Electropolymerization of N‐hydroxyethylcarbazole on carbon fiber microelectrodes

N‐Hydroxyethylcarbazole (EtOHCz) was electropolymerized on carbon fiber microelectrodes (CFMEs). The polyEtOHCz‐modified CFME was characterized with FTIR‐ATR, scanning electron microscopy, cyclic voltammetry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The polymer/CFME electrode exhibited the capacitive behavior and also good stability up to 2.0 V. The presence of hydoxylic group of the monomer seems to be an advantage on polymerization because of the unpaired electrons of oxygen, which would make ease at first stage for the adsorbtion on carbon fiber. The estimated value of the low‐frequency redox capacitance (C_LF) was found to increase with increasing dc potential. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009     

A study on performance and exhaust emissions of the steam injected DI diesel engine running with different diesel- conola oil methyl ester blends

Although biodiesels have low emission profiles, the main drawback of using biodiesel in diesel engines is higher NOx. Nowadays, the electronic controlled steam injection is a promising method for NOx control. This study investigates the effects of steam injection with diesel fuel-canola oil methyl ester (COME) blends on the performance and emissions characteristics of a direct injection (DI) single cylinder diesel engine. Steam is injected into the inlet manifold during inlet period. The combustion of diesel-COME blends has been modeled using two zone combustion model. The results have been compared with each other in terms of performance and emissions. The maximum increments in engine torque and power were measured as 2.5% for 10% COME (B10) at 1200 rpm, 2.8% for 20% COME (B20) at 2200 rpm. The effects of steam injection on performance and emissions of the diesel engine running with B10 and B20 COME blends were also investigated. Satisfaction improvements have been obtained with the combination of steam injection and COME blends. The maximum torque of the engine running with B10 and 10% steam ratio combination (B10 + S10) and B20 and 10% steam ratio combinations (B20 + S10) were found as 2.4% at 1400 rpm and 0.6% at 1400 rpm, respectively. Significant reduction has been observed in NOx emission with B10-S10 combination. The reduction rate in NOx emissions were 22% with B10-S10 and 18% with B20-S10 at 1200 rpm. The study showed that steam injection is an effective tool for controlling NOx emissions without performance degradation in the diesel engines fueled with COME blends.     

Proposal of a mathematical model for describing magnetorheological fluid dynamic behavior

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - This study proposes a model for describing magnetorheological (MR) fluid dynamic behavior. Experimental research was conducted to validate the model...     

Fuzzy logic-based performance improvement on MAC layer in wireless local area networks

There are many studies that have been done to improve the quality of service of wireless local area networks (WLANs). Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) WLAN are based on IEEE 802.11 protocol. The 802.11e medium access control (MAC) protocol is generally recommended for efficient quality of service in WLANs. There are many parameters in the MAC protocol that affect quality of services. Among these parameters, request to send threshold value (RSTV), fragmentation threshold value (FTV) and buffer size (BS) directly affect network performance. RSTV is used in the request to send/clear to send (RTS/CTS) mechanism in the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol for collision prevention. This parameter specifies the threshold used to activate the CSMA/CA protocol. FTV is another parameter that is used to send large-sized packets by dividing them into appropriate fragments during CSMA/CA transmission and reduces packet loss in WLAN. BS is another parameter that has a significant cost in the CSMA/CA model and also directly affects the performance. In this article, to improve the performance of WLANs, OPNET Modeler was used and ideal values were obtained for RSTV, FTV and BS by using fuzzy logic-based method. The values obtained by fuzzy logic were re-tested in OPNET Modeler, and the achieved improvement was as follows: for delay 36–38%, for load 2–10% and for throughput 25–44%, respectively. Thus, in WLANs, performance was improved by using fuzzy logic-based method.

     

Recent progress in microstructural hydrogen mapping in steels: quantification,kinetic analysis,and multi-scale characterisation

ABSTRACT

This paper gives an overview of recent progress in microstructure-specific hydrogen mapping techniques. The challenging nature of mapping hydrogen with high spatial resolution, i.e. at the scale of finest microstructural features, led to the development of various methodologies: thermal desorption spectrometry, silver decoration, the hydrogen microprint technique, secondary ion mass spectroscopy, atom probe tomography, neutron radiography, and the scanning Kelvin probe. These techniques have different characteristics regarding spatial and temporal resolution associated with microstructure-sensitive hydrogen detection. Employing these techniques in a site-specific manner together with other microstructure probing methods enables multi-scale, quantitative, three-dimensional, high spatial, and kinetic resolution hydrogen mapping, depending on the specific multi-probe approaches used. Here, we present a brief overview of the specific characteristics of each method and the progress resulting from their combined application to the field of hydrogen embrittlement.

This paper is part of a thematic issue on Hydrogen in Metallic Alloys     

Electrolyte and solvent effects of electrocoated polycarbazole thin films on carbon fiber microelectrodes

Carbazole was electrochemically synthesized on carbon fiber microelectrodes (CFMEs) in different electrolyte and solvent media. The characterization of polycarbazole thin films formed on micron sized carbon fiber electrodes was performed by electrochemical methods (i.e., cyclic voltammetric measurements, solid state conductivity measurements (four point probe), spectrophotometric methods (ultraviolet/visible spectroscopy (UV–vis), ex situ spectroelectrochemistry, fourier transform infrared reflectance spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR)) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The best electrolyte and solvent in regards to yield, conductivity and charge for the electro-grafting was sodium perchlorate in acetonitrile, whose conductivity was 3.60 mS cm⁻¹, had a yield of 89% and had a charge of 5.50C. The effects of scan rate, feed ratio, supporting electrolyte and solvent type on the electropolymerization are discussed.     

Synthesis and electrochemical polymerization of N‐ethylcarbazole‐bis‐3,4‐etyhlenedioxythiophene‐N‐ethylcarbazole comonomer

A new comonomer ECz‐BEDOT‐ECz (EBEE) [ECz: N‐ethylcarbazole‐BEDOT:2,2′‐bis(3,4‐ethyhlenedioxy) thiophene] has been synthesized, characterized, and electropolymerized on Pt and carbon fiber microelectrodes (CFME). The ECz side group of the comonomer plays an important role in determining its physical properties PEBEE and it resembles the behavior of corresponding homopolymer (PECz). PBEDOT was increased by the incorporation of ECz monomer into structure. The environmental stability of PBEDOT was increased by incorporating the ECz unit into the structure. The new comonomer seems prefer to be electrodeposited onto CFME as opposed to Pt. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 103: 795–801, 2007     

Investigation of post-thermal annealing on material properties of Cu-In-Zn-Se thin films

The Cu-In-Zn-Se thin film was synthesized by changing the contribution of In in chalcopyrite CuInSe2 with Zn.The XRD spectra of the films showed the characteristic diffraction peaks in a good agreement with the quaternary Cu-In-Zn-Se compound.They were in the polycrystalline nature without any post-thermal process,and the main orientation was found to be in the (112) direction with tetragonal crystalline structure.With increasing annealing temperature,the peak intensities in preferred orientation became more pronounced and grain sizes were in increasing behavior from 6.0 to 25.0 nm.The samples had almost the same atomic composition of Cu0.5In0.5ZnSe2.However,EDS results of the deposited films indicated that there was Se re-evaporation and/or segregation with the annealing in the structure of the film.According to the optical analysis,the transmittance values of the films increased with the annealing temperature.The absorption coefficient of the films was calculated as around 105 cm-1 in the visible region.Moreover,optical band gap values were found to be changing in between 2.12 and 2.28 eV depending on annealing temperature.The temperature-dependent dark-and photo-conductivity measurements were carried out to investigate the electrical characteristics of the films.