Curing process of powdered phenol–formaldehyde resol resins and the role of water in the curing systems

The curing behavior of two kinds of commercial powdered resol phenolic resins was studied by differential scanning calorimetry. Liquid‐state ¹³C‐NMR spectroscopy was used to aid in understanding the curing behavior by detecting the structure of powdered resins. The reaction mechanism was interpreted with the dependency of activation energy on the degree of conversion. The results indicate that there are differences in the curing mechanism between core and face phenolic resins. The curing process of core resin was faster than that of face resin at the same reaction temperature. The water added in the curing system played an important role of plasticizer or diluent according to different curing stages and water content. In the initial curing stage, water mainly diluted the system and retarded the curing reactions. However, at the higher degrees of conversion, water played the role of plasticizer to decrease the effect of diffusion on the curing reactions to make the curing reactions more complete. The excess water added in the curing system played the role of diluent at almost all stages during the curing process. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 89: 1371–1378, 2003     

Thermal and kinetic properties of poly(lactic acid) and transglutaminase‐crosslinked wheat gluten blends

Wheat gluten (10 g) was crosslinked (XL) using 10 units of transglutaminase. Different blends of XL gluten and poly(lactic acid) (PLA) were mixed in a Brabender mixer at 180°C for 10 min. Neat PLA and blends were analyzed using modulated DSC (MDSC). Neat PLA displayed a glass transition (T_g) and exothermic (Cry) followed by endothermic (Mel) transitions. The profile showed a T_g of 0.46 J/g/°C, Cry with 29.9 J/g, whereas Mel exhibited 28.7 J/g. XL wheat gluten displayed one T_g with 0.45 J/g/°C. Samples were subjected to repeated heating and cooling cycles to show the level of compatibility between the two polymers. The activation energy (E_a) and pre‐exponential factor (Z) were determined according to Borchardt and Daniels (B/D) kinetics approach. The blends showed increased E_a values with an increase in the amount of XL gluten. In the presence of 5 and 20% XL gluten, the E_a of PLA increased from 150 to 200 kJ/mol, respectively. A higher number of cycles caused an increase in E_a. The T_g temperature of different PLA/XL gluten blends can be predicted by Gordon–Taylor equation and its modified forms. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2007     

Stability analysis of neutral systems with mixed delays

The stability of neutral systems with mixed delays is studied in this paper. A new discretized Lyapunov functional method is proposed. The method in this paper is less conservative than the existing ones and the results are very close to the analytical results. In addition, this method allows the coefficient matrix of the neutral term to have time-varying uncertainties.     

Investigating the influence of the counter Si-cell on the optoelectronic performance of high-efficiency monolithically perovskites/silicon tandem cells under various optical sources

Nowadays, tandem structures have become a valuable competitor to conventional silicon solar cells, especially for perovskite over silicon, as metal halides surpassed Si with tunable bandgaps, high absorption coefficient, low deposition, and preparation costs. This led to a remarkable enhancement in the overall efficiency of the whole cell and its characteristics. Consequently, this expands the usage of photovoltaic technology in various fields of applications not only under conventional light source spectrum in outdoor areas, i.e., AM1.5G, but also under artificial light sources found indoors with broadband intensity values, such as Internet of things (IoTs) applications to name a few. We introduce a numerical model to analyze perovskite/Si tandem cells (PSSTCs) using both crystalline silicon (c-Si) and hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) experimentally validated as base cells. All proposed layers have been studied with J-V characteristics and energy band diagrams under AM1.5G by using SCAPS-1D software version 3.7.7. Thereupon, the proposed architectures were tested under various artificial lighting spectra. The proposed structures of Li4Ti5O12/CsPbCl3/MAPbBr3/CH3NH3PbI3/Si recorded a maximum power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 25.25% for c-Si and 17.02% for a-Si:H, with nearly 7% enhancement concerning the Si bare cell in both cases.     

Combining temporal partitioning and temporal placement techniques for communication cost improvement

In this paper, we present a typical temporal partitioning methodology that temporally partitions a data flow graph on reconfigurable system. Our approach optimizes the communication cost of the design. This aim can be reached by minimizing the transfer of data required between design partitions and the routing cost between FPGA modules. Consequently, our algorithm is composed by two main steps. The first step aims to find a temporal partitioning of the graph. This step gives the optimal solution in term of communication cost. Next, our approach builds the best architecture, on a partially reconfigurable FPGA, that gives the lowest routing cost between modules. The proposed methodology was tested on several examples on the Xilinx Virtex-II pro. The results show significant reduction in the communication cost compared with others famous approaches used in this field.     

2-Level error (drift) compensation for low-cost MEMS-based inertial measurement unit (IMU)

In this paper, we extend the 1-level compensation method for MEMS-based IMUs, dealing mainly with stochastic drifts, described in our previous work Yudanto et al. (Proc SPIE, 9517:95,172H-95–95,172H-12, 2015) to a 2-level compensation method dealing with both stochastic and temperature drifts. While the 1-level compensation method is based on an automatic detection of systems states which triggers an online recalibration of the sensors parameters, the 2-level compensation method extends the 1-level compensation method by using a model-based approach to remove the temperature influences in the sensors outputs. The 2-level compensation schemes are then integrated together to allow an algorithmic framework that can be used in an easy way to auto-calibrate MEMS-based IMUs. Experiments using an industrial MEMS-based IMU under various operating conditions have been conducted to demonstrate the added value of the 2-level compensation method. The experimental results show that the estimations of acceleration and angular velocity based on the 2-level compensation method are in general more accurate than the ones obtained based on the 1-level compensation method.     

Route Maintenance in IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh networks

In this paper, we propose a novel Route Maintenance scheme for IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh networks. Despite lack of mobility and energy constraints, reactive routing protocols such as AODV and DSR suffer from frequent route breakages in 802.11 based infrastructure wireless mesh networks. In these networks, if any intermediate node fails to successfully transmit a packet to the next hop node after a certain number of retransmissions, the link layer reports a transmission problem to the network layer. Reactive routing protocols systematically consider this as a link breakage (and therefore a route breakage). Transmission failures can be caused by a number of factors e.g. interference or noise and can be transient in nature. Frequent route breakages result in significant performance degradation. The proposed mechanism considers multiple factors to differentiate between links with transient transmission problems from those links which have permanent transmission problems and takes a coherent decision on link breakage. The proposed mechanism is implemented in AODV for single-radio single-channel mesh network and an extension is incorporated in multi-radio multi-channel scenarios. Simulation results show substantial performance improvement compared to classical AODV and local route repair schemes.     

Narrow‐band interference suppression in wavelet packets based multicarrier multicode CDMA overlay system

The wavelet packets based multicarrier (MC) multicode (MCD) code‐division multiple‐access (CDMA) transceiver consists of the MCD part, which ensures the transmission for high speed and flexible data rate; the MC part contributing to robustness to frequency‐selective fading and flexibility for handling multiple data rates; and wavelet packets (WPs) modulation technique, which contributes to the mitigation of the interference problems. As WPs have lower sidelobes compared with sinusoidal carriers, this system is very effective in reducing the problem of inter‐carrier interference. Of course, like any CDMA system, the system can suppress a given amount of interference. This paper considers an interference suppression scheme which will enhance the performance of the system. The receiver employs suppression filters to mitigate the effect of narrow‐band jammer interference. The framework for the system and the performance evaluation are presented in terms of the bit error rate and the outage probability over a Nakagami fading channel. Also, we investigate how the performance is influenced by various parameters, such as the number of taps of the suppression filter and the ratio of narrow‐band interference bandwidth to the spread‐spectrum bandwidth. Finally, the performance of the system is compared with the performance of sinusoidal based MC/MCD‐CDMA system denoted Sin‐MC/MCD‐CDMA. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Photocatalytic degradation of methyl orange dye by NiFe<Subscript>2</Subscript>O<Subscript>4</Subscript> nanoparticles under visible irradiation: effect of varying the synthesis temperature

Nanoparticles of nickel ferrites (NiFe₂O₄) were synthesized at different temperature of synthesis (25, 50 and 80 °C) through the chemical co-precipitation method. The synthesized powders were characterized using X-ray diffraction for crystallite size and lattice parameter calculation. It reveals the presence of cubic spinel structure of ferrites with crystallite size between 29 and 41 nm. Transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy showed uniform distribution of ferrite particles with some agglomeration. The Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy showed absorption bonds, which were assigned to the vibration of tetrahedral and octahedral complexes. Raman spectroscopy is used to verify that we have synthesized ferrite spinels and determines their phonon modes. The thermal decomposition of the NiFe₂O₄ was investigated by TGA/DTA. The optical study UV–visible is used to calculate the band gap energy. Magnetic measurements of the samples were carried out by means of vibrating sample magnetometer and these studies reveal that the formed nickel ferrite exhibits ferromagnetic behavior. Photoluminescence showed three bands of luminescence located at 420, 440 and 535 nm. The photocatalytic properties of nickel ferrite (NiFe₂O₄) nanoparticles were evaluated by studying the photodecomposition of methyl orange as organic pollutant models and showed a good photocatalytic activity.