Effects of TiFe Intermetallic Compounds on the Tensile Behavior of Ti-4Al-4Fe-0.25Si Alloy

The effect of the B2 (ordered BCC) intermetallic compound TiFe on the tensile behavior of the Ti-4Al-4Fe-0.25Si alloy was investigated. The nucleation mechanism of TiFe was dependent on the solution temperature, and the solution treatment and aging temperatures were also important to the final alloy. The presence of intra-granular TiFe, which nucleated at α′ (HCP) sites during aging, resulted in alloy brittleness. Alternatively, the presence of inter-granular TiFe, which nucleated only at nano-sized α (HCP) sites during aging, resulted in an excellent combination of strength and ductility compared to the original microstructure.     

Organo bifunctional silane effects on the vibration,thermal, and mechanical properties of a vinyl‐group‐containing silicone rubber/natural rubber/silica compound

A bifunctional silane (TESPD) was added to a vinyl‐group‐containing silicone rubber (SR)/natural rubber (NR)/silica compound, and the resulting mechanical, morphological, and thermal properties were compared with those of an NR/silica compound. The addition of TESPD to the silica‐filled SR/NR compound formed an SR‐silane‐silica‐silane‐NR structure that behaved as a ter‐polymer. The addition of SR into the NR improved the mechanical properties (torque maximum, modulus, elongation at break, and hardness) and thermal properties as well as the tan δ values. The SR‐silane‐silica‐silane‐NR structure exhibited advanced properties that are suitable for an automotive engine mount application, which requires good thermal and vibration absorption properties. J. VINYL ADDIT. TECHNOL., 2010. © 2010 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Enhanced Open‐Circuit Voltage in Colloidal Quantum Dot Photovoltaics via Reactivity‐Controlled Solution‐Phase Ligand Exchange

The energy disorder that arises from colloidal quantum dot (CQD) polydispersity limits the open‐circuit voltage (V_OC) and efficiency of CQD photovoltaics. This energy broadening is significantly deteriorated today during CQD ligand exchange and film assembly. Here, a new solution‐phase ligand exchange that, via judicious incorporation of reactivity‐engineered additives, provides improved monodispersity in final CQD films is reported. It has been found that increasing the concentration of the less reactive species prevents CQD fusion and etching. As a result, CQD solar cells with a V_OC of 0.7 V (vs 0.61 V for the control) for CQD films with exciton peak at 1.28 eV and a power conversion efficiency of 10.9% (vs 10.1% for the control) is achieved.     

Dual-Phase Stabilized Perovskite Nanowires for Reduced Defects and Longer Carrier Lifetime

1D perovskite materials are of significant interest to build a new class of nanostructures for electronic and optoelectronic applications. However, the study of colloidal perovskite nanowires (PNWs) lags far behind those of other established perovskite materials such as perovskite quantum dots and perovskite thin films. Herein, a dual-phase passivation strategy to synthesize all-inorganic PNWs with minimized surface defects is reported. The local phase transition from CsPbBr₃ to CsPb₂Br₅ in PNWs increases the photoluminescence quantum yield, carrier lifetime, and water-resistivity, owing to the energetic and chemical passivation effect. In addition, these dual-phase PNWs are employed as an interfacial layer in perovskite solar cells (PSCs). The enhanced surface passivation results in an efficient carrier transfer in PSCs, which is a critical enabler to increase the power conversion efficiency (PCE) to 22.87%, while the device without PNWs exhibits a PCE of 20.74%. The proposed strategy provides a surface passivation platform in 1D perovskites, which can lead to the development of novel nanostructures for future optoelectronic devices.     

A centrifugal force-based serpentine micromixer (CSM) on a plastic lab-on-a-disk for biochemical assays

In this paper, a centrifugal force-based serpentine micromixer (CSM) on a plastic lab-on-a-disk (LOD) for biochemical assay was designed, fabricated, and fully characterized with numerical and experimental methods. The CSM comprised two inlets, an outlet, and a serpentine microchannel composed of five circumferential channels with connecting radial channels in one layer. The centrifugal force induced in the rotating disk thoroughly mixed the sample and reagent together throughout the serpentine microchannel of the CSM. Despite its simple geometry, effective mixing performance was achieved inside the CSM because of transverse secondary flows and the three-dimensional stirring effect in the microchannel. Numerical simulation showed that the interfaces of the two streams inside the circumferential microchannel were efficiently stirred by the induced transversal velocity field. The plastic LOD was fabricated by CNC-micromilling on one layer of the thermoplastic substrate, followed by thermal bonding with a cover plastic substrate. Mixing performance of the CSM was also investigated experimentally by means of colorimetric analysis using phenolphthalein. High levels of distributive mixings were obtained within a short required mixing length. As a proof-of-concept example, a biochemical assay of albumin level was successfully determined with the help of the LOD containing the CSM. Owing to the mass-producible simple geometry, excellent mixing performance, and convenience, the CSM can be applied to biochemical assays based on the centrifugal microfluidics.     

Effects of stearic acid coated talc,CaCO3, and mixed talc/CaCO3 particles on the rheological properties of polypropylene compounds

The effect of the stearic acid coated fillers and their geometry on the shear/dynamic viscosity and complex viscosity has been investigated using polypropylene (PP) compounds filled with stearic acid uncoated and coated talc, calcite, and mixed talc/calcite particles. The viscosity was measured over a wide range of shear rates (10^?8 to 10³) using a capillary, cone‐plate and sandwich rheometer. Overall, the rheological properties of the compounds exhibited different behavior upon different filler systems, stearic acid involvement, shear stress or strain, and frequencies due to stearic acid involvement. This implies that the stearic acid lowers the interfacial force between the filler surface and the resin matrix, followed by a favorable processing. In addition, at very low shear stresses, the viscosity of talc(un) compounds was higher than calcite(un) ones; at very high shear stresses, on the other hand, talc compounds became lower than calcite(un) compounds. This is interpreted as due to the different geometry between talc and calcite. The yield value as a function of shear stress was observed for all filler systems and exhibited lower than that obtained from the extrapolation. Furthermore, the Cox–Merz relation between the complex and shear viscosity for both the stearic acid uncoated and coated compounds is found not valid. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 93: 2105–2113, 2004     

Frame Error Concealment Using Pixel Correlation in Overlapped Motion Compensation Regions

In low bit‐rate video transmission, the payload of a single packet can often contain a whole coded frame due to the high compression ratio in both spatial and temporal domains of most modern video coders. Thus, the loss of a single packet not only causes the loss of a whole frame, but also produces error propagation into subsequent frames. In this paper, we propose a novel whole frame error concealment algorithm which reconstructs the first of the subsequent frames instead of the current lost frame to suppress the effects of error propagation. In the proposed algorithm, we impose a constraint which uses side match distortion (SMD) and overlapped region difference (ORD) to estimate motion vectors between the target reconstructed frame and its reference frame. SMD measures the spatial smoothness connection between a block and its neighboring blocks. ORD is defined as the difference between the correlated pixels which are predicted from one reference pixel. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm effectively suppresses error propagation and significantly outperforms other conventional techniques in terms of both peak signal‐to‐noise ratio performance and subjective visual quality.     

Microstructural evolution of wet deposited nickel interfacial phases on phosphorus doped silicon surface

Selective deposition and formation of Ni-Cu-Sn electrodes by electroless plating using an all-wet process were investigated to find a substitute for the commercial solar cells made by screen-printed Ag electrodes. Because of Ni-Cu-Sn multilayer, it is necessary to improve contact resistance at each interface using annealing process. So Nickel silicide was created by controlling the Si and Ni interface for the formation of an ohmic contact to reduce the contact resistance and improve the efficiency of solar cells. The phase transition and thermal stability of nickel silicide were analyzed in the annealing temperature range of 200–500 °C. Using electroless plated Ni, films with the thickness of 200±50 nm corresponding to the silicide phases of Ni2Si, Ni3Si2, and NiSi were identified from the thermal budget. The formation of the Ni74-Si26 silicide phase by rapid thermal processing at 250 °C was verified, and the possibility of low-temperature Ni silicidation was identified.     

Comparison of Two D−A Type Polymers with Each Being Fluorinated on D and A Unit for High Performance Solar Cells

For the purpose of investigating the effect of fluorination position on D?A type conjugated polymer on photophysical and photovoltaic properties, two types of fluorinated polymere are synthesized, HF with fluorination on electron‐donating unit and FH with fluorination on electron‐accepting unit. Compared to non‐fluorinated polymer, fluorinated polymers exhibit deeper HOMO energy levels without change of bandgap and stronger vibronic shoulder in UV?visible absorption, indicating that fluorination enhances intermolecular interaction. HF with fluorinated D unit exhibits well‐developed fibril network, low bimolecular recombination and high hole mobility, which lead a high PCE of 7.10% in conventional single‐junction solar cells, which is higher than the PCE (6.41%) of FH with fluorinated A unit. Therefore, this result demonstrates that fluorination on electron‐donating unit in D?A polymers could be a promising strategy for achieving high performance polymer solar cells.