Publications

Abstract Research in hybrid and flexible natural fiber-reinforced polymer composites has included advances in innovative and environmentally sustainable devices. However, in practice, controversies still exist regarding the relationship between electrical and materials performance targets in a system design context. This work aimed to investigate the alternating conductivity of a novel pressure sensor based on semiconducting polyaniline (PANI)-coated vegetable fiber (VF, Euterpe oleracea Mart., Acai) in silicone polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) rubber. We used alternating electrical conductivity measurements, σ*(ω) ∝ ωs (frequency range—ω from 1 Hz to 10 MHz; s   0.6), to adjust the optimal operating frequency region to enhance the pressure sensing performance of the PDMS-PANI-VF composites. A generalized effective-medium approach to the pressure-induced conductivity in terms of loading pressure, percolation regime, and the interpolation between Bruggeman's symmetric and asymmetric media theories was obtained. We have found a solution for inducing percolation in composites with a low concentration of fiber inclusions by uniaxial pressure (P), characterized by the expression σ ∝ (P−P0)t (0 ≤ t ≤ 4.0, 0 ≤ P0 ≤ 250 kPa). The sensor demonstrates maximum sensitivity of 1.5 Pa−1 in the operating electrical frequency from 1 to 100 Hz, and a wide linearity range from 0 to 250 kPa. The result provides new insight into the AC universality, s, and t behaviors of natural fiber-reinforced polymer composites to enhance pressure sensitivity of a new concept and technology for resource-efficiency optimization of sustainable environmental devices.

Raman spectroscopy is an extremely useful tool to characterize graphene systems. The strongest Raman features are the first-order G band and the second-order 2D and 2D′ bands, which are the overtones of the double resonance D and D’ bands. However, the 2G band, which is the overtone of the G band, is not usually observed in the spectra of monolayer graphene and of crystalline graphite. In this work, we present an experimental and theoretical investigation of the resonance Raman spectra in twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) with different twisting angles and using several laser excitation energies in the NIR and visible ranges. We observed that the 2G band is enhanced when the incident photons are in resonance with the transition between the van Hove singularities in the density of states of the TBG. We show that the 2G band has three contributions (2G1, 2G2 and 2G3), that are not dispersive by changing the laser excitation energy. We also present theoretical calculations showing that the 2G1 and 2G2 bands are related to combinations of the in-phase (IP) and out-of-phase (OP) vibrations of the atoms in the different layers. The Raman excitation profiles (REPs) of the 2G peaks are upshifted in comparison with the REP of the G band. This behavior was confirmed theoretically using a graphene tight binding model. We conclude that the different resonance behavior comes from the fact that the G band is a first-order process whereas the 2G band is second-order processes giving rise to overall different resonance conditions.

In this work, we employed Density Functional Theory calculations combined with search techniques based on evolutionary algorithms to predict and characterize crystalline structures composed of nitrogen (N6) cage-like molecules. We found stable molecular crystals and a rich phenomenology associated with their behavior under pressure, including atomic rebonding and semiconductor-metal transitions. This investigation resides in the context of high-energy-density materials, since molecular species containing only nitrogen atoms tend to dissociate into N2 molecules, releasing large amounts of energy.

In this work, we apply a combination of theoretical techniques to characterize a two-dimensional material with formula B2N2O2, featuring a zigzag array of nitrogen atoms. We predict its energetic, thermal, and dynamic stability and determine its electronic properties, including band structure and mobility evaluation for a phonon-mediated mechanism. We show that the compound is a wideband-gap semiconductor, with parabolic band edges and with large electron and hole mobilities within the deformation potential approach. We ascribe this result to the existence of electronic channels defined by the zigzag array of nitrogen bonds, which define the edges of both conduction and valence bands. We also propose a mechanism to synthesize the compound based on oxygen functionalization and application of pressure. Finally, we show that the results can be generalized to represent a family of 2D compounds.

Unimodular gravity is one of the oldest geometric gravity theories and alternatives to general relativity. Essentially, it is based on the Einstein–Hilbert Lagrangian with an additional constraint on the determinant of the metric. It can be explicitly shown that unimodular gravity can be recast as general relativity in the presence of a cosmological constant. This fact has led to many discussions on the equivalence of both theories at the classical and quantum levels. Here, we present an analysis focused on the classical scalar perturbations around a cosmological background. We focus on the unusual situation in which the typical conservation laws are not adopted. The discussion is extended to the case where a non-minimal coupled scalar field is introduced. We also present a gauge-invariant analysis showing that perturbations in unimodular gravity display instabilities. Our results reinforce that the equivalence is not verified completely at a cosmological perturbative level.

Moiré superlattices of two-dimensional heterostructures arose as a new platform to investigate emergent behaviour in quantum solids with unprecedented tunability. To glean insights into the physics of these systems, it is paramount to discover new probes of the moiré potential and moiré minibands, as well as their dependence on external tuning parameters. Hydrostatic pressure is a powerful control parameter, since it allows to continuously and reversibly enhance the moiré potential. Here we use high pressure to tune the minibands in a rotationally aligned MoS2/WSe2 moiré heterostructure, and show that their evolution can be probed via moiré phonons. The latter are Raman-inactive phonons from the individual layers that are activated by the moiré potential. Moiré phonons manifest themselves as satellite Raman peaks arising exclusively from the heterostructure region, increasing in intensity and frequency under applied pressure. Further theoretical analysis reveals that their scattering rate is directly connected to the moiré potential strength. By comparing the experimental and calculated pressure-induced enhancement, we obtain numerical estimates for the moiré potential amplitude and its pressure dependence. The present work establishes moiré phonons as a sensitive probe of the moiré potential as well as the electronic structures of moiré systems.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) makes use of Artificial Intelligence algorithms to extract meaningful information from unstructured texts, i.e., content that lacks metadata and cannot easily be indexed or mapped onto standard database fields. It has several applications, from sentiment analysis and text summary to automatic language translation. In this work, we use NLP to figure out similar structural linguistic patterns among several different languages. We apply the word2vec algorithm that creates a vector representation for the words in a multidimensional space that maintains the meaning relationship between the words. From a large corpus we built this vectorial representation in a 100-dimensional space for English, Portuguese, German, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, Basque, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, and Estonian. Then, we calculated the fractal dimensions of the structure that represents each language. The structures are multi-fractals with two different dimensions that we use, in addition to the token-dictionary size rate of the languages, to represent the languages in a three-dimensional space. Finally, analyzing the distance among languages in this space, we conclude that the closeness there is tendentially related to the distance in the Phylogenetic tree that depicts the lines of evolutionary descent of the languages from a common ancestor.

Osteosarcoma is the most common type of bone cancer. Despite therapeutic progress, survival rates for metastatic cases or that do not respond well to chemotherapy remain in the 30% range. In this sense, the use of nanotechnology to develop targeted and more effective therapies is a promising tool in the fight against cancer. Nanostructured hydroxyapatite, due to its biocompatibility and the wide possibility of functionalization, is an interesting material to design nanoplatforms for targeted drug delivery. These platforms have the potential to enable the use of natural substances in the fight against cancer, such as curcumin. Curcumin is a polyphenol with promising properties in treating various types of cancer, including osteosarcoma. In this work, hydroxyapatite (n-HA) nanorods synthesized by the hydrothermal method were investigated as a carrier for curcumin. For this, first-principle calculations based on the Density Functional Theory (DFT) were performed, in which the modification of curcumin (CM) with the coupling agent (3-aminopropyl) triethoxysilane (APTES) was theoretically evaluated. Curcumin was incorporated in n-HA and the drug loading stability was evaluated by leaching test. Samples were characterized by a multi-techniques approach, including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), UV–visible spectroscopy (UV–Vis), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (FRX), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), zeta potential analysis (ζ), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results show that n-HAs with a 90 nm average size were obtained and successful incorporation of curcumin in the nanostructure was achieved. Cell viability and the number of osteosarcoma cells were decreased by CMAP-HA treatment. Furthermore, the stability test suggests that hydroxyapatite nanoparticles present great potential for the transportation of curcumin in the bloodstream, crediting this system for biological performance evaluations aiming at the treatment of osteosarcomas. Keywords: nanostructures, curcumin, hydroxyapatite, osteosarcoma.

Generalized uncertainty principles (GUP) and, independently, Lorentz symmetry violations are two common features in many candidate theories of quantum gravity. Despite that, the overlap between both has received limited attention so far. In this brief paper, we carry out further investigations on this topic. At the nonrelativistic level and in the realm of commutative spacetime coordinates, a large class of both isotropic and anisotropic GUP models is shown to produce signals experimentally indistinguishable from those predicted by the Standard Model Extension (SME), the common framework for studying Lorentz-violating phenomena beyond the Standard Model. This identification is used to constrain GUP models using current limits on SME coefficients. In particular, bounds on isotropic GUP models are improved by a factor of $10^7$ compared to current spectroscopic bounds and anisotropic models are constrained for the first time.