@article{10327,
  abstract     = {Composite materials offer numerous advantages in a wide range of applications, including thermoelectrics. Here, semiconductor–metal composites are produced by just blending nanoparticles of a sulfide semiconductor obtained in aqueous solution and at room temperature with a metallic Cu powder. The obtained blend is annealed in a reducing atmosphere and afterward consolidated into dense polycrystalline pellets through spark plasma sintering (SPS). We observe that, during the annealing process, the presence of metallic copper activates a partial reduction of the PbS, resulting in the formation of PbS–Pb–CuxS composites. The presence of metallic lead during the SPS process habilitates the liquid-phase sintering of the composite. Besides, by comparing the transport properties of PbS, the PbS–Pb–CuxS composites, and PbS–CuxS composites obtained by blending PbS and CuxS nanoparticles, we demonstrate that the presence of metallic lead decisively contributes to a strong increase of the charge carrier concentration through spillover of charge carriers enabled by the low work function of lead. The increase in charge carrier concentration translates into much higher electrical conductivities and moderately lower Seebeck coefficients. These properties translate into power factors up to 2.1 mW m–1 K–2 at ambient temperature, well above those of PbS and PbS + CuxS. Additionally, the presence of multiple phases in the final composite results in a notable decrease in the lattice thermal conductivity. Overall, the introduction of metallic copper in the initial blend results in a significant improvement of the thermoelectric performance of PbS, reaching a dimensionless thermoelectric figure of merit ZT = 1.1 at 750 K, which represents about a 400% increase over bare PbS. Besides, an average ZTave = 0.72 in the temperature range 320–773 K is demonstrated.},
  author       = {Li, Mengyao and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Yu and Han, Xu and Xiao, Ke and Nabahat, Mehran and Arbiol, Jordi and Llorca, Jordi and Ibáñez, Maria and Cabot, Andreu},
  issn         = {1944-8252},
  journal      = {ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces},
  keywords     = {CuxS, PbS, energy conversion, nanocomposite, nanoparticle, solution synthesis, thermoelectric},
  number       = {43},
  pages        = {51373–51382},
  publisher    = {American Chemical Society },
  title        = {{PbS–Pb–CuxS composites for thermoelectric application}},
  doi          = {10.1021/acsami.1c15609},
  volume       = {13},
  year         = {2021},
}

@article{7262,
  abstract     = {Advances in shape-morphing materials, such as hydrogels, shape-memory polymers and light-responsive polymers have enabled prescribing self-directed deformations of initially flat geometries. However, most proposed solutions evolve towards a target geometry without considering time-dependent actuation paths. To achieve more complex geometries and avoid self-collisions, it is critical to encode a spatial and temporal shape evolution within the initially flat shell. Recent realizations of time-dependent morphing are limited to the actuation of few, discrete hinges and cannot form doubly curved surfaces. Here, we demonstrate a method for encoding temporal shape evolution in architected shells that assume complex shapes and doubly curved geometries. The shells are non-periodic tessellations of pre-stressed contractile unit cells that soften in water at rates prescribed locally by mesostructure geometry. The ensuing midplane contraction is coupled to the formation of encoded curvatures. We propose an inverse design tool based on a data-driven model for unit cells’ temporal responses.},
  author       = {Guseinov, Ruslan and McMahan, Connor and Perez Rodriguez, Jesus and Daraio, Chiara and Bickel, Bernd},
  issn         = {2041-1723},
  journal      = {Nature Communications},
  keywords     = {Design, Synthesis and processing, Mechanical engineering, Polymers},
  publisher    = {Springer Nature},
  title        = {{Programming temporal morphing of self-actuated shells}},
  doi          = {10.1038/s41467-019-14015-2},
  volume       = {11},
  year         = {2020},
}

@inproceedings{6493,
  abstract     = {We present two algorithmic approaches for synthesizing linear hybrid automata from experimental data. Unlike previous approaches, our algorithms work without a template and generate an automaton with nondeterministic guards and invariants, and with an arbitrary number and topology of modes. They thus construct a succinct model from the data and provide formal guarantees. In particular, (1) the generated automaton can reproduce the data up to a specified tolerance and (2) the automaton is tight, given the first guarantee. Our first approach encodes the synthesis problem as a logical formula in the theory of linear arithmetic, which can then be solved by an SMT solver. This approach minimizes the number of modes in the resulting model but is only feasible for limited data sets. To address scalability, we propose a second approach that does not enforce to find a minimal model. The algorithm constructs an initial automaton and then iteratively extends the automaton based on processing new data. Therefore the algorithm is well-suited for online and synthesis-in-the-loop applications. The core of the algorithm is a membership query that checks whether, within the specified tolerance, a given data set can result from the execution of a given automaton. We solve this membership problem for linear hybrid automata by repeated reachability computations. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm on synthetic data sets and on cardiac-cell measurements.},
  author       = {Garcia Soto, Miriam and Henzinger, Thomas A and Schilling, Christian and Zeleznik, Luka},
  booktitle    = {31st International Conference on Computer-Aided Verification},
  isbn         = {9783030255398},
  issn         = {0302-9743},
  keywords     = {Synthesis, Linear hybrid automaton, Membership},
  location     = {New York City, NY, USA},
  pages        = {297--314},
  publisher    = {Springer},
  title        = {{Membership-based synthesis of linear hybrid automata}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-030-25540-4_16},
  volume       = {11561},
  year         = {2019},
}