Biocompatibility of Hydrogen-Diluted Amorphous Silicon Carbide Thin Films for Artificial Heart Valve Coating

Amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC:H) thin films were synthesized using trichloromethylsilane by a hot wire chemical vapor deposition process. The deposited films were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy to confirm its chemical bonding, structural network and composition of the a-SiC:H films. The optical microscopy images reveal that hydrogen dilution increased the surface roughness and pore density of a-SiC:H thin film. The Raman spectroscopy and FTIR spectra reveal chemical network consisting of Si-Si, C-C and Si-C bonds, respectively. The XRD spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy indicate a-SiC:H still has short-range order. In addition, in vitro cytotoxicity test ensures the behavior of cell–semiconductor hybrid to monitor the proper coordination. The live–dead assays and MTT assay reveal an increase in green nucleus cell, and cell viability is greater than 88%, respectively, showing non-toxic nature of prepared a-SiC:H film. Moreover, the result indicated by direct contact assay, and cell prefers to adhere and proliferate on a-SiC:H thin films having a positive effect as artificial heart valve coating material.     

Cobalt selenide thin film: photovoltaic and impedance spectral studies by simple chemical grown technique

A thin film of cobalt selenide is deposited on the fluorescence tin oxide-coated glass surface material using a simple chemical growth technique. In this article, we report on the study of photoelectrochemical characteristics (PEC), including current–voltage, capacitance–voltage characteristics, photovoltaic power output, and spectral response in dark and light conditions. For the above parameter study, we prepared using cobalt selenide and carbon electrode (using polysulfide as electrolyte), the battery configuration is expressed as n-CoSe/NaOH (1 M)?+?Na₂S (1 M)?+?S (1 M)/C (graphite). The performance of the cobalt selenide thin film material the resulted values of respective series (R_S) and shunt (R_Sh) resistance 2.280 kΩ and 1.224 Ω, respectively. The efficiency and fill factor of these PEC cells were found to be 0.899 and 28.72%. The junction ideality value are found to be (n_D) is 0.69 in the dark and 2.72 in the light (n_L). The M–S plots are constructed using C^?2 against applied bias voltage (with respect to SCE) for CoSe PEC cell. The positive slope of the M–S plot confirms n-type conductivity of the CoSe films. The carrier density values of the samples obtained from the M–S plots varied from 3.48?×?10¹⁴ cm^?3.

     

Fiber-optic miniature sensor for in situ temperature monitoring of curing composite material

This study proposes a fiber-optic temperature sensor with a single-mode fiber tip covered with a thermo-sensitive polymer resin. The temperature is sensed by measuring the Fresnel reflection from the optical fiber/polymer interface. Because the thermo-optic coefficients differ between the optical fiber and the polymer, the in situ temperature can be measured even in curing composite materials. In initial experiments, the proposed sensor successfully measured and recovered the temperature information. The measured sensor data were linearly correlated, with an R² exceeding 0.99. The standard deviation in the long-term measurements of constant temperature was 2.6%. The durability and stability of the sensor head material in long-term operation was validated by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis. In further experiments, the suggested miniature temperature sensor obtained the internal temperatures of curing composite material over a wide range (30–110 °C).     

Anticorrosion Potential of Flectofenine on Mild Steel in Hydrochloric Acid Media: Experimental and Theoretical Study

Journal of Failure Analysis and Prevention - The inhibition effect of Flectofenine on corrosion of mild steel in 1M HCl solution was investigated by using traditional weight loss method and...     

Overview of emerging nonvolatile memory technologies

Nonvolatile memory technologies in Si-based electronics date back to the 1990s. Ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FeFET) was one of the most promising devices replacing the conventional Flash memory facing physical scaling limitations at those times. A variant of charge storage memory referred to as Flash memory is widely used in consumer electronic products such as cell phones and music players while NAND Flash-based solid-state disks (SSDs) are increasingly displacing hard disk drives as the primary storage device in laptops, desktops, and even data centers. The integration limit of Flash memories is approaching, and many new types of memory to replace conventional Flash memories have been proposed. Emerging memory technologies promise new memories to store more data at less cost than the expensive-to-build silicon chips used by popular consumer gadgets including digital cameras, cell phones and portable music players. They are being investigated and lead to the future as potential alternatives to existing memories in future computing systems. Emerging nonvolatile memory technologies such as magnetic random-access memory (MRAM), spin-transfer torque random-access memory (STT-RAM), ferroelectric random-access memory (FeRAM), phase-change memory (PCM), and resistive random-access memory (RRAM) combine the speed of static random-access memory (SRAM), the density of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), and the nonvolatility of Flash memory and so become very attractive as another possibility for future memory hierarchies. Many other new classes of emerging memory technologies such as transparent and plastic, three-dimensional (3-D), and quantum dot memory technologies have also gained tremendous popularity in recent years. Subsequently, not an exaggeration to say that computer memory could soon earn the ultimate commercial validation for commercial scale-up and production the cheap plastic knockoff. Therefore, this review is devoted to the rapidly developing new class of memory technologies and scaling of scientific procedures based on an investigation of recent progress in advanced Flash memory devices.     

The potential of electricity imports to meet future electricity requirements in India

As resources of electricity generation in India are not sufficient, this paper analyses the potential of electricity import from neighboring countries to meet the future electricity requirements of India. Based on the data of electricity generation, consumption, and future generation potential, we work out projected electricity generation/ demand of India and its neighboring countries by 2050 to identify the possibility of India’s cross-border electricity trading with its neighboring countries, more particularly the electricity import potential.     

Conjugation of curcumin with PVP capped gold nanoparticles for improving bioavailability

Curcumin, a natural polyphenolic compound, has astounding therapeutic applications but lacks in bioavailability mainly due to its poor solubility in water. Polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) which is a proven drug carrier has been used to facilitate the conjugation of curcumin with gold nanoparticles and to improve the solubility of curcumin in water. In this conjugate diaryl heptanoid chromophore group of curcumin which is a much needed group in biomedical applications remains intact as observed from FTIR and UV–vis spectroscopy analysis. The work shows good promise for such conjugates as therapeutic-cum-imaging materials in biomedical field.     

Role of carrier material in encapsulation of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) by spray drying

ABSTRACT

Yeast was encapsulated using different carrier materials and their combinations to explore the possible synergistic effect of carrier material during encapsulation using spray drying. Freeze-drying was performed for comparison. The dried cell powders were analyzed for the quality aspects (morphology, flowability, and storage stability). The best results were observed, with a combination of whey protein and corn starch (cell survival: 82.37% and yield: 56%, w/w) with a shelf life of 6 months (with only 10% reduction in cell survival). The survival was found to be 40% without any carrier material, which decreased to less than 25% within 4 weeks.     

Local pixel statistics based impulse detection and hybrid color filtering for restoration of digital color images

This paper presents a two stage filtering system to remove random valued impulse noise from color images based on local statistics of the filtering window under consideration. In the first stage, to detect the noisy pixel, the locally adaptive threshold is derived from the pixels of the filtering window. In the second stage, the restoration of the noisy pixel is done on the basis of brightness and chromaticity information obtained from the neighbouring pixels in the filtering window. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme yields much superior performance in comparison with other color image filtering methods.     

Properties of Dried and Intermediate Moisture Honey Products: A Review

This review discusses the processing techniques proposed for the production of dried and intermediate moisture honey products, as well as their properties. Stickiness is the major problem in the drying of sugar rich products like honey, that depend on the type of sugar and temperature of operation, which are related to the glass transition temperature. Some additives are usually added to the sugary feed to increase the glass transition temperature and concurrently the sticky point temperature. In the case of honey-fruit spreads, nutritional and sensory characteristics can be enhanced by replacing part of sugar with honey. Co-crystallization of honey with sucrose could be used to preserve the honey flavor. These diversified honey products provide better taste and nutrition to the consumer besides enhancing the utilization of honey.