Synthesis and characterization of novel poly(arylene ether)s based on 9,10‐bis‐(4‐fluoro‐3‐trifluoromethylphenyl) anthracene and 2,7‐bis‐(4‐fluoro‐3‐trifluoromethylphenyl) fluorene

Two new bisfluoro monomers 9,10‐bis‐(4‐fluoro‐3‐trifluoromethylphenyl) anthracene and 2,7‐bis‐(4‐fluoro‐3‐trifluoromethylphenyl) fluorene have been synthesized by the cross‐coupling reaction of 2‐fluoro‐3‐trifluoromethyl phenyl boronic acid with 9,10‐dibromo anthracene and 2,7‐dibromo fluorine, respectively. These two bisfluoro compounds were used to prepare several poly(arylene ether)s by aromatic nucleophilic displacement of fluorine with various bisphenols; such as bisphenol‐A, bisphenol‐6F, bishydroxy biphenyl, and 9,9‐bis‐(4‐hydroxyphenyl)‐fluorene. The products obtained by displacement of the fluorine atoms exhibits weight‐average molar masses up to 1.5 ×10⁵ g mol^?1 and number average molecular weight up to 6.8 × 10⁴ g mol^?1 in GPC. These poly(arylene ether)s show very high thermal stability even up to 490°C for 5% weight loss occurring at this temperature in TGA in synthetic air and showed glass transition temperature observed up to 310°C. All the polymers are soluble in a wide range of organic solvents, e.g., CHCl₃, THF, NMP, and DMF. Films cast from DMF solution are brittle in nature. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2007     

Enhanced field emission and improved supercapacitor obtained from plasma-modified bucky paper

The surface morphology of bucky papers (BPs) made from single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is modified by plasma treatment resulting in the formation of vertical microstructures on the surface. The shapes of these structures are either pillarlike or conelike depending on whether the gas used during plasma treatment is Ar or CH(4) . A complex interplay between different factors, such as the electric field within the plasma sheath, polarization of the CNT, intertubular cohesive forces, and ion bombardment, result in the formation of these structures. The roles played by these factors are quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. The final material is flexible, substrate-free, composite-free, made only of CNTs, and has discrete vertically aligned structures on its surface. It shows enhanced field emission and electrochemical charge-storage capabilities. The field enhancement factor is increased by 6.8 times, and the turn-on field drops by 3.5 times from an initial value of 0.35 to 0.1 V μm(-1) as a result of the treatment. The increase in Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area results in about a fourfold improvement in the specific capacitance of the BP electrodes. Capacitance values before and after the treatments are 75 and 290 F g(-1) , respectively. It is predicted that this controlled surface modification technique could be put to good use in several applications based on macroscopic CNT films.     

Optimization of correlated multiple responses of ultrasonic machining (USM) process

Ultrasonic machining (USM) process has several important performance measures (responses), some of which are correlated. For example, material removal rate and tool wear rate are highly correlated. Although in the recent past several methods have been proposed in the literature to resolve the multi-response optimization problems, only a few of them take care of the possible correlation between the responses. All these methods primarily make use of principal component analysis (PCA) to consider the possible correlation between the responses. Process engineers may face the difficulty of selecting the appropriate method because the relative optimization performances of these methods are unknown. In this paper, two sets of past experimental data on USM process are analysed using three methods dealing with the multiple correlated responses, and the optimization performances of these three methods are subsequently compared. It is observed that both the weighted principal component (WPC) and PCA-based TOPSIS methods result in a better optimization performance than the PCA-based grey relational analysis method. However, the WPC method is preferable because of its simpler computational procedure.     

Modeling and validation of high selective harmonic reduced bandpass filter using coupled resonators and defected ground structures

Recent developments in wireless communication systems demand good Band pass filter (BPF) with high quality factor and good selectivity to select the required signal from the adjacent signals. In this paper one coupled Band pass filter with centre frequency 2?GHz and 30?% Fractional Bandwidth (FBW) has been designed with rectangular split ring coupled resonators formed with conventional Microstrip transmission line. This designed BPF has been simulated with the help of MoM based IE3D electromagnetic EM simulation software. Here it is found that the proposed BPF provides second harmonic nearer to the twice of its passband centre frequency and some other few harmonics. Therefore, in this paper attention also has been given towards the suppression of harmonics with the help of Defected Ground Structures (DGS) in addition with the proposed coupled microstrip BPF. The proposed structure has been measured with Agilent vector network analyzer. There is a good agreement between simulated and measured responses.     

Synthesis and characterization of highly soluble poly(ether imide)s containing indane moieties in the main chain

A new indane containing unsymmetrical diamine monomer ( 3 ) was synthesized. This diamine monomer leads to a number of novel semifluorinated poly (ether imide)s when reacted with different commercially available dianhydrides like benzene‐1,2,4,5‐tetracarboxylic dianhydride (PMDA), benzophenone‐3,3′, 4,4′‐tetracarboxylic dianhydride (BTDA), 4,4′‐(hexafluoro‐isopropylidene)diphthalic anhydride (6FDA), 4,4′‐oxydiphthalic anhydride (ODPA), and 4,4′‐(4,4′‐Isopropylidenediphenoxy)bis(phthalic anhydride) (BPADA) by thermal imidization route. All the poly(ether imide)s showed excellent solubility in several organic solvents such as N‐methylpyrrolidone (NMP), N,N‐dimethylformamide (DMF), N,N‐dimethylacetamide (DMAc), tetrahydrofuran (THF), chloroform (CHCl₃) and dichloromethane (DCM) at room temperature. These light yellow poly (ether imide)s showed very low water absorption (0.19–0.30%) and very good optical transparency. Wide angle X‐ray diffraction measurements revealed that these polymers were amorphous in nature. The polymers exhibited high thermal stability up to 526°C in nitrogen with 5% weight loss, and high glass transition temperature up to 265°C. The polymers exhibited high tensile strength up to 85 MPa, modulus up to 2.5 GPa and elongation at break up to 38%, depending on the exact polymer structure. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2009     

An asymmetric defected ground structure with elliptical response and its application as a lowpass filter

A new asymmetric defected ground structure (DGS) consisting of two square headed slots connected with a rectangular slot transversely under a microstrip line is proposed. In the frequency characteristics of its unit cell, an attenuation zero is observed close to the attenuation pole. The DGS unit is represented by Cauer's T-network, modeled by a third order elliptical lowpass filter and finally equivalent L-C parameters are extracted. Several studies have been accomplished on the influence of the geometric modification of the filter on its characteristics. Better transition sharpness, lower passband insertion loss and broader stopband are observed, compared to popular dumbbell DGSs due to its additional attenuation zero. The two-cell configuration of this DGS produces a three-pole lowpass filter having wide and deep stopband at low cutoff frequency. This is applied under the input and output feed lines of a parallel-coupled bandpass filter for suppressing harmonic frequencies. A lowpass filter is realized using cascaded investigated DGS and dumbbell DGS under a microstrip line.     

Feature-based recognition of control chart patterns

Control charts primarily in the form of chart are widely used to identify the situations when control actions will be needed for manufacturing systems. Various types of patterns are observed in control charts. Identification of these control chart patterns (CCPs) can provide clues to potential quality problems in the manufacturing process. Each type of control chart pattern has its own geometric shape and various related features can represent this shape. Feature-based approaches can facilitate efficient pattern recognition since extracted shape features represent the main characteristics of the patterns in a condensed form. In this paper, a set of eight new features, extraction of which does not call for utilizing the experience and skill of the user in any form, is presented. Two feature-based approaches using heuristics and artificial neural network (ANN) are developed, which are capable of recognizing eight most commonly observed CCPs including stratification and systematic patterns. Relative performances of the feature-based heuristic and feature-based ANN recognizers are extensively studied using synthetic pattern data. The feature-based ANN recognizer results in better recognition performance and generalization compared to the feature-based heuristic recognizer.     

Synthesis of self-organized mixed oxide nanotubes by sonoelectrochemical anodization of Ti-8Mn alloy

Self ordered arrays of titanium manganese mixed oxide nanotubes were prepared by anodization of Ti8Mn alloy (UNS R56080) under ultrasonication in diluted ethylene glycol containing fluoride. The dimensions of the nanotubes (diameter: 20-100 nm and length: 0.5-2.0 μm) could be tuned by changing the synthesis parameters. The as-anodized nanotubes showed a stoichiometry of (Ti,Mn)O₂. Upon annealing at 500 °C in oxygen atmosphere, the nanotubes contained a mixture of anatase + rutile phases of TiO₂ and Mn₂O₃. The composition of the oxide nanotubes was influenced by the chemistry of the phases present in the alloy. More manganese content was observed in the oxide formed on the β-phase than in the oxide layer of α-phase. Anodization in the ultrasonic field increased the kinetics of nanotubular oxide formation and resulted in homogeneous ordering of the nanotubular arrays as compared to the anodization by conventional stirring in the fluoride containing ethylene glycol solution. Whereas, anodization in aqueous acidified fluoride solutions resulted in severe attack of the β-phase and did not show presence of nanotubular oxide structure.     

Synthesis and characterization of new sulfonated copolytriazoles and their proton exchange membrane properties

This work reports the synthesis and characterization of a series of new sulfonated copolytriazoles. The polymers were prepared by CuI catalyzed 1,3-cycloaddition reaction of an equimolar amount of a dialkyne monomer, 1,3-diethynylbenzene and a mixture of two diazide monomers, namely, 4,4′-diazidodiphenyl ether and 4,4′-diazido-2,2′-stilbenedisulfonic acid disodium salt. The copolymers showed high inherent viscosity indicating the formation of high molar mass product. The copolymers were characterized by Fourier transform infrared and proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic techniques. The copolymer membranes displayed moderate water uptake, high dimensional, mechanical, and thermal stability. Transmission electron microscopy micrographs displayed excellent phase-separated morphology along with very fine ionic clusters. The copolymer PTEOSH-90 (90% degree of sulfonation) showed much higher proton conductivity value which is up to 196 mS cm⁻¹ at 80 °C in completely hydrated condition compared to that of Nafion (165 mS cm⁻¹). © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2020 , 137, 48514.