News on China's scientific and technological development.

The Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CIOMP) and Nature Publishing Group (NPG) launched their co-published academic journal “Light: Science & Applications (LSA)" on March 29, 2012.

LSA is a fully open access journal, the first Chinese-based and completely open access journal in physical sciences to be published by NPG. This journal will showcase the best international optics and photonics research and, through rigorous but fair peer-review, publish the most outstanding and interesting work possible.

The partnership between NPG and CIOMP combines the core strengths of both organizations. NPG is clearly a leader in the scientific publishing world. CIOMP, one of China's early national research institutions founded in 1952, has undertaken a series of pioneering works across many fields under the leadership of academician Daheng Wang. CIOMP has also been hailed as "the Cradle of Optics in China" for its outstanding research in applied optics, precision mechanics, lasers and optoelectronics.　

The website of the journal is:

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For the first time a new and energy efficient 3D display technology, the polarized single-chip 3D projection display system using laser sources of narrow line width, has been applied in a 3D movie in an experiment on Saturday, responding to the Science and Technology Week

3D projection display system using laser sources

The display system is developed by Prof. Minghai, the director of Photonics Technology Institute in USTC. Prof. Minghai said that the laser device used in this system is an exclusive one with a quite narrow band spectrum and is easily to integrated, so it can be very energy efficient, which makes it significantly different from the mix laser light source applied in existing display system. Besides that, laser makes the color of the movie more vivid. In addition to these, being integrated with the new and cheap polarized single-chip 3D projection display technology results in less light energy loss than in traditional polarized 3D display technology.

In the room where the new 3D film was displayed, many children gathered, wearing polarized glasses and exciting expression. Of course some of them have once watched 3D films and been wondering all the time how the picture can be so close to them, and it is in USTC that they got the answer, and even more: what they got in touch with, although simple and crude in form, is totally a new one by nature.

3D projected image

Although the polarized single-chip 3D projection display technology has been a patent in 1940s in American, the polarized single-chip 3D projection display system using laser sources of narrow line width is yet a new thing. And its energy efficiency is going to be indispensable for 3D display in future.

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The manufacturing execution system (MES) for bogie manufacturing center developed by the Automation Systems Department of Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA) stood out among competitors and secured the institute a contract with CNR Changchun Railway Vehicles Co., Ltd (CNR CRC), laying a solid foundation for the system to be applied in China’s high-speed railway manufacturing in the future.

As the management system for locomotive manufacturing, the MES covers the whole process of bogie production, including workshops for processing, welding, wheel axle, assembly, anti-corrosion, maintenance and new product, as well as departments of general affairs, production, manufacturing method and equipment. The first phase of project under the contract revolves around process tracking, focuses on the transparency of production process, and is expected to start at the end of this year.

CNR CRC is currently China’s largest and strongest R&D, manufacturing and exportation base of mainline passenger vehicles and urban mass transit vehicles. From the establishment of company, CNR CRC has accumulatively manufactured more than 30 thousand various railway vehicles (including EMUs), approximately taking up 44% of entire operating vehicles; accumulatively manufactured more than 4,100 various urban mass transit vehicles (including CNR Bombardier), taking up about 55% of domestically operating vehicles.

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Researchers from Microwave Devices and Integrated Circuits Department (Dept. No.4) of Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS) have succeeded in developing 8-GS/s 4-bit ADC (analog-to-digital converter) and 10-GS/s 8-bit DAC (digital-to-analog converter) chips in mid-April.

The ADC based on flash-interpolating architecture, integrates about 1250 transistors. And its chip can work stably at a clock rate of 8 GS/s with a maximum of 9 GS/s.

The ultra-high-speed DAC is based on R-2R current steering architecture, and integrates about 1045 transistors, including a 10-Gbps built-in self-test generator. The DAC chip can work stably at a clock rate of 10 GS/s.

The ultra-high speed ADC/DAC chips play a key role in the fields of optical communication and broadband wireless communication. These two kinds of chips developed by IMECAS greatly increased the Maximum Sampling Rate of ADC/DAC chips in China, laying a solid foundation for the development of higher performance ADC/DAC circuits.

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Northwest China's Gansu province, home to the country's earliest nuclear base, plans to build more than 30 radiation monitoring stations in the following five years, local authorities announced on Saturday.

The province will invest 30 million yuan (4.7 million U.S. dollars) in setting up the stations in 14 cities and prefectures and also in areas with sources of radioactivity including uranium mining and metallurgy and nuclear facilities, according to the local government's nuclear and radiation safety bureau.

Gansu has already established three automatic radiation monitoring stations in the cities of Lanzhou, Jiayuguan and Jinchang in the past five years. They contributed greatly in emergency monitoring during the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and have been providing accurate data on local radiation levels.

Gansu now has nearly 2,900 radioactive sources, more than 1,000 radioactive facilities and rapidly increasing exposure to electromagnetic radiation.

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Development of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) with high power and energy density considerably depends on the improvement of electrode materials. Nanostructured materials can provide multiple advantages, such as accelerating the Li ion diffusion, improving the compatibility between electrolyte and electrode materials. However, volume expansion and aggregation during the cycling process commonly result in rapid fading of capacities for these materials. At present, the study on high-rate and long-cycling electrode materials has attracted great interest in energy field.

Prof. GUAN Lunhui and his colleagues at the State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter(FJIRSM), explored new electrode materials by using wet chemical methods based on various carbon carriers such as carbon nanotubes, carbon nanohorns and graphene sheets.

They obtained carbon-based metal oxide composites and investigated their electrochemical properties. Recently, a composite of SnO2/Fc@SWNTs with large capacities of 900 mAh/g was obtained (Chem. Comm. 2011, 47, 5238); the anodes based on carbon nanohorn carrier exhibited superior Li-batteries performance with large reversible capacity, excellent cyclic performance, and good rate capability (Chem. Comm. 2011, 47, 7416； RSC ADV.DOI: 10.1039/C1RA00267H). Furthermore, nanoflake MnO2/MWNT composite prepared via asimple redox reaction was firstly used as cathode materials for Li-air batteries (Electrochem. Comm. 2011, 13, 698).

In addition, Prof.GUAN’s group has also built the composites of Pt-based core-shell nanoparticles (<5 nm) well dispersed on the surface of single-walled carbon nanotubes. As a novel electrode in fuel cells, the anodic peak current density of the nanocomposite is 8.0 times higher than that of Pt/C for ethanol oxidation. This may be helpful for the design and synthesis of more active catalysts to meet our future energy requirements. Those results above have been issued in Energy & Environmental Science

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A kind of MIMO-OFDM core Baseband chip for High-Speed WLAN which was designed by IMECAS-BCS of ASIC & SYSTEM of Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMECAS) has been developed and accomplished the demonstration of 8-channels video transmission in late march.

The research taken by IMECAS-BCS of ASIC & SYSTEM is a national science and technology expertise program that aims to realize “New generation of Wideband Wireless Mobile Communication Net” and is supported by “National Nature Science Fund”, "Beijing science star” and so on. The BCS team develops 2-input and 2-output MIMO-OFDM Baseband Mixed-Signal Chip BCS5731, which is integrated with four 80MHz/10bit Pipeline ADCs, four 80MHz/10bit DACs and excellent-performance MIMO-OFDM Baseband DSP, supporting 32 modes such as SDM, STBC, MRC for IEEE802.11a/g/n and achieving 130Mbps throughput. The performance and integrated level lead in domestic industry and academia and is the first MIMO-OFDM Baseband DSP chip supporting IEEE802.11a/g/n in China.

The chip has passed the authentication of China Electrical Technique Standard Institute and demonstration of 8 channels close-loop high-quality video transmission. This technique builds up a good foundation for the research and industrialization for the IMT-Advanced (4G) High-Speed Wireless Communication chip, the next generation Very-High-Speed WLAN and medium-distance high-speed wireless communication chip, and prompts the domestic technology research and industrialization progress of high-throughput wireless communication chip

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The China CNC Machine Tool Fair 2012 (CCMT 2012) opened in Nanjing on 16th. Near 800 machine tool manufacturers from 15 countries and regions took part in the fair, with more than 1100 units (sets) of whole machines and large measuring instruments, and tens of thousands of numerical-control systems, function parts, measuring and cutting tools, and machine tool accessories put on display in the fair. This is the largest fair in terms of exhibition volume since the establishment of the CCMT in 2000.

Xu Xingchu, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an expert of precision instrument designing and techniques, said that the standard of exhibits in this year's fair has improved significantly, a full proof of China's remarkable achievement in reforming the development pattern and promoting product structure adjustment of China's machine tool industry. Main manifestations include:

More than 100 proprietary innovative achievements show the new features of the industry's upgrade. In the fair, over 70 machine tools manufacturers exhibit more than 100 proprietary innovative achievements, including many innovative achievements of national key scientific projects of high-end numerical-control machine tools and basic manufacturing equipments. These achievements break many bottlenecks that have long been hindering the development of China's machine tool technology, accomplish many innovative achievements, and cover many areas across the industry, including a lot of key host machines, high-performance numerical-control systems, key function parts, and other accessories.

A great number of high-end and high-quality products reflect the application of international advanced manufacturing technology in China's machine tool sector. About 300 units (sets) of high-end and high-quality products are exhibited here. These products embody the fundamental technology features of the development trend of contemporary international advanced manufacturing technology. They are the real reflection of the application of current international advanced technologies in China's machine tool manufacturing sector, indicating that China's machine tool industry is vigorously catching up with and adopting international advanced manufacturing technology and endeavoring to get into and merge with the trend of contemporary international advanced manufacturing technology.

A series of exhibits that provide service to key clients show the improvement of the industry's guarantee capability. A large number of key products that are used in key parts and procedures in the country's key development sectors, such as aviation, aerospace, automobile, shipping, and energy, are exhibited, indicating the important role of machine tool and fundamental manufacturing equipments in the economy and national defense, reflecting that the support and guarantee capability of China's machine tool industry in the economy and national defense continue to improve.

Peripheral basic products are diversified and excellent, showing that the industrial structure of China's machine tool industry is becoming more and more complete. Along with whole machines, these hundreds of manufacturers offer tens of thousands of units of numerical-control systems, functions parts, measuring and cutting tools, and accessories in the fair. The technological standard of these products are significantly improved. These fundamental peripheral products indicate that an industrial structure of synchronized and coordinated development of the machine tool industry is heading for completion.

It is learned that the gross industrial output value of China's machine tool industry in 2011 aggregated at RMB 660.65 billion Yuan, an increase of 32.1 percent year on year; the aggregate products turnover amounted to RMB 642.49 billion Yuan, an increase of 31.1 percent over the previous year. As of the end of the 11th Five-year Plan, China's machine tool output value had ranked 1st in the world for 2 consecutive years, the development rate significantly higher than major machine tools manufacturing countries such as Japan and Germany.

Wu Bolin, vice standing chairman of China Machine Tool & Tool Builders' Association, points out that the achievement of the structural adjustment of the machine tool industry would not be possible without the fast and steady development of the industry for 10 years in a row. Nonetheless, at present, despite the huge volume of China's machine tool industry, it is not very competitive, the main conflict being the incompatibility between the supply capability of the industry and the accelerated upgrade of the demand structure of the domestic market. As upgrade of market demand accelerates, demand for high-end products and specialized machines increases. Famous international companies are gearing up to seize the middle- and high-end market in China, posing serious challenges for domestic machine tool enterprises.

According to Wu Bolin, in the face of the new conditions of market demand, enterprises should make focus efforts to increase their competitiveness in the middle- and high-end numerical-control machine tool market, to increase the supporting capability of middle- and high-end numerical-control systems and function parts, and to improve their comprehensive service capability for the middle- and high-end market, so as to withstand the test of the market. Only with highly steady performance, reliability, and low cost can machine tool products possess during market competitiveness.

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The world's first High-Tc superconducting power substation, which was developed by the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IEE CAS), was put into operation officially in the power grid in Baiyin city, Gansu province, China.

The substation with voltage level of 10.5 kV, which is located at the National High-Tech Industry Park in Baiyin city, integrates a 1 MJ/0.5 MVA high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnetic energy storage devices (SMES), a 3-phase 1.5 kA high-Tc superconducting fault current limiters (SFCL), a 630 kVA high temperature superconducting (HTS) transformer, and a 75m long/1.5 kA 3-phase AC HTS transmission cable. These new-type superconducting power devices can enhance the stability and reliability of the grid, improve the power quality, decrease the system losses and reduce the occupation area of substation.

Till now, it is the only distribution-level High-Tc superconducting substation in the world, which creates the world’s first and China’s first in many areas. Nearly 70 completely independent intellectual property rights were obtained. It integrates the latest and the most advanced research results of superconducting power technology of recent 10 years in China. The operation of the power substation marked a significant breakthrough of China's superconducting power technology.

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