Quantitative detection of a simulant of organophosphonate chemical warfare agents using liquid crystals

The performance characteristics of liquid crystal (LC)-based sensors for detection of dimethylmethylphosphonate (DMMP), a representative organophosphonate compound and simulant of chemical warfare agent sarin, are presented. The equilibration coordination interaction among the aluminum ions on a surface, the cyano group in LCs, and the phosphoryl group in DMMP have been exploited to achieve sensitive, fast, and reversible sensor responses. Measurement of the response time of the sensor allows quantitative detection of an unknown concentration of DMMP with high accuracy. The strong coordination interaction between the cyano group present in the LC and the aluminum ions supporting the film of LC provides immunity to exposure to a number of potentially interfering compounds including high humidity. Exposure studies under varied temperature and humid conditions show a minimal effect on the sensor performance. Although the sensors stored at room temperature exhibited slightly diminished sensitivity, the sensors stored at 4 °C remained functionally stable for at least six months. These results combined with the ease of fabrication using the established processes, low cost associated with off-the-shelf components, and small foot print suggest that these LC-based sensors can form the basis of a new class of low cost, light weight, robust sensors for a number of detection applications.     

A Lesson learned from PMF based approach for Semantic Recommender System

Linked Open Data cloud is being conceived and published to improve the usability and performance of various applications including Recommender System. While most of the existing works incorporate semantic web information into recommendation system by exploiting content based method, we introduced a collaborative filtering based semantic dual probabilistic matrix factorization approach. We have used semantic item features, generated in an unsupervised manner and incorporated them into user-item preference matrix for recommendation by co-factoring two matrices. To mitigate the difficulty of high dimensionality, sparsity and possible noise in the semantic item-property matrix, Singular Value Decomposition was used as an unsupervised preprocessing step. To evaluate our new approach, RMSE are compared with 10 state-of-art algorithms especially Probabilistic Matrix Factorization which our method is based on, Precision is also compared between our method and PMF. Although similar dual matrix factorization approaches exist but most of them deal with very small item property matrix with abundant entries while our approach introduced a high dimensional and sparse item property matrix through an unsupervised automatic way which also alleviate the efforts to create those item property matrices.     

Enhanced Piezoelectric,Ferroelectric, and Electrostrictive Properties of Lead-Free (1-x)BCZT-(x)BCST Electroceramics with Energy Harvesting Capability

Next-generation electronics and energy technologies can now be developed as a result of the design, discovery, and development of novel, environmental friendly lead (Pb)-free ferroelectric materials with improved characteristics and performance. However, there have only been a few reports of such complex materials’ design with multi-phase interfacial chemistry, which can facilitate enhanced properties and performance. In this context, herein, novel lead-free piezoelectric materials (1-x)Ba_0.95Ca_0.05Ti_0.95Zr_0.05O₃-(x)Ba_0.95Ca_0.05Ti_0.95Sn_0.05O₃, are reported, which are represented as (1-x)BCZT-(x)BCST, with demonstrated excellent properties and energy harvesting performance. The (1-x)BCZT-(x)BCST materials are synthesized by high-temperature solid-state ceramic reaction method by varying x in the full range (x = 0.00–1.00). In-depth exploration research is performed on the structural, dielectric, ferroelectric, and electro-mechanical properties of (1-x)BCZT-(x)BCST ceramics. The formation of perovskite structure for all ceramics without the presence of any impurity phases is confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analyses, which also reveals that the Ca²⁺, Zr⁴⁺, and Sn⁴⁺ are well dispersed within the BaTiO₃ lattice. For all (1-x)BCZT-(x)BCST ceramics, thorough investigation of phase formation and phase-stability using XRD, Rietveld refinement, Raman spectroscopy, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), and temperature-dependent dielectric measurements provide conclusive evidence for the coexistence of orthorhombic + tetragonal (Amm2 + P4mm) phases at room temperature. The steady transition of Amm2 crystal symmetry to P4mm crystal symmetry with increasing x content is also demonstrated by Rietveld refinement data and related analyses. The phase transition temperatures, rhombohedral-orthorhombic (T_R-O), orthorhombic- tetragonal (T_O-T), and tetragonal-cubic (T_C), gradually shift toward lower temperature with increasing x content. For (1-x)BCZT-(x)BCST ceramics, significantly improved dielectric and ferroelectric properties are observed, including relatively high dielectric constant ε_r ≈ 1900–3300 (near room temperature), ε_r ≈ 8800–12 900 (near Curie temperature), dielectric loss, tan δ ≈ 0.01–0.02, remanent polarization P_r ≈ 9.4–14 µC cm⁻², coercive electric field E_c ≈ 2.5–3.6 kV cm⁻¹. Further, high electric field-induced strain S ≈ 0.12–0.175%, piezoelectric charge coefficient d₃₃ ≈ 296–360 pC N⁻¹, converse piezoelectric coefficient ${(d_{33}^{\ast })}_{\mathrm{ave}}$≈ 240–340 pm V⁻¹, planar electromechanical coupling coefficient k_p ≈ 0.34–0.45, and electrostrictive coefficient (Q₃₃)_avg ≈ 0.026–0.038 m⁴ C⁻² are attained. Output performance with respect to mechanical energy demonstrates that the (0.6)BCZT-(0.4)BCST composition (x = 0.4) displays better efficiency for generating electrical energy and, thus, the synthesized lead-free piezoelectric (1-x)BCZT-(x)BCST samples are suitable for energy harvesting applications. The results and analyses point to the outcome that the (1-x)BCZT-(x)BCST ceramics as a potentially strong contender within the family of Pb-free piezoelectric materials for future electronics and energy harvesting device technologies.