Abstract As global production and consumption of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) becomes higher, so does the amount of waste PET. Several methods of waste PET reduction like mechanical and chemical recycling have been investigated. In this report, we selected the new chemical recycling of PET by transesterification reaction with adipic acid to regain terephthalic acid and oligo(ethylene-adipate-co-terephthalate) (OEAT). Terephthalic acid can also be recovered from PET by hydrolysis in the presence of acid or base catalysts at high temperature and pressure, then sophisticated equipment is required. The advantage of the transesterification over hydrolysis process is performing at atmospheric pressure. OEAT contains...

Abstract Despite recent advancements in materials and strategies for oil spill remediation, challenges remain in handling the harsh conditions of oil–water separation and enabling the efficient recovery of oil-adsorbing materials. This study reports a facile and effective method to functionalize green-based polyurethane sponge (g-PUS), offering a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based polyurethane sponge (p-PUS), making it with superhydrophobicity, fire resistance, and enhanced stability in water. Accordingly, dodecyltrimethoxysilane-functionalized Fe3O4@SiO2 core-shell nanoparticles (FSiRhD), derived from rice husk, were synthesized via a precipitation method. The sponges were then coated with a graphene oxide/diammonium hydrogen phosphate (GD) system, followed by surface functionalization with FSiRhD and polydimethylsiloxane...

Abstract In this study, S-scheme heterojunction photocatalysts composed of SnO2 and ZnSn(OH)6 (ZHS) were synthesized via a one-step hydrothermal method. The resulting ZHS/SnO2 (ZS) composites exhibited high crystallinity, enhanced light-harvesting capability, and a well-defined interfacial architecture, all of which synergistically facilitated efficient charge carrier separation through an n–n type step-scheme (S-scheme) mechanism. The enhanced photocurrent response confirmed accelerated charge transport, while the broadened absorption range indicated improved photon utilization. Among the composites, the 10 % ZS sample exhibited the highest photocatalytic activity toward nitric oxide (NO) oxidation (76.95 %), with a reaction rate constant of 0.16982 min⁻1, which is approximately ten times higher than that of...

Abstract This study investigated the modification of TiO2 photoanodes using reduced graphene oxide (rGO) to enhance electron transport channels and prevent recombination processes, thereby improving the photovoltaic performance. Through the ultraviolet (UV)-assisted photoreduction of GO on TiO2 coated on a fluoride tin oxide substrate (FTO|TiO2), we demonstrated the successful integration of rGO. This was evidenced by the increased Csp2 content observed during X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and reduced photogenerated electron–hole recombination observed during photoluminescence spectroscopy. The incorporation of rGO significantly improved the photocurrent density and power conversion efficiency (PCE). A 12 % increase was observed in the PCE, which reached 8.5 % when the UV irradiation time was optimized from 10 to 15 min compared with...

Abstract Cellulose-based electronic devices show great potential for the development of advanced green electronics, such as digital resistive switching (RS) memory and analog RS artificial synapses. Previous studies on two-terminal devices have primarily used cellulose as a channel for the formation and rupture of metallic conductive filaments that directly govern the RS behavior. This means that cellulose has not yet played a central role in directly controlling the RS behavior in two-terminal devices. In this study, by combining density functional theory calculations with experimental investigations, we functionalized the porous cellulose layer using sputtered-metal atoms during the top electrode deposition process...

Abstract The WO3 semiconductor emerges as a photocatalytic material of remarkable potential in harnessing solar radiation absorption capabilities, with promising applications in the photocatalytic treatment of organic compounds. Nonetheless, a primary limitation in the fast recombination of photogenerated electrons and holes is caused by an ill-suited ECBM energy level, resulting in electrons not reacting with dissolved oxygen. In this study, Fe-doped WO3 is used to improve the energy band structure and enhance H2O2 oxidative activation. Results demonstrated strong photocatalytic activity in degrading ciprofloxacin antibiotic (CIP 40 ppm) and rhodamine B dye (RhB 40 ppm) with 74.1 % of CIP and a staggering 92.8 % of RhB being decomposed...

Abstract Hybrid materials possess the unique properties of their individual components, enabling their use in multiple synergistic applications. In this study, we synthesized biogenic fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) decorated with biodegradable periodic mesoporous organosilica nanoparticles (BPMO), creating BPMO@CDs. The CDs, approximately 9.8 nm in diameter, were derived from Musa paradisiaca cv. Awak juice using a rapid microwave method, exhibiting a spherical shape and green and red luminescence. The resulting BPMO@CDs are spherical, around 100 nm in size, and maintain high pore volume and surface area. The elemental chemical state in the BPMO@CDs remains consistent with that of pure BPMO. Our findings demonstrate that BPMO@CDs...

Abstract Speech enhancement plays a crucial role in improving speech clarity and intelligibility in noisy environments, benefiting applications such as telecommunications, assistive hearing, voice-activated systems, and automatic speech recognition. Although transformer and conformer-based models achieve state-of-the-art performance, their complexity makes real-time deployment on resource-constrained devices impractical. In contrast, convolutional neural networks offer efficient on-device deployment due to their lower computational demands and better hardware compatibility. To bridge the gap between these architectures, knowledge distillation has emerged as a promising model compression technique, allowing knowledge transfer from a complex teacher model to a lightweight student model. However, conventional methods typically assume architectural similarity between teacher and...

Abstract Bi-doped ZnO thin films were deposited on glass substrates using radio frequency magnetron sputtering, with varying concentrations of impurities. The effect of Bi concentration on the structural, electrical, and optical properties of these films was investigated. This study indicates that a doping concentration of 1 at% Bi is optimal for enhancing the crystalline quality and photoelectric characteristics of the ZnO films. At this concentration, the films exhibit desirable attributes such as high visible region transmittance (approximately 80 %), low resistivity of 1.3 × 10−3 Ω.cm, and a high carrier density of 3.8 × 1020 cm−3. Furthermore, the presence of Bi impurity was demonstrated to decrease the residual stress, structural distortion, and carrier mobility of the films by reducing point defects in ZnO lattice. Nguyen P.Y.; Phan...

Abstract Polyp shape is critical for diagnosing colorectal polyps and assessing cancer risk, yet there is limited data on segmenting pedunculated and sessile polyps. This paper introduces PolypDB_INS, a dataset of 4403 images containing 4918 annotated polyps, specifically for sessile and pedunculated polyps. In addition, we propose DYNAFormer, a novel transformer-based model utilizing an anchor mask-guided mechanism that incorporates cross-attention, dynamic query updates, and query denoising for improved object segmentation. Treating each positional query as an anchor mask dynamically updated through decoder layers enhances perceptual information regarding the object’s position, allowing for more precise segmentation of complex structures like polyps....