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Silicon-containing groups were introduced into fluoroacrylate polymer to further improve the comprehensive performance of pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) for expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) bonding.

A series of silicon-containing fluorinated acrylic copolymers were synthesized through free radical solution polymerization with vinyloxy trimethylsilane, allyltrimethylsilane, 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate or 1,3,5-tris(3,3,3-trifluoropropyl) methylcyclotrisiloxane as silicon monomers, and comprehensive performance of the copolymers was evaluated based on Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), gel permeation chromatography, glass transition temperatures (T_g), differential scanning calorimetry, thermogravimetric analysis, water contact angle, the track, 180° peel strength, and shear holding power.

Based on the FTIR and XPS results, it is confirmed that the silicon monomers were successfully introduced into the fluorinated acrylate copolymer. XPS analysis indicated that the silicon groups had the tendency to enrich on the surface of the film, thereby reducing the F content on the film surface. The glass transition temperatures (T_g) of the PSAs increased when silicon monomers were introduced, while the thermal stability declined. The contact angles of the acrylic PSA films were increased with the introduction of silicon monomers. From the perspective of bonding performance, the track, 180° peel strength and shear holding power decreased to varying degrees compared to silicon-free PSA, except significantly elevated holding power with MPS as the silicon monomer.

Silicon-containing fluorinated acrylic copolymers were synthesized, and the comprehensive performance was evaluated as PSAs of ePTFE for the first time.

The low-temperature sintering of silica glass combined with additive manufacturing (AM) technology has brought a revolutionary change in glass manufacturing. This study aims to carry out in an attempt to achieve precious manufacturing of silicate glassy matrix through the method of slurry extrusion.

A low-cost slurry extrusion modelling technology is used to extrude silicate glassy matrix inks, composed of silicate glass powder with different amounts of additives. Extrudability of the inks, their printability window and the featuring curves of silicate glassy matrix are investigated. In addition, the properties of the low-temperature sintering green part as a functional part are explored and evaluated from morphology, hardness and colour.

The results showed that the particle size was mainly distributed from 1.4 µm to 5.3 µm, showing better slurry stability and print continuity. The parameters were set to 8 mm/s, 80% and 0.4 mm, respectively, to achieve better forming of three-dimensional (3D) samples. Besides, the organic binder removal step was concentrated on 200°C–300°C and 590°C–650°C was the fusion bonding temperature of the powder. The hardness values of 10 test samples ranged from 588 HL to 613 HL, which met the requirements of hard stones with super-strong mechanical strength. In addition, the mutual penetration of elements caused by temperature changes may lead to a colourful appearance.

The custom continuous AM technology enables the fabrication of a glass matrix with 3D structural features. The precise positioning technology of the glass matrix is expected to be applied more widely in functional parts.

The study aims to explore the composition and microstructure of clay functionally graded materials under the process of double-gradient direct ink writing (DIW).

The investigation focused specifically on the pore characteristics of barite-kaolin clay composite after three-dimensional (3D) printing and sintering as well as its bionic application in geophysical model.

The model with pore and material variations brought about spatial and nonlinear mechanical properties. Moreover, the vertical gradient and connected pores in the upper kaolin part simulated the natural phenomenon of the landslide model (take Chinese Majiagou landslides as an example). Both the thermal debinding behavior and the kaolin powder particles characteristics [large pore volume (0.019 cm³g^–1) and pore size (29.20 nm)] were attributed to the interconnection channels.

Hence, the macroscopic and microscopic pores achieved by dual-gradient DIW process make it possible to control the permeability and details of properties, precisely in the geological model.

The purpose of this paper is to explore concrete design methodology which can improve production technology.

An application of advanced process control (APC) on distributed control systems (DCS) was designed by defining the project target, scope, and control strategy. Calculation is based on heat and mass conservation, such as RPID=FC 203×900×(DC 241 PV‐400)×1.06/500 DC 241 PV; CATRATE=LEVELRATE×0.2²×3.14/4. The quality controller writes the control target on the density controller, which writes the initial value or output value onto the DCS.

The technique has dramatically increased the control quality of the DCS system: production capacity of the equipment has been improved and the aim of fecundity with little input is realized. The transit time of the product name is shortened and the excess stock is reduced.

The paper is aimed at operational researches and engineers.

How do entrepreneurs use simple rules to build their business models? Based on an inductive study of three Chinese Internet and technology firms, the authors find that business models emerge from simple rules that entrepreneurs learn from their experience. Simple rules also guide entrepreneurs to actualize and exploit opportunities in the marketplace, and they can help business models evolve through market feedback, especially in internationalization. This paper aims to delve into the black box of entrepreneurial decision-making and offer a better depiction of the business model development process in uncertain and fast-changing environments and thus provide guidance for future entrepreneurs.

Following the case method (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2003), the authors first present a thick description of characteristics of three companies and the dynamics of their business models. They then code these descriptions into first-order measures. Finally, they aggregate these measures into abstract constructs. They constantly compare the theoretical constructs and the emerging theory with the existing literature on business models.

The authors generate three key insights from the findings: business models emerge from simple rules learned from entrepreneurs’ experience, simple rules help entrepreneurs exploit and actualize opportunities in the marketplace and simple rules help businesses expand and evolve business models through market feedback, especially in internationalization.

This paper falls into the intersection of strategy and entrepreneurship – an emerging new field of strategic entrepreneurship – and is concerned with how businesses create and sustain a competitive advantage while simultaneously identifying and exploiting new opportunities. The authors bring people – the individual decision-makers for businesses – back in strategy research and depict a more realistic picture of the behavior of successful entrepreneurs and their business model development process.

Traditional simulation research of geological and similar engineering models, such as landslides or other natural disaster scenarios, usually focuses on the change of stress and the state of the model before and after destruction. However, the transition of the inner change is usually invisible. To optimize and make models more intelligent, this paper aims to propose a perceptible design to detect the internal temperature change transformed by other energy versions like stress or torsion.

In this paper, micron diamond particles were embedded in 3D printed geopolymers as a potential thermal sensor material to detect the inner heat change. The authors use synthetic micron diamond powder to reinforced the anti-corrosion properties and thermal conductivity of geopolymer and apply this novel geopolymer slurry in the direct ink writing (DIW) technique.

As a result, the addition of micron diamond powder can greatly influence the rheology of geopolymer slurry and make the geopolymer slurry extrudable and suitable for DIW by reducing the slope of the viscosity of this inorganic colloid. The heat transfer coefficient of the micron diamond (15 Wt.%)/geopolymer was 50% higher than the pure geopolymer, which could be detected by the infrared thermal imager. Besides, the addition of diamond particles also increased the porous rates of geopolymer.

In conclusion, DIW slurry deposition of micron diamond-embedded geopolymer (MDG) composites could be used to manufacture the multi-functional geological model for thermal imaging and defect detection, which need the characteristic of lightweight, isolation, heat transfer and wave absorption.

This study aims to complement existing studies by investigating the impact of different corporate social responsibility (CSR) information disclosed by peer listed stars (i.e. governance information [GI] and output information [OI]) on focal firms’ responsive CSR (RCSR) and strategic CSR (SCSR) practices. The authors also investigate the influence of different boundary conditions (i.e. founders’ social status [SS] and industry pollution intensity).

Based on the listed stars of 16 industries and their 4,096 private peers in China, the authors use the least squares method and logistic regression models to analyze the data set.

The results indicate that the GI of peer listed stars can only positively affect firms’ RCSR behavior. The OI of peer listed stars has a positive effect on firms’ SCSR behavior while negatively affecting firms’ RCSR behavior. The SS of focal firms’ founders and their interaction with the industry’s pollution level strengthen the abovementioned positive relationships while weakening the negative ones.

This study provides insights into the role of listed stars in influencing peer firms’ CSR activities, offering important practical implications for both policymakers and managers.

This study extends the recent discussion on peer effects of CSR by elucidating the peer star effect on CSR and confirms that firms may adopt heterogeneous CSR practices to achieve sustainable growth by investigating peer firms’ different responses to their listed stars’ different CSR information. Moreover, by introducing the SS of founders and the pollution intensity of the industry as boundary conditions, this study enriches the research context on CSR activities.

Hazard assessment on drought disaster is of great significance for improving drought risk management. Due to the complexity and uncertainty of the drought disaster, the index values have some grey multi-source heterogeneous characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to construct a grey projection incidence model (GPIM) to evaluate the hazard of the drought disaster characterised by the grey heterogeneity information.

First, the index system of the drought hazard risk is established based on the formation mechanism of the drought disaster. Then, the GPIM for the heterogeneous panel data is constructed to assess drought hazard of five cities in Henan Province. Subsequently, based on the assessment results, the grey clustering model is employed for the regional division.

The findings demonstrate that five cities in central Henan Province are divided into three categories, which correspond to three different risk grades, respectively. With respect to different drought risk areas, corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are proposed.

This paper provides a practical and effective new method for the hazard assessment on drought disaster. Meanwhile, these countermeasures and suggestions can help policy makers to improve the efficiency of drought resistance work and reduce the losses caused by drought disasters in Henan Province.

This paper proposes a new GPIM which resolves the assessment problems of the uncertain systems with grey heterogeneous information, such as real numbers, interval grey numbers and three-parameter interval grey numbers. It not only expands the application scope of the grey incidence model, but also enriches the research of panel data.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the influence of different aspects of top management team (TMT) functional background on short-term performance, long-term performance, innovation performance and oversea performance separately. This research aims to verify whether the social categorization theory and information and decision-making theory are applicable in listed companies of China’s information technology (IT) industry so as to provide key theoretical references for TMT enhancement ad corporate performance improvement.

This paper takes A-share listed companies in Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange as its study subjects, and it chooses the data from 2004 to 2010 in all of the 105 companies in IT industry in terms of the classification of Wind Database. The stepwise multiple regressions were run utilizing the regression program in Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS).

The research results show that the social categorization theory can better explain TMT’s influence on corporate performance. TMT functional heterogeneity does not contribute to improving corporate performance and shows significant negative influence on short-term performance and innovation performance in particular. Among the three basic functional backgrounds, TMTs dominated by “throughput” backgrounds show significant positive influence on short-term performance, long-term performance, innovation performance and overseas performance, and the influence turns out to be the largest among these three backgrounds. In terms of the three special professional experiences, top executives with overseas backgrounds have significant positive influence on all of short-term, long-term, innovation and overseas performances. Externally hired executives, however, would impede corporate innovation development, while those with government background would increase corporate overseas performance.

This paper analyzes the relationship between TMT functional background and corporate performance in a comprehensive way for the first time and then takes the lead in considering the dynamics and complexity of corporate performance as well as discussing the influence of TMT functional background on four corporate performances. This study not only supports the effect that the social categorization theory has on TMTs but also offers some inspirations on the development of China’s IT companies.

The literature reports inconsistent findings about the effects of social media usage (SMU). Researchers distinguish between active and passive social media usage (ASMU and PSMU), which can generate different effects on users by social support and social comparison mechanisms, respectively. Drawing on social presence theory (SPT), this study integrates an implicit social presence mechanism with the above two mechanisms to explicate the links between SMU and seniors' loneliness.

Data were collected from a field study by interviewing seniors living in eight aging care communities in China. Loneliness, social media activities and experiences with social media in terms of online social support (OSS), upward social comparison (USC) and social presence (SP) were assessed. Factor-based structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

OSS can mediate the relationship between ASMU and seniors' loneliness. Moreover, SP mediates between ASMU, PSMU, and seniors' loneliness, and between OSS, USC and seniors' loneliness. OSS mediates the relationship between ASMU and SP, and USC mediates the relationship between PSMU and SP.

This study shows that social media can alleviate seniors' loneliness, which could help relieve the pressures faced by health and social care systems. Social presence features are suggested to help older users interact with social health technologies in socially meaningful ways.

This study not only demonstrates that SP can play a crucial role in the relationship between both ASMU and PSMU and loneliness, but also unravels the links between SP and OSS, as well as USC.