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In this article, direct coating of ZnO on PECVD-grown multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) is achieved using atomic layer deposition (ALD). Transmission electron microscopy investigation shows that the deposited ZnO shell is continuous and uniform, in contrast to the previously reported particle morphology. The ZnO layer has a good crystalline quality as indicated by Raman and photoluminescence (PL) measurements. We also show that such ZnO layer can be used as seed layer for subsequent hydrothermal growth of ZnO nanorods, resulting in branched CNT–inorganic hybrid nanostructures. Potentially, this method can also apply to the fabrication of ZnO-based hybrid nanostructures on other carbon nanomaterials.

Since many applications of YBCO tapes operate in external magnetic fields, it is necessary to investigate the magnetoangular dependence of critical current and n-values in coated conductors. In this paper, five commercial YBCO tapes with different microstructures produced by three different manufacturers are chosen. The selected samples have a width of 2.0, 4.0, 4.8, 6.0 or 12 mm, with copper, brass or stainless steel laminations. The critical current density dependence J c (B, θ) and n-values characteristics n(B, θ) of the tapes are comprehensively measured under various magnetic fields and orientations. Afterwards, the obtained experimental data sets are successfully fitted using a novel multi-objective model which considers the material anisotropy. By using this approach, a fitting function I c (B, θ) can always be obtained to accurately describe the experimental data, regardless of the fabrication and width differences of the superconducting tapes. Moreover, our experiment shows that when subject to different external magnetic fields, the angular dependence of n-values characteristics is directly correlated with the corresponding critical current profiles. Our results are helpful to predict the critical current of electromagnetically interacting 2G HTS wires, thereby improving the design and performance of the devices made from YBCO tapes.

SUMMARYThe characteristics of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) make the design of routing protocol a great challenge. In this paper, we propose a vehicle density and load aware routing protocol for VANETs called VDLA. VDLA adopts sequential selection of junctions to construct the route. The selection is based on the real-time vehicle density, the traffic load, and the distance to the destination. The network information is collected by a decentralized mechanism. Through factoring in these metrics, the packets are avoided being sent to roads where network is disconnected, and the network load is balanced to mitigate network congestion. The intermediate junctions are selected before the packet reaches a junction to reduce the unnecessary hops. Our study also investigates the impact of the high mobility of the nodes. An analytical framework is proposed to analyze the mobility. Based on the analysis, the traditional Hello scheme is enhanced to improve the accuracy of the neighbor table. In the simulation, we compare VDLA with greedy perimeter coordinator routing and GpsrJ+, which are geographic routings protocols proposed for VANETs. The results validate the superiority of VDLA in terms of end-to-end delay and packet delivery rate. And the superiority holds in different scenarios.