellation optimization mechanism was established based on projection signal. The mechanism eliminates the projection vector of signal error, and improves the signal transmission gain. Then, the performance of anti-fading channel was optimized by the sequence weight rearrangement (SWR) mechanism, and the energy attenuation was assessed by the quantitative evaluation model of the source segmentation mapping transmission (SSMT) mechanism. In this way, the Rice noise can be effectively removed from the channel, and the occurrence of channel error can be greatly reduced. Through NS2 simulation, the proposed method was proved to be superior to High Density Orthogonal Channel with Encryption (HDOCE) Algorithm, which is widely used in high density 5G orthogonal channels, and Optimized Transmission Encryption algorithm based on Concurrent Channel Segmentation (OTE_CCS) in transmission error, signal strength, and source transmission quality.

Starch has a wide range of sources and can be used as a high-quality precursor for sodium-ion battery anode materials. However, the carbonization yield and specific capacity of carbon materials obtained by directly pyrolyzing starch are low. Herein, starch is used as the carbon source, and ammonium polyphosphate (APP) is used as the cross-linking agent and dopant to prepare a nitrogen and phosphorus co-doped porous carbon (NPPC). As the anode for sodium-ion batteries, NPPC-2 exhibits a high reversible capacity of 385.8 mA h g−1 at 50 mA g−1. Even after 1000 cycles at a large current density of 5 A g−1, the reversible capacity can still be maintained at 126.9 mA h g−1. Based on detailed data and first-principles calculations, the excellent performance of NPPC is due to the effective doping of nitrogen and phosphorus elements, which distorts the graphite sheet, introduces defects, and increases the graphite layer spacing, thereby enhancing the adsorption capacity of the carbon material for sodium ions, reducing the diffusion barrier of sodium ions. This work provides a new idea for heteroatom doping and carbon material modification.

Equiatomic multicomponent transition metal carbides containing different metal element numbers and carbide components were prepared from monocarbides by spark plasma sintering. The compositional effect on their mechanical properties were investigated in detail. Results indicate that all solid solutions exhibit higher hardness, strength, and modulus values than those obtained from rule of mixture, and it is prone to obtain higher mechanical properties in high-entropy compositions. Nevertheless, the variations of hardness, strength, toughness, and modulus show diverse trends upon the change of composition in carbide solid solutions. By comparison and analysis, it was concluded that entropy-related solid solution effect is a crucial parameter influencing the mechanical properties of metal carbides, however, other parameters such as microstructure, type of base monocarbides, phase purity are also negligible parameters which can have big influence on the overall mechanical properties.

In this study, 37 kinds of high-entropy pyrochlore/fluorite ceramics with equiatomic multicomponent compositions were successfully synthesized and the process of phase transformation was also investigated. Eventually, the experimental results show that 33 among the high-entropy compounds exhibit a single pyrochlore/fluorite structure with all cations randomly and uniformly distributed at A and B sites. Meanwhile, the ionic radii, valence, and size disorder may be the main driving forces for the formation of single-phase high-entropy pyrochlore/fluorite oxides. Furtherly, the average radius ratio(rA/rB) is the main factor of the pyrochlore/fluorite phase transformation. And when the average radius ratio(rA/rB) extends from 1.46 to 1.78, the high-entropy pyrochlore structure is stable. When the average radius ratio rA/rB is less than 1.46, it transforms into the defective fluorite structure. This study not only further expands the high-entropy pyrochlore family and but also is expected to guide the design of high-entropy pyrochlore through composition customization.

The hydration and thermal response kinetics of the cross-linked thermoresponsive copolymer poly((diethylene glycol monomethyl ether methacrylate)-co-poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate), abbreviated as P(MEO2MA-co-OEGMA300), thin film on a hydrophobic polyacrylonitrile (PAN) substrate coating, which resembles a synthetic fabric, is probed by in situ neutron reflectivity (NR). The PAN and monomer (MEO2MA and OEGMA300) solutions are sequentially spin-coated onto a silicon (Si) substrate. Afterward, plasma treatment is applied to realize the cross-linking of PAN and monomers. The as-prepared cross-linked P(MEO2MA-co-OEGMA300) film on the hydrophobic PAN substrate coating presents a two-layer structure: a substrate-near layer, which is a mixture of PAN and P(MEO2MA-co-OEGMA300), and a main layer, which is composed of pure hydrophilic P(MEO2MA-co-OEGMA300). During hydration in D2O vapor atmosphere, the hydrophobic PAN component prevents the formation of D2O enrichment in the substrate-near layer. However, an additional vapor-near layer is observed on top of the main layer, which is enriched with D2O. The hydration process is constrained by the cross-linking points in the film, inducing the relaxation time to be longer than that in a spin-coated P(MEO2MA-co-OEGMA300) film. Because the as-prepared cross-linked film presents a transition temperature (TT) at 38 °C, the hydrated film switches to the collapsed state when the temperature is increased from 23 to 50 °C. The response to a thermal stimulus is also slower due to the existence of the internal cross-linking points as compared to the spin-coated film. Interestingly, no reswelling is observed at the end of the thermal stimulus, which can be also attributed to the presence of internal cross-linking points.

Metal-nitrogen-carbon (M-N-C) single-atom catalysts exhibit desirable electrochemical catalytic properties. However, the replacement of N atoms by heteroatoms (B, P, S, etc.) has been regarded as a useful method for regulating the coordination environment. The structure engineered M-N-C sites via doping heteroatoms play an important role to the adsorption and activation of the oxygen intermediate. Herein, we develop an efficient strategy to construct dual atomic site catalysts via the formation of a Co1-PN and Ni1-PN planar configuration. The developed Co1-PNC/Ni1-PNC catalyst exhibits excellent bifunctional electrocatalytic performance in alkaline solution. Both experimental and theoretical results demonstrated that the N/P coordinated Co/Ni sites moderately reduced the binding interaction of oxygen intermediates. The Co1-PNC/Ni1-PNC endows a rechargeable Zn-air battery with excellent power density and cycling stability as an air-cathode, which is superior to that of the benchmark Pt/C+IrO2. This work paves an avenue for design of dual single-atomic sites and regulation of the atomic configuration on carbon-based materials to achieve high-performance electrocatalysts.

Nowadays, the Inertial Navigation System/Global Navigation Satellite System (INS/GNSS) integrated navigation system is widely used in many applications. The extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is a popula...

A novel magnetic gel composite Fe3O4@SA/Y was synthesized by synergistic cross-linking reaction of sodium alginate (SA) and Yttrium(III) ions with Fe3O4 and characterized by Scanning Electron Micro...

High-entropy alloys (HEAs) have been widely studied due to their unconventional compositions and unique physicochemical properties for various applications. Herein, for the first time, we propose a surface strain strategy to tune the electrocatalytic activity of HEAs for methanol oxidation reaction (MOR). High-resolution aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and elemental mapping demonstrate both uniform atomic dispersion and the formation of a face-centered cubic (FCC) crystalline structure in PtFeCoNiCu HEAs. The HEAs obtained by heat treatment at 700°C (HEA-700) exhibit 0.94% compressive strain compared with that obtained at 400°C (HEA-400). As expected, the specific activity and mass activity of HEA-700 is higher than that of HEA-400 and most of the state-of-the-art catalysts. The enhanced MOR activity can be attributed to a shorter Pt-Pt bond distance in HEA-700 resulting from compressive strain. The nonprecious metal atoms in the core could generate compressive strain and down shift d-band centers via electron transfer to surface Pt layer. This work presents a new perspective for the design of high-performance HEAs electrocatalysts.

Zintl-phase compounds have great potential in thermoelectric applications owing to their “phonon glass-electron crystal” (PGEC) structures. In this paper, a new Zintl-phase thermoelectric material BaAgSb is reported. Ba deficiency increased the carrier concentration, and then suppressed the intrinsic excitation. The peak ZT value of Ba0.98AgSb reached ∼0.56 at 773 K. Moreover, Eu alloying at Ba site not only lowered the lattice thermal conductivity by inducing point-defect scattering, but also improved the electrical properties by increasing the carrier mobility. Finally, a peak ZT of ∼0.73 was achieved in Ba0.78Eu0.2AgSb.

Monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have provided a platform to investigate the excitonic states at the two-dimensional (2D) limit. The inherent properties of excitons in TMDs, such as the photoluminescence quantum yield, the charge states, and even the binding energy, can be effectively controlled via electrostatic gating, selective carrier doping, or substrate dielectric engineering. Here, aiming for the nonvolatile electrical tunability of excitonic states and thereby the optical property of TMDs, we demonstrate a 2D ferroelectric heterostructure with monolayer MoSe2 and ultrathin CuInP2S6 (CIPS). In the heterostructure, the electric polarization of CIPS results in continuous, global, and large electronic modulation in monolayer MoSe2. With the saturated ferroelectric polarization of CIPS, electron-doped or hole-doped MoSe2 is realized in a single device. The carrier density tunability in the heterostructure is as high as 5 × 1012 cm-2. The nonvolatile behavior of these devices up to 3 months is also characterized. Our results provide a new and practical strategy for low-power consumption and agelong tunable optoelectronic devices.

Moire superlattices (MSLs) formed in van der Waals materials have become a promising platform to realize novel two-dimensional electronic states. Angle-aligned trilayer structures can form two sets of MSLs which could potentially interfere. In this work, we directly image the moire patterns in both monolayer and twisted bilayer graphene aligned on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), using combined scanning microwave impedance microscopy and conductive atomic force microscopy. Correlation of the two techniques reveals the contrast mechanism for the achieved ultrahigh spatial resolution (

The connectivity of networks has been widely studied in many high-impact applications, ranging from immunization, critical infrastructure analysis, social network mining, to bioinformatic system studies. Regardless of the end application domains, connectivity minimization has always been a fundamental task to effectively control the functioning of the underlying system. The combinatorial nature of the connectivity minimization problem imposes an exponential computational complexity to find the optimal solution, which is intractable in large systems. To tackle the computational barrier, greedy algorithm is extensively used to ensure a near-optimal solution by exploiting the diminishing returns property of the problem. Despite the empirical success, the theoretical and algorithmic challenges of the problems still remain wide open. On the theoretical side, the intrinsic hardness and the approximability of the general connectivity minimization problem are still unknown except for a few special cases. On the algorithmic side, existing algorithms are hard to balance between the optimization quality and computational efficiency. In this article, we address the two challenges by (1) proving that the general connectivity minimization problem is NP-hard and is the best approximation ratio for any polynomial algorithms, and (2) proposing the algorithm CONTAIN and its variant CONTAIN + that can well balance optimization effectiveness and computational efficiency for eigen-function based connectivity minimization problems in large networks.

In order to suppress leakage current caused in the traditional multi-cells series Li-ion battery pack protection system, a new battery voltage transfer method is presented in this paper, which uses the current generated in the transfer process of one of the batteries to compensate for the leakage of itself and other cells except the top cell. Based on the 0.18 µm Bipolar and CMOS and DMOS technology, this proposed circuit has been integrated into a 7-cells Li-ion battery charge and discharge protection chip successfully. The experimental results of cell balancing confirm that the balancing algorithm can help with the shortage of the voltage transfer circuit. Furthermore, analysis of 20 samples shows that the new method can greatly suppress the battery leakage. Compared with the traditional solution, the voltage transfer circuit proposed in this paper greatly reduces the leakage current, which helps to extend the service life of the battery.

Visible light communication (VLC) systems relying on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) devices have gathered momentum recently, due to the pervasive adoption of LED lighting and mobile devices. However, the achievable throughput by such practical systems is still several orders below those claimed by controlled experiments with specialized devices. In this paper, we engineer CoLight aiming to boost the data rate of the VLC system purely built upon COTS devices. CoLight adopts COTS LEDs as its transmitter, but it innovates in its simple yet delicate driver circuit wiring an array of LED chips in a combinatorial manner. Consequently, modulated signals can directly drive the on-off procedures of individual chip groups, so that the spatially synthesized light emissions exhibit a varying luminance following exactly the modulation symbols. To obtain a readily usable receiver, CoLight interfaces a COTS PD with a smartphone through the audio jack, and it also has an alternative MCU-driven circuit to emulate a future integration into the phone. The evaluations on CoLight are both promising and informative: they demonstrate a throughput up to 80 kbps at a distance of 2 m, while suggesting various potentials to further enhance the performance.

Summary Atomically dispersed Fe–N–C catalyst has shown great performance in the CO2-to-CO conversion, yet the high CO selectivity is achieved only within a rather narrow potential range, which cannot well meet the requirements for the following CO dimerization or hydrogenation. Here, we developed a hydrogen-pyrolysis etching strategy to precisely manipulate the uncoordinated N dopants in the Fe–N–C catalyst. This strategy could preferentially eliminate pyridinic and pyrrolic N atoms while leaving graphitic N. The resulting catalyst gave a CO faradaic efficiency (FECO) above 90% over a broad window from −0.3 to −0.8 V (versus RHE) (in particular, FECO > 97% at −0.6 V). In situ ATR-SEIRAS and first-principle calculations further revealed that this strategy can not only suppress the parasitic H2 generation but also promote CO2 activation and protonation with the assistance of co-adsorbed H2O on the “atomic interface” of “FeN4/graphitic N.”

We propose a three-stage resilient unit commitment model which considers uncertain typhoon paths and line outages to improve the power system resilience against typhoon events. The proposed solution coordinates resources in response to the worst-case scenario for each possible typhoon path. The optimal decision is based on the characterization of the power system schedule into three stages of preventive control, emergency control, and restoration. Preventive control is performed before the typhoon occurs by quickly adjusting the three-stage resilient unit commitment schedule; emergency control is conducted during the typhoon by shedding local loads to meet the power balance, while other control strategies are assumed to be unavailable due to possible interruptions in the communication system; restoration is realized after the typhoon, when resources are optimally dispatched to repair the outages of critical devices and recover the normal operation state of the power system quickly. Considering the typhoon path uncertainty, we have introduced a stochastic model for possible typhoon paths where all possible affected lines along each typhoon path are assumed to be on outage during the typhoon. Accordingly, we explore the strategy for co-optimizing the three stages in unit commitment. The proposed model is tested on the IEEE 118-bus system and the real-world provincial system to verify its effectiveness.

The practical application of photocatalytic water splitting for hydrogen evolution hinges on the development of high-efficient and low-cost photocatalysts. Defects engineering has emerged as a promising strategy to enhance photocatalytic activity effectively. Herein, a facile and versatile co-precipitation method is proposed to fabricate mesoporous Cd-Zn-S solid solutions (E-CdxZn1-xS) with abundant surface defects by the inorganic salts formed in the reaction system as self-template. Compared with Cd-Zn-S solid solutions (W-Cd0.65Zn0.35S) prepared by the traditional co-precipitation method, the enhanced specific surface area and abundant surface defects endow E-Cd0.65Zn0.35S with more accessible active sites and effective separation of electron-hole pairs for the photocatalytic water splitting reaction. The E-Cd0.65Zn0.35S solid solution exhibits hydrogen evolution rate of 5.2 mmol h−1 g−1 without loading noble metal as cocatalyst under visible light, which is 1.13 times higher than that of W-Cd0.65Zn0.35S sample. The present work provides a simple, low-cost and prospective strategy for the synthesis of defective Cd-Zn-S solid solutions, and it also delivers guidance to design and develop the advanced visible-light photocatalyst in the future.

We experimentally demonstrate digital signal processing (DSP)-free 8 × 10 Gb/s 4-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM-4) transmission for cost-effective coherent wavelength division multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) with 20 GHz channel spacing over the C-band. The polarization-independent coherent receiver at optical network unit (ONU) including a 3 × 3 fiber coupler and a polarization beam splitter (PBS) followed by three single-ended photodiodes (PDs), is simple and cost-effective, because neither DSP nor phase/frequency locking is necessary for the coherent detection of PAM-4 signal. We numerically compare the performance between the transmitted signal diversity and the local oscillator (LO) signal diversity schemes, and optimize the parameters of heterodyne detection, in order to enhance the power budget. Based on the LO signal diversity scheme, we can achieve an average receiver sensitivity of −26 dBm for eight wavelength channels at a bit error ratio (BER) below the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) threshold (i.e., 3.8 × 10−3), leading to a power budget of 29 dB after 25 km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) transmission. Moreover, we verify an unequally spaced PAM-4 signaling, leading to contribution of 1 dB receiver sensitivity improvement for 10 Gb/s/λ PON.

It is of vital importance to accelerate the sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) process at the cathode with earth-abundant metal-based catalysts for the commercialization of low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. In consideration of high catalytic activity, long-term stability and low cost of potential ORR electrocatalysts, transition metal species have attracted much interest and transition metal-nitrogen-carbon (M−N/C, M = Fe, Co, Ni, Mn, etc.) catalysts have been widely considered as the most promising non-precious metal catalysts for ORR. Herein, the fundamental understanding of ORR catalytic mechanism and the identification of active centers are briefly introduced, and then different M−N/C catalysts classified by precursors with the strategies for design and optimization are highlighted. The challenges and possible opportunity for future development of high-performance ORR catalysts are finally proposed.

Community search, which aims to retrieve important communities (i.e., subgraphs) for a given query vertex, has been widely studied in the literature. In the recent, plenty of research is conducted to detect influential communities, where each vertex in the network is associated with an influence value. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of work that can support personalized requirement. In this paper, we propose a new problem, i.e., maximal personalized influential community search. Given a graph G, an integer k and a query vertex u, we aim to obtain the most influential community for u by leveraging the k-core concept. To handle larger networks efficiently, two algorithms, i.e., top-down algorithm and bottom-up algorithm, are developed. In real-life applications, there may be a lot of queries issued. Therefore, an optimal index-based approach is proposed in order to meet the online requirement. In many scenarios, users may want to find multiple communities for a given query. Thus, we further extend the proposed techniques for the top-r case, i.e., retrieving r communities with the largest influence value for a given query. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on 6 real-world networks to demonstrate the advantage of proposed techniques.

Entropy is a physical quantity gauging the degree of chaos in the system. High entropy alloying is thus an effective strategy to reduce the lattice thermal conductivity of the thermoelectric materials. In this paper, PbTe, GeTe, and MnTe are coalloyed with SnTe to form a single-phase solid solution. Because of the inclusion of various elements at the cationic (Sn2+) site, the configurational entropy increases, and the phonon scattering is strongly enhanced, leading to a reduced lattice thermal conductivity. In addition, the Seebeck coefficient is improved because of the band modification via this coalloying. Ga is then further doped to optimize the carrier concentration to ∼5.7 × 1020 cm-3 and reduce the room-temperature lattice thermal conductivity to ∼0.6 W m-1 K-1. Finally, a high peak ZT value of ∼1.52 at 823 K and an average ZT value ∼1.0 from 323 to 823 K were obtained in Ga0.025(Sn0.25Pb0.25Mn0.25Ge0.25)0.975Te.

Wireless power transfer (WPT) is favored by consumers due to its convenience, safety, and flexible layout. Circular and rectangular coils are the most common coil structures in WPT systems. However, they are not suitable for installation conditions with angled groove areas such as railways, conveyors, and so on. To fully utilize installation space and to improve transfer efficiency, this paper has proposed a quasi-bowl-shaped (QBS) magnetic coupler, which can suitably fit on angled grooves. First, a QBS coupler model was presented. Second, formulas of its spatial magnetic field density were derived. Third, the influences of the bending distance and bending angle on the coupler coefficient were analyzed. Fourth, five magnetic core types were presented and analyzed for coupler optimization. Finally, QBS WPT performances were tested on a newly built experiment platform. Experimental results show that the QBS coupler can realize a constant transfer efficiency of 92.36% at an axial distance of 6 cm, and it can realize a constant transfer efficiency of 84.17% at an axial distance of 10 cm.

In this paper, we report a facile strategy to synthesize Co-BDC-NH2 material, which is used as a precursor towards an excellent OER electrocatalyst by thermal annealing in nitrogen. Ultra-small Co/CoOx nanoparticles were uniformly dispersed on the rhombus N-doped carbon (NC) nanoflakes. Transmission electron microscopic, X-ray diffraction spectrometric, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic analyses revealed the coexistence of metallic Co and Co oxides nanoparticles. It was found that Co/CoOx@NC obtained at 500 °C annealing temperature exhibited the highest electrocatalytic OER activity, with 307 and 375 mV overpotential to achieve 10 and 100 mA cm−2 current densities. Besides, thanks to the in-situ annealing process, Co/CoOx@NC showed excellent catalytic stability with 97.4% current density retention after 24 h electrolysis at 1.66 V vs. RHE electrode potential. Further investigations revealed that the ultra-small Co/CoOx nanoparticles distributed on N-doped carbon template contribute significantly towards OER electrocatalysis through enlarging the activity surface areas and enhancing the intrinsic electrochemical activity due to the presence of metallic Co.

The effects of SiO2 content on the preparation process and metallurgical properties of acid oxidized pellets, including compressive strength, reduction, and softening—melting behaviors, were systematically investigated. Mineralogical structures, elemental distribution, and pore size distribution were varied to analyze the mechanism of the effects. The results show that with an increase in SiO2 content from 3.51wt% to 7.18wt%, compressive strength decreases from 3150 N/pellet to 2100 N/pellet and reducibility decreases from 76.5% to 71.4%. The micro-structure showed that pellets with high SiO2 content contained more magnetite in the mineralogical structures. Additionally, some liquid phases appeared, which hindered the continuous crystallization of hematite. Also, the softening—melting properties of the pellets clearly deteriorated as the SiO2 content increased. With increasing SiO2 content, the temperature range of the softening—melting zone decreased, and the maximum differential pressure and the comprehensive permeability index increased significantly. When acid oxidized pellets are used as the raw materials for blast furnace smelting, it should be combined with high basicity sinters to improve the softening—melting behaviors of the comprehensive charge.