arXiv subjects

Xiong Zheng

Publications and source records attributed to Xiong Zheng.

17 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2024

Asymmetric electron distribution induced intrinsically strong anisotropy of thermal transport in bulk CrOCl

Anisotropic heat transfer offers promising solutions to the efficient heat dissipation in the realm of electronic device thermal management. However, the fundamental origin of the anisotropy of thermal transport remains mysterious. In this paper, by combining frequency domain thermoreflectance (FDTR) technique and first-principles-based multiscale simulations, we report the intrinsic anisotropy of thermal transport in bulk CrOCl, and further trace the origin of the anisotropy back to the fundamental electronic structures. The in-plane and cross-plane thermal conductivities ($κ$) at 300 K are found to be 21.6 and 2.18 Wm$^{-1}$K$^{-1}$, respectively, showcasing a strong $κ_\mathrm{in-plane}/κ_\mathrm{cross-plane}$ ratio of $\sim$10. Deep analysis of orbital-resolved electronic structures reveals that electrons are mainly distributed along the in-plane direction with limited interlayer distribution along the cross-plane direction, fundamentally leading to the intrinsic anisotropy of thermal transport in bulk CrOCl. The insight gained in this work sheds light on the design of advanced thermal functional materials.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2024

Superfolded configuration induced low thermal conductivity in two-dimensional carbon allotropes revealed via machine learning force constant potential

Understanding the fundamental link between structure and functionalization is crucial for the design and optimization of functional materials, since different structural configurations could trigger materials to demonstrate diverse physical, chemical, and electronic properties. However, the correlation between crystal structure and thermal conductivity (\k{appa}) remains enigmatic. In this study, taking two-dimensional (2D) carbon allotropes as study cases, we utilize phonon Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) along with machine learning force constant potential to thoroughly explore the complex folding structure of pure sp2 hybridized carbon materials from the perspective of crystal structure, mode-level phonon resolved thermal transport, and atomic interactions, with the goal of identifying the underlying relationship between 2D geometry and \k{appa}. We propose two potential structure evolution mechanisms for targeted thermal transport properties: in-plane and out-of-plane folding evolutions, which are generally applicable to 2D carbon allotropes. It is revealed that the folded structure produces strong symmetry breaking, and simultaneously produces exceptionally strongly suppressed phonon group velocities, strong phonon-phonon scattering, and weak phonon hydrodynamics, which ultimately lead to low \k{appa}. The insight into the folded effect of atomic structures on thermal transport deepens our understanding of the relationship between structure and functionalization, which offers straightforward guidance for designing novel nanomaterials with targeted \k{appa}, as well as propel developments in materials science and engineering.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Wave-graphene: a full-auxetic carbon semiconductor with high flexibility and optical UV absorption

The abundant bonding possibilities of Carbon stimulate the design of numerous carbon allotropes, promising the foundation for exploring structure-functionality relationships. Herein, utilizing the space bending strategy, we successfully engineered a two-dimensional carbon allotrope with pure sp2 hybridization, named "Wave-graphene" from the unique wave-like ripple structure. The novel Wave-graphene exhibits full-auxetic behavior due to anisotropic mechanical response, possessing both negative and zero Poisson's ratios. The fundamental mechanism can be attributed to the fact that highly buckled out-of-plane structures lead to anisotropic responses of in-plane nonlinear interactions, which further lead to anisotropy of lattice vibrations. In addition, Wave-graphene is found having quasi-direct wide bandgap of 2.01 eV, the excellent optical transparency and the high flexibility. The successful design of Wave-graphene with excellent outstanding multifunctional properties shows that the utilization of space bending strategies can provide more degrees of freedom for designing novel materials, further enriching the carbon material family and supplementing its versatility.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2023

Janus-graphene: a two-dimensional half-auxetic carbon allotropes with non-chemical Janus configuration

The asymmetric properties of Janus two-dimensional materials commonly depend on chemical effects, such as different atoms, elements, material types, etc. Herein, based on carbon gene recombination strategy, we identify an intrinsic non-chemical Janus configuration in a novel purely sp$^2$ hybridized carbon monolayer, named as Janus-graphene. With the carbon gene of tetragonal, hexagonal, and octagonal rings, the spontaneous unilateral growth of carbon atoms drives the non-chemical Janus configuration in Janus-graphene, which is totally different from the chemical effect in common Janus materials such as MoSSe. A structure-independent half-auxetic behavior is mapped in Janus-graphene that the structure maintains expansion whether stretched or compressed, which lies in the key role of $p_z$ orbital. The unprecedented half-auxeticity in Janus-graphene extends intrinsic auxeticity into pure sp$^2$ hybrid carbon configurations. With the unique half-auxeticity emerged in the non-chemical Janus configuration, Janus-graphene enriches the functional carbon family as a promising candidate for micro/nanoelectronic device applications.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

The consistent behavior of negative Poissons ratio with interlayer interactions

Negative Poissons ratio (NPR) is of great interest due to the novel applications in lots of fields. Films are the most commonly used form in practical applications, which involves multiple layers. However, the effect of interlayer interactions on the NPR is still unclear. In this study, based on first principles calculations, we systematically investigate the effect of interlayer interactions on the NPR by comparably studying single-layer graphene, few-layer graphene, h-BN, and graphene-BN heterostructure. It is found that they almost have the same geometry-strain response. Consequently, the NPR in bilayer graphene, triple-layer graphene, and graphene-BN heterostructure are consistent with that in single-layer graphene and h-BN. The fundamental mechanism lies in that the response to strain of the orbital coupling are consistent under the effect of interlayer interactions. The deep understanding of the NPR with the effect of interlayer interactions as achieved in this study is beneficial for the future design and development of micro-/nanoscale electromechanical devices with novel functions based on nanostructures.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2022

The synergistic modulation of electronic and geometry structures leads to ultra-low thermal conductivity of graphene-like borides (g-B3X5, X=N, P, As)

The design of novel devices with specific technical interests through modulating structural properties and bonding characteristics promotes the vigorous development of materials informatics. Herein, we propose a synergy strategy of component reconstruction by combining geometric configuration and bonding characteristics. With the synergy strategy, we designed a novel two-dimensional (2D) graphene-like borides, e.g. g-B3N5, which possesses counter-intuitive ultra-low thermal conductivity of 21.08 W/mK despite the small atomic mass. The ultra-low thermal conductivity is attributed to the synergy effect of electronics and geometry on thermal transport due to the combining reconstruction of g-BN and nitrogene. With the synergy effect, the dominant acoustic branches are strongly softened, and the scattering absorption and Umklapp process are simultaneously suppressed. Thus, the thermal conductivity is significantly lowered. To verify the component reconstruction strategy, we further constructed g-B3P5 and g-B3As5, and uncovered the ultra-low thermal conductivity of 2.50 and 1.85 W/mK, respectively. The synergy effect and the designed ultra-low thermal conductivity materials with lightweight atomic mass cater to the demand for light development of momentum machinery and heat protection, such as aerospace vehicles, high-speed rail, automobiles.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2021

Rabia: Simplifying State-Machine Replication Through Randomization

We introduce Rabia, a simple and high performance framework for implementing state-machine replication (SMR) within a datacenter. The main innovation of Rabia is in using randomization to simplify the design. Rabia provides the following two features: (i) It does not need any fail-over protocol and supports trivial auxiliary protocols like log compaction, snapshotting, and reconfiguration, components that are often considered the most challenging when developing SMR systems; and (ii) It provides high performance, up to 1.5x higher throughput than the closest competitor (i.e., EPaxos) in a favorable setup (same availability zone with three replicas) and is comparable with a larger number of replicas or when deployed in multiple availability zones.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2021

Anisotropy of thermal transport in phosphorene: A comparative first-principles study using different exchange-correlation functional

With the increasing applications of Phosphorene in nano/optoelectronics and thermoelectrics, a comprehensive study on its thermal transport properties is necessary. It has been concluded from previous studies that there exist vast differences and uncertainty in the theoretically predicted thermal conductivity of single-layer phosphorene, which is generally attributed to the selection of XC functionals. However, even though the selection of functional groups in the first-principles calculations is particularly essential for predicting the thermal conductivity of phosphorene, there is no comprehensive investigation on this issue, which is unclear and is a gap in the field. Thus, the goal of this study is to investigate the effects of different XC functions on the thermal transport properties of phosphorene.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Amortized Constant Round Atomic Snapshot in Message-Passing Systems

We study the lattice agreement (LA) and atomic snapshot problems in asynchronous message-passing systems where up to $f$ nodes may crash. Our main result is a crash-tolerant atomic snapshot algorithm with \textit{amortized constant round complexity}. To the best of our knowledge, the best prior result is given by Delporte et al. [TPDS, 18] with amortized $O(n)$ complexity if there are more scans than updates. Our algorithm achieves amortized constant round if there are $Ω(\sqrt{k})$ operations, where $k$ is the number of actual failures in an execution and is bounded by $f$. Moreover, when there is no failure, our algorithm has $O(1)$ round complexity unconditionally. To achieve amortized constant round complexity, we devise a simple \textit{early-stopping} lattice agreement algorithm and use it to "order" the update and scan operations for our snapshot object. Our LA algorithm has $O(\sqrt{k})$ round complexity. It is the first early-stopping LA algorithm in asynchronous systems.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2020

Byzantine Lattice Agreement in Synchronous Systems

In this paper, we study the Byzantine lattice agreement problem in synchronous systems. The lattice agreement problem in crash failure model has been studied both in synchronous and asynchronous systems, which leads to the current best upper bound of $O(\log f)$ rounds in both systems. However, very few algorithmic results are known for the lattice agreement problem in Byzantine failure model. The paper [Nowak et al., DISC, 2019] first gives an algorithm for a variant of the lattice agreement problem on cycle-free lattices that tolerates up to $f < n/(h(X) + 1)$ Byzantine faults, where $n$ is the number of processes and $h(X)$ is the height of the input lattice $X$. The recent preprint by Di et al. studies this problem with a slightly modified validity condition in asynchronous systems. They present a $O(f)$ rounds algorithm by using the reliable broadcast primitive as a first step and following the similar algorithmic framework as the algorithms in crash failure model. In this paper, we propose three algorithms for the Byzantine lattice agreement problem in synchronous systems. The first algorithm takes $\min \{3h(X) + 6,6\sqrt{f} + 6\})$ rounds and $O(n^2 \min\{h(X), \sqrt{f}\})$ messages, where $h(X)$ is the height of the input lattice $X$, $n$ is the total number of processes. The second algorithm runs in $3\log n + 3$ rounds and takes $O(n^2 \log n)$ messages. The third algorithm takes $4 \log f + 3$ rounds and takes $O(n^2 \log f)$ messages. All algorithms can tolerate up to $f < \frac{n}{3}$ Byzantine failures.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2020

Byzantine Lattice Agreement in Asynchronous Systems

We study the Byzantine lattice agreement (BLA) problem in asynchronous distributed message passing systems. In the BLA problem, each process proposes a value from a join semi-lattice and needs to output a value also in the lattice such that all output values of correct processes lie on a chain despite the presence of Byzantine processes. We present an algorithm for this problem with round complexity of $O(\log f)$ which tolerates $f < \frac{n}{5}$ Byzantine failures in the asynchronous setting without digital signatures, where $n$ is the number of processes. We also show how this algorithm can be modified to work in the authenticated setting (i.e., with digital signatures) to tolerate $f < \frac{n}{3}$ Byzantine failures.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2019

Physical origin of the expansion of polymer coils in a binary solvent in the vicinity of its demixing critical point

Critical fluctuations are known to induce a collapse of polymer chains in a mixed solvent upon approaching its liquid-liquid critical point, as originally predicted by Brochard and de Gennes. Recently, we have found that closer to the critical point this collapse is followed by a reswelling of the polymer coils well beyond the original dimensions, a phenomenon not predicted by the theory of Brochard and de Gennes. We submit that upon approaching the critical temperature more closely, the correlation length of the critical fluctuations inside the polymer coils can no longer further increase due to the finite size of the coils, resulting in the appearance of large critical Casimir forces that cause a significant expansion of the polymer coils. Eventually, micro-phase separation inside the coils will appear and the coils will reshrink. This entire process takes place while the bulk solution is still in the one-phase region.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2019

Parallel and Distributed Algorithms for the housing allocation Problem

We give parallel and distributed algorithms for the housing allocation problem. In this problem, there is a set of agents and a set of houses. Each agent has a strict preference list for a subset of houses. We need to find a matching such that some criterion is optimized. One such criterion is Pareto Optimality. A matching is Pareto optimal if no coalition of agents can be strictly better off by exchanging houses among themselves. We also study the housing market problem, a variant of the housing allocation problem, where each agent initially owns a house. In addition to Pareto optimality, we are also interested in finding the core of a housing market. A matching is in the core if there is no coalition of agents that can be better off by breaking away from other agents and switching houses only among themselves. In the first part of this work, we show that computing a Pareto optimal matching of a house allocation is in {\bf CC} and computing the core of a housing market is {\bf CC}-hard. Given a matching, we also show that verifying whether it is in the core can be done in {\bf NC}. We then give an algorithm to show that computing a maximum Pareto optimal matching for the housing allocation problem is in {\bf RNC}^2 and quasi-{\bf NC}^2. In the second part of this work, we present a distributed version of the top trading cycle algorithm for finding the core of a housing market. To that end, we first present two algorithms for finding all the disjoint cycles in a functional graph: a Las Vegas algorithm which terminates in $O(\log l)$ rounds with high probability, where $l$ is the length of the longest cycle, and a deterministic algorithm which terminates in $O(\log^* n \log l)$ rounds, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the graph. Both algorithms work in the synchronous distributed model and use messages of size $O(\log n)$.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2019

An Optimal Vector Clock Algorithm for Multithreaded Systems

Tracking causality (or happened-before relation) between events is useful for many applications such as debugging and recovery from failures. Consider a concurrent system with $n$ threads and $m$ objects. For such systems, either a vector clock of size $n$ is used with one component per thread or a vector clock of size $m$ is used with one component per object. A natural question is whether one can use a vector clock of size strictly less than the minimum of $m$ and $n$ to timestamp events. We give an algorithm in this paper that uses a hybrid of thread and object components. Our algorithm is guaranteed to return the minimum number of components necessary for vector clocks. We first consider the case when the interaction between objects and threads is statically known. This interaction is modeled by a thread-object bipartite graph. Our algorithm is based on finding the maximum bipartite matching of such a graph and then applying König-Egerváry Theorem to compute the minimum vertex cover to determine the optimal number of components necessary for the vector clock. We also propose two mechanisms to compute such an vector clock when computation is revealed in an online fashion. Evaluation on different types of graphs indicates that our offline algorithm generates a size vector clock which is significantly less than the minimum of $m$ and $n$. These mechanisms are more effective when the underlying bipartite graph is not dense.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2018

Linearizable Replicated State Machines with Lattice Agreement

This paper studies the lattice agreement problem in asynchronous systems and explores its application to building linearizable replicated state machines (RSM). First, we propose an algorithm to solve the lattice agreement problem in $O(\log f)$ asynchronous rounds, where $f$ is the number of crash failures that the system can tolerate. This is an exponential improvement over the previous best upper bound. Second, Faleiro et al have shown in [Faleiro et al. PODC, 2012] that combination of conflict-free data types and lattice agreement protocols can be applied to implement linearizable RSM. They give a Paxos style lattice agreement protocol, which can be adapted to implement linearizable RSM and guarantee that a command can be learned in at most $O(n)$ message delays, where $n$ is the number of proposers. Later on, Xiong et al in [Xiong et al. DISC, 2018] give a lattice agreement protocol which improves the $O(n)$ guarantee to be $O(f)$. However, neither protocols is practical for building a linearizable RSM. Thus, in the second part of the paper, we first give an improved protocol based on the one proposed by Xiong et al. Then, we implement a simple linearizable RSM using the our improved protocol and compare our implementation with an open source Java implementation of Paxos. Results show that better performance can be obtained by using lattice agreement based protocols to implement a linearizable RSM compared to traditional consensus based protocols.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2018

Lattice Agreement in Message Passing Systems

This paper studies the lattice agreement problem and the generalized lattice agreement problem in distributed message passing systems. In the lattice agreement problem, given input values from a lattice, processes have to non-trivially decide output values that lie on a chain. We consider the lattice agreement problem in both synchronous and asynchronous systems. For synchronous lattice agreement, we present two algorithms which run in $\log f$ and $\min \{O(\log^2 h(L)), O(\log^2 f)\}$ rounds, respectively, where $h(L)$ denotes the height of the {\em input sublattice} $L$, $f < n$ is the number of crash failures the system can tolerate, and $n$ is the number of processes in the system. These algorithms have significant better round complexity than previously known algorithms. The algorithm by Attiya et al. \cite{attiya1995atomic} takes $\log n$ synchronous rounds, and the algorithm by Mavronicolasa \cite{mavronicolasabound} takes $\min \{O(h(L)), O(\sqrt{f})\}$ rounds. For asynchronous lattice agreement, we propose an algorithm which has time complexity of $2 \cdot \min \{h(L), f + 1\}$ message delays which improves on the previously known time complexity of $O(n)$ message delays. The generalized lattice agreement problem defined by Faleiro et al in \cite{faleiro2012generalized} is a generalization of the lattice agreement problem where it is applied for the replicated state machine. We propose an algorithm which guarantees liveness when a majority of the processes are correct in asynchronous systems. Our algorithm requires $\min \{O(h(L)), O(f)\}$ units of time in the worst case which is better than $O(n)$ units of time required by the algorithm of Faleiro et al. \cite{faleiro2012generalized}.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2018

Unusual transformation of polymer coils in a mixed solvent close to the critical point

We have discovered unusual behavior of polymer coils in a binary solvent (nitroethane+isooctane) near the critical temperature of demixing. The exceptionally close refractive indices of the solvent components make the critical opalescence relatively weak, thus enabling us to simultaneously observe the Brownian motion of the polymer coils and the diverging correlation length of the critical fluctuations. The polymer coils exhibit a collapse-reswelling-expansion-collapse transition upon approaching the critical temperature. While the first stage (collapse-reswelling) can be explained by the theory of Brochard and de Gennes, the subsequent expansion-collapse transition is a new unexpected phenomenon that has not been observed so far. We believe that this effect is generic and attribute it to micro-phase separation of the solvent inside the polymer coil.

cond-mat.soft↗