Structural,optical and electrical properties of Zn-doped SnO2 nanoparticles synthesized by the co-precipitation technique

Nanometric size Zn-doped SnO₂ particles with Zn concentration varying from 1 to 6 % were prepared using the co-precipitation method. X-ray diffraction patterns show for all samples a typical rutile-type tetragonal structure of SnO₂ without any additional peaks from spurious phases. These results together with transmission electron microscopy analyses have shown that the size of the nanoparticles decreases with Zn doping down to 4 nm. According to UV–visible absorption measurements this decrease of particle size is accompanied by a decrease of the band gap value from 3.34 eV for SnO₂ down to 3.28 eV for 6 % Zn doping. The electrical conductivity of the system has been investigated between 473 and 718 K, in the 200 Hz–5 MHz frequency range, by means of impedance spectroscopy. The temperature dependence of the bulk conductivity was found to obey the Arrhenius law with activation energies of 0.74 eV for SnO₂ and 0.69 eV for 6 % Zn doping.     

AC actuation contribution to the induced electromotive force in the miniaturized inductive planar microphone

In this paper, we aim to analyze the gain ratio in the output induced voltage of a CMOS-compatible miniaturized electrodynamic microphone which is based on the use of two coplanar concentric inductors. These latter are comparable to a concentric transformer with a secondary situated on the microphone diaphragm top. The study has been applied when the outer inductor is actuated using an AC bias instead of DC leading to a time-variable B-field. The induced output voltage expression has been evaluated using two distinct analytic methods: the magnetic field derivation and the electric field approach. When an AC current with frequency above that of the acoustic band is used to bias the primary, results show that the induced voltage increases and becomes independent from the incident pressure wave frequency. The paper demonstrates also that with an AC bias, the microphone induced voltage values can reach the order of hundreds of µVs, as opposed to only few µVs when applying a DC bias. The gain in the induced voltage has been investigated and it is shown that it can be correlated to the AC current frequency, ω_c, and the inner inductor fluctuation frequency, ω_p. Moreover, this has been quantified analytically and it is shown that it equals ω_c/8ω_p. This result will not only enhance the overall performance of the microphone, but will also make the preamplification design less complicated by increasing the SNR ratio.     

Effect of Lubricant Contamination on Gear Wear

In this work the degradation of spur gears lubricated in a severe dusty environment studied. An experiment was carried out, which simulates the operation of gears in contaminated media such as the Sahara desert, quarries, or mines. The present study gives the effect of the presence of solid bodies in lubricants during surface contact. This paper shows that the use of a lubricant contaminated by very fine sand particles, leads to significant wear in the first few operating cycles, in zones with a high rate of sliding. This wear is more significant at the gear tooth root than at the tip. In order to understand the wear phenomenon, Scanning Electronic Microscopy (SEM) images were taken. The presence of contaminants, leads to an increase in friction, and therefore raises the temperature; consequently the roughness increases. The roughness values become more significant with the presence of particles smaller than 40 μm in the lubricant.     

Low communication cost (LCC) scheme for localizing mobile wireless sensor networks

In recent years, the number of applications utilizing mobile wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has increased, with the intent of localization for the purposes of monitoring and obtaining data from hazardous areas. Location of the event is very critical in WSN, as sensing data is almost meaningless without the location information. In this paper, two Monte Carlo based localization schemes termed MCL and MSL* are studied. MCL obtains its location through anchor nodes whereas MSL* uses both anchor nodes and normal nodes. The use of normal nodes would increase accuracy and reduce dependency on anchor nodes, but increases communication costs. For this reason, we introduce a new approach called low communication cost schemes to reduce communication cost. Unlike MSL* which chooses all normal nodes found in the neighbor, the proposed scheme uses set theory to only select intersected nodes. To evaluate our method, we simulate in our proposed scheme the use of the same MSL* settings and simulators. From the simulation, we find out that our proposed scheme is able to reduce communication cost—the number of messages sent—by a minimum of 0.02 and a maximum of 0.30 with an average of 0.18, for varying node densities from 6 to 20, while nonetheless able to retain similar MSL* accuracy rates.     

Robustness,Stability, and Gains of Utility Maximization Algorithms for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Cross-layer designs (CLDs) have the potential to better utilize network resources than a traditional layered protocol architecture, providing better communication services to end-users. This is particularly relevant in MANETs, which are characterized by a scarcity of network resources, in particular bandwidth. While many papers have demonstrated the potential performance benefit that CLDs can provide, their evaluation is often done under idealized scenarios, such as instantaneous message transmission times, complete topology knowledge, and/or zero message loss rates. Nodes in real MANETs do typically experience message losses, message delays, and have at best a partial and most likely inaccurate knowledge of the dynamic network topology. Our work focuses on realistic evaluations of a specific CLD approach. We propose a robust and stable version of a network utility maximization algorithm that optimizes the medium access probabilities at the MAC layer jointly with the end-to-end sessions rates at the transport layer. We report on stability tests with different link failure scenarios in case of synchronous and asynchronous message updates, convergence speed, and link utilizations. The results show that the algorithm converges even with a very high rate of link transmission failures and can tolerate asynchronous parameters updates. The CLD fully utilizes the link capacities and provides a network capacity gain of up to 250 %. The proposed modified CLD approach is therefore both beneficial and practical for real MANETs.     

Synthesis and characterization of photoluminescent cerium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet

Powder phosphor yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG), doped with trivalent cerium (Ce³⁺) is synthesized by sol-gel method. The formation of YAG and YAG:Ce (cerium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet) was investigated by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were also used. The purified crystalline phases of YAG and YAG:Ce were obtained at 1000 °C. The maximum average grain size is about 20-23 nm for undoped samples and 28-34 nm for doped samples. The crystalline YAG:Ce emission shows one peak in the range 480-535 nm with the maximum near 520 nm. Photoluminescence (PL) intensity of 5d → 4f transition of Ce³⁺ increased with increasing annealing temperature. With increasing the concentration of Ce³⁺, the photoluminescence peak shifts towards the red region.     

Steady state theoretical model of fired clay hollow bricks for enhanced external wall thermal insulation

This paper proposes a theoretical model to study the steady state thermal behavior of fired clay hollow bricks for enhanced external wall thermal insulation. The study aims at the development of new materials and structural components with good thermal material properties, with respect to energy saving and ecological design. Thermal insulation capacity of two external walls of different thicknesses, constructed of locally produced bricks, is studied. The basic brick units used for the investigation are small-size bricks with eight equal cavities or recesses and big-size bricks with twelve equal recesses. Their recesses configuration has been varied to perform the assessment. The insulation materials injected within brick recesses during the assessment are granulated cork and expanded polystyrene. The improvement in the thermal performance of the walls will be the result of optimization among the various factors such as brick cavity configurations, integration of insulation within brick recesses and the cavity surface emissivities. So emphasis is given to the study of the impact of these factors singly or in combination on the overall thermal resistance of walls in order to find out the best design solutions to maximize their thermal insulation capacity. Computer modeling and calculations performed, for steady state conditions, show that the increase in hollow brick cavity height contributes to the improvement of the overall thermal resistance of the order of 18–20%. The improvement could significantly increase to the range of 88.64% and 93.33%, if the bricks used are injected with the insulating material. If the cavity surface emissivities are lowered to 0.3, the improvement will be 72.73–78.33%. The results have also shown that replacing the cork by expanded polystyrene (EPS), having lower thermal conductivity, would not improve significantly the overall thermal resistance. This improvement is 9.08% for a wall of small-size bricks having configuration BS2CV and 8.34% for a wall of big-size bricks having configuration BB3CV.     

Experiences with incorporating formal techniques into industrial practice

We report about experiences at Philips Healthcare with component-based development supported by formal techniques. The formal Analytical Software Design (ASD) approach of the company Verum has been incorporated into the industrial workflow. The commercial tool ASD:Suite supports both compositional verification and code generation for control components. For other components test-driven development has been used. We discuss the results of these combined techniques in a project which developed the power control service of an interventional X-ray system.     

PRSV equation of state parameter modeling through artificial neural network and adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system

Two different modeling methods have been proposed to relate the Peng-Robinson-Stryjek-Vera (PRSV) parameter, κ ₁, to some common thermodynamic constants, including critical temperature (T _c ), critical pressure (P _c ), acentric factor (ω) and molecular weight (Mw). The methods are artificial neural network (ANN) and adaptive networkbased fuzzy inference System (ANFIS). A set of 159 data points (116, 23 and 20) was used for construct training, validating and testing, respectively. The radius parameter of ANFIS was determined through genetic algorithm (GA) optimization technique. The ANN and especially ANFIS results are in a good agreement with most of the compound groups.     

Synthesis,characterization and photocatalytic activity of ZnO-SnO2 nanocomposites

Nanocomposites of coupled ZnO-SnO₂ photocatalysts were synthesized by the coprecipitation method and were characterized by X-ray diffraction, UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, surface area analyzer and scanning electron microscopy. Their photocatalytic activity was investigated under UV, visible and solar light and evaluated using methylene blue (MB) as a model pollutant. The performance of the coupled ZnO-SnO₂ photocatalysts was found to be related to the Zn/Sn molar ratio and to the calcination conditions. The photocatalyst with a Zn/Sn molar ratio of 1:0.05 calcined at 600 °C for 2 h showed the maximum degradation rate of MB under different lights used. Its photocatalytic activity was found to be about two times that of ZnO and about 10 times that of SnO₂ which can be explained by the heterojunction effect. Charge separation mechanism has been studied.