Measurement method of plasma current and density in atmospheric pressure plasma jet

We present a measurement method of the plasma current and density in an atmospheric‐pressure plasma generated using a quartz tube, helium gas, and copper foil electrode by applying a high RF voltage. The plasma in the form of a bullet is released as a plume or jet into the atmosphere. To study the characteristics of the atmospheric‐pressure plasma, the plasma current is measured using a current probe, and the drift velocity of plasma plume is measured using a photodetector. The current of the plasma plume is estimated by subtracting the ground line current from the power line current in the circuit. The density of plasma plume n is estimated from the plasma plume current I and the drift velocity v as I = envS, where S is the cross section of plasma plume. The density of the released plasma into the atmosphere is estimated as ∼10¹⁸ m⁻³ by the method. © 2015 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

High-performance molecular-separation ceramic membranes derived from oxidative cross-linked polytitanocarbosilane

Polytitanocarbosilane (TiPCS)-derived ceramic membranes were fabricated using a pre-ceramic polymer. Special attention was focused on a process of thermal-oxidative curing that was used to induce cross-linking and the effect of this process on the ceramic yield, thermal stability, oxidation resistance, and microstructure of TiPCS. The cross-linked TiPCS powders showed a ceramic yield and thermal stability that were higher than that from the non-cross-linked version. In addition, the cross-linked TiPCS with uniform micropores showed higher levels of N₂ and CO₂ adsorption capacity, BET surface area, and micropore volume than the non-cross-linked versions, and the cross-linking process enhanced the stability of the pore structure at high temperature. The cross-linked TiPCS membranes showed high H₂ permeance (1.49 × 10⁻⁶ mol/(m² s Pa)) with sub-nanopores (H₂/SF₆ selectivity: 12 000, H₂/N₂: 10), and in addition higher oxidation resistance than their non-cross-linked counterparts. Furthermore, the influence of the concentration of the TiPCS precursor coating solution was optimized and the hydrothermal stability of the membranes at high temperatures was also evaluated. The optimized membrane demonstrated great performance for the pervaporation removal of methanol in binary azeotropic systems of either MeOH/butyl acetate or MeOH/toluene, and it also showed high hydrothermal stability with excellent dehumidification performance under high temperatures.     

Monolithiation of 5,5′‐Dibromo‐2,2′‐bithiophene Using Flow Microreactors: Mechanistic Implications and Synthetic Applications

The lithiation of 5,5′‐dibromo‐2,2′‐bithiophene with one equivalent of an alkyllithium such as n‐BuLi or s‐BuLi was studied by varying the residence time in flow microreactors. With a short residence time, the product 2,2′‐bithiophene (3) derived from dilithiation was obtained preferentially and a significant amount of the starting material 5,5′‐dibromo‐2,2′‐bithiophene remained unchanged. An increase in the residence time caused a higher yield of the product 5‐bromo‐2,2′‐bithiophene derived from monolithiation with expense in the yields of 2,2′‐bithiophene and 5,5′‐dibromo‐2,2′‐bithiophene. The lithiation using MeLi gave the product 5‐bromo‐2,2′‐bithiophene preferentially even with a very short residence time.     

Effect of α-substituents on molecular motion and wetting behaviors of poly(fluoroalkyl acrylate) thin films with short fluoroalkyl side chains

The effect of α-substituent on the molecular motion and wetting behavior of poly{2-(perfluorobutyl)ethyl acrylate} [PFA-C₄], poly{2-(perfluorobutyl)ethyl methacrylate} [PFMA-C₄], poly{2-(perfluorobutyl)ethyl α-fluoroacrylate} [PFFA-C₄], and poly{2-(perfluorobutyl)ethyl α-chloroacrylate} [PFClA-C₄] films were characterized by dynamic contact angle measurement, lateral force microscopy (LFM), wide angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). WAXD of oriented PFClA-C₄ fiber suggested the presence of rod-like chain due to the presence of bulky α-substituent. The glass transition temperature (T_g) of PFFA-C₄ and PFClA-C₄ were well above the room temperature. The water repellencies of PFFA-C₄ and PFClA-C₄ were as high as that of PFMA-C₄ and their oil repellency of PFFA-C₄ and PFClA-C₄ was higher than the PFMA-C_4. This result was originated from the low main chain mobility of PFFA-C₄ and PFClA-C₄ due to the presence of bulky α-substituents. The effect of molecular motion on water repellency was clarified by the results of temperature dependence studies of dynamic contact angle, LFM, and surface chemical composition measured by XPS.     

Boiling heat transfer characteristics of a sulfuric-acid flow in thermochemical iodine–sulfur cycle

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency has been conducting research and development on the thermo-chemical iodine–sulfur (IS) process, which is one of the most attractive water-splitting hydrogen production methods that uses nuclear thermal energy. The sulfuric acid decomposer is one of the key components of the IS process. The boiling heat transfer coefficients of sulfuric acid solutions are required to design the sulfuric acid decomposer. These coefficients were measured in aqueous solutions where the mole fraction of H₂O ranged from 0.17 to 0.37 (heat flux range from 16.9 kW/m² to 5.6 kW/m²) and compared with the empirical correlations formulated for binary mixtures. A combination of the Stephan–Körner correlation, using the empirical constant A₀ = 2.00, and the Nishikawa–Fujita correlation was used to predict the experimental results with an accuracy of ±10%.     

Development of biobased microwave absorbing composites with various magnetic metals and carbons

The preparation and characterization of a biobased electromagnetic absorbing composites derived from natural lacquer as a renewable resource with microwave‐absorption fillers, including Ni–Zn ferrite and carbonyl iron (CI) as magnetic metals and soot and carbon nanotube (CNT) as carbon materials, were investigated in terms of the gel content, hardness, drying properties, and electromagnetic absorption properties. Interestingly, composites with ferrite and CI contained up to 320 and 550 wt %, respectively, of these compounds. This quite high loading capacity of the metal fillers in a natural‐lacquer base could have been due to the high compatibility between the filler and the natural lacquer; this indicated that the natural lacquer worked as a binder for these metals. The morphology of the biobased composite was characterized by scanning electron microscopy. The electromagnetic absorption properties of composites were characterized in the frequency range from 0.05 and 20 GHz by the reflection loss (RL) measurement method in terms of the kind of fillers and filler loading. The natural lacquer did not affect the absorption properties of the fillers. Biobased composites showed over 99% electromagnetic absorption in the frequency range 3.0–4.0 GHz for 280 wt % ferrite and 8.9–9.7 GHz for 200 wt % CI. Conversely, 10 and 20 wt % soot exhibited good performance (RL < ?20 dB) between 16.5 and 17.3 and between 8.8 and 9.2 GHz, respectively. The areas with RL values of less than ?20 dB of the CNT composites were 10.4–11.0 GHz for 5 wt % and 14.6–15.2 GHz for 10 wt %. Hence, natural lacquer can be used as a binder material for electromagnetic absorption composites. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016 , 133, 44131.     

Fast Labelling of Natural Scenes Using Enhanced Knowledge

A new technique for labelling natural scenes is proposed. This technique labels disjoint regions on an image of a natural scene on the basis of knowledge about the relationship among objects. The proposed technique consists of three stages: (1) segmentation, (2) initial labelling, and (3) label improvement. One of the most promising previous techniques uses simulated annealing to find the solution, while our technique uses local hill-climbing with enhanced knowledge for speeding up the processing. Local hill-climbing is known to be easy to be captured by a local minimum. We solved this problem by enhancing the knowledge being used as constraints for the search. Our knowledge represents 1-to-n relationships among regions, pair-wise relationships of regions, and relative locations of the regions to the image. In addition, we introduced two region features: an entropy in intensity; and a linearity of contours of each region. The linearity evaluation aims to distinguish artificial objects from natural objects. The validity of the technique is supported by some experiments. These experiments showed that the proposed technique is much faster with the almost same accurate.     

Radial compression of sugi wood (Cryptomeria japonica D. Don)

This paper deals with the heat fixation of compressive deformation of sugi wood (Cryptomeria japonica D. Don) which is a typical Japanese coniferous wood with a low density. After wet specimens were compressed in the radial direction to about 50% of their original thickness and dried under restraint, they were subjected to heat treatment by three methods: beneath the surface of molten metal, and in the presence or absence of air. The relationship between the recovery of deformation and the weight loss was expressed by a hyperbolic equation regardless of heating methods. The retentions of the MOE and the MOR of compressed specimens at the perfect fixation were 89% and 81%, respectively. The perfect fixation of deformation was speculated to have resulted from the release of stresses stored in the cell wall polymers by their degradation as well as the reduction of hygroscopicity of the cell wall polymers.     

Source-synchronization and timing vernier techniques for 1.2-GB/sSLDRAM interface

This paper describes a validation system for an SLDRAM interface. The SLDRAM system utilizes two techniques to achieve a high data-transfer rate with a conventional module mounting style. The first technique is a source-synchronization scheme. Since the chip that transmits data also supplies the data clock, the clock and data are completely synchronous. The second is the timing vernier technique. A wait time for output data is programmable in each SLDRAM. Therefore, the time at which data arrive at the controller from any SLDRAM can be set by the controller with a 200-ps step size. The validation chip is designed to emulate these operations. The chip is fabricated using a 0.35-μm CMOS process technology and packaged in a conventional 0.65-mm pitch thin small out-line package, mounted on a single-chip module, and put into an eight-module system. A stub series terminated logic (SSTL)-like interface is adopted for high-speed signals. From system-level measurements, the data eye width of 600 ps is obtained at a data rate of 600 Mbps. Errorless data transmission is observed in both read and write operations in a bit-error rate testing. The validation system has successfully demonstrated a data-transmission rate of 1.2 GB/s (600 Mbit/s/pin) using source-synchronization and timing vernier techniques at the supply voltage of 2.5 V