Piezo/pyro/photo-catalysis activities in Ba0.85Ca0.15(Ti0.9Zr0.1)1-xFexO3 ceramics

Ba_0.85Ca_0.15(Ti_0.9Zr_0.1)_1-xFe_xO₃ (x = 0, 0.5, and 1%) ceramics were studied for piezocatalysis, photocatalysis, and pyrocatalysis using dye degradation in the simulated wastewater. The effect of electrical poling was also performed and found a significant impact of poling on all three catalytic reactions. Fe decreased the optical bandgap of Ba_0.85Ca_0.15Ti_0.9Zr_0.1O₃ (BCZTO) to the visible region. Bandgap for x = 0, 0.005, and 0.01 was found to be 3.14 eV, 2.75 eV, and 2.61 eV, respectively. Interestingly, visible light photocatalytic activity was observed after Fe inclusion in BCZTO lattice. These compositions have also demonstrated dye degradation under ultrasonication (piezocatalytsis) and during temporal temperature change (pyrocatalysis). Results indicate promising multicatalysis in BCZTO ceramics which can be tuned using Fe substitution.     

Effect of poling on piezocatalytic removal of muti-pollutants using BaTiO3

The BaTiO₃ powder was prepared via a solid-state reaction route. It was studied for the degradation of bacterial cells, dye, and pharmaceuticals waste using ultrasonically driven piezocatalytic effect. The bacterial catalytic behavior of poled BaTiO₃ was remarkably increased during ultrasonication (10% E coli survival in 60 minutes). The structural damages were illustrated using scanning electron micrographs of bacterial cells which demonstrated morphological manifestations under different conditions. Methylene blue (MB dye), ciprofloxacin and diclofenac were also cleaned using the piezocatalytic effect associated with the poled BaTiO₃ powder. Around 92, 85, and 78% of degradations were observed within 150 minutes duration for methylene blue, ciprofloxacin, and diclofenac, respectively.     

Iodine-loaded poly(silicic acid) gellan nanocomposite mucoadhesive film for antibacterial application

Iodine-loaded poly(silicic acid) gellan nanocomposite film was fabricated and evaluated for antibacterial properties. Poly(silicic acid) nanoparticles were synthesized by condensation of silicic acid under alkaline conditions in the presence of polyvinyl pyrrolidone, phosphate ions, and molecular iodine. The nanoparticles were incorporated into gellan dispersion to prepare gellan nanocomposite film using the solvent casting method. The nanocomposite films were characterized by Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and X-ray diffraction studies. The results of characterization studies indicated improved thermal stability and an increase in the degree of crystallinity. The scanning electron micrographs and energy dispersive X-ray spectrum confirmed the uniform dispersion of silica and iodine in the nanocomposite films. The analysis of physical and mechanical properties revealed the enhanced tensile strength, moisture resistance, and higher folding endurance of poly(silicic acid) gellan nanocomposite films as compared to gellan film. Further, the iodine-loaded poly(silicic acid) gellan nanocomposite films showed good antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli and effective mucoadhesive strength. The results indicate that iodine-loaded poly(silicic acid) gellan nanocomposite mucoadhesive film can be used for potential antibacterial applications in pharmaceuticals.     

Microstructure and properties of flame sprayed tungsten carbide coatings

This article reports on feasibility experiments carried out with oxy-acetylene spray system with various oxygen to fuel ratios using two different tungsten carbide powders and powder feeding methods, to evaluate the newly developed fused WC, synthesised by transferred arc thermal plasma method. Transferred arc thermal plasma method is more economical and less energy intensive than the conventional arc method and results in a fused carbide powder with higher hardness. The microstructure and phase composition of powders and coatings were analysed by optical and scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. Carbon content of the powders and coatings were determined to study the decarburisation of the material during spraying process. Coatings were also characterised by their hardness and abrasive wear. The effects of metallurgical transformation and phase content are related to wear performance. The results demonstrate that the powders exhibit various degree of phase transformation during the spray process depending on the type of powder, powder feeding and spray parameters. The carbon loss during the spray process in excess of 45% resulted in reduced hardness and wear resistance of the coatings. Coatings with high amount of WC and W₂C along with FeW₃C showed higher wear resistance. Thus, coatings of high wear resistance can be produced using fused tungsten carbide powder with WC and W₂C phases, which can be economically synthesised by thermal plasma transferred arc method.     

Thermodynamic modeling and phase equilibria calculations of the quaternary Al-Ga-In-Sb Sastem

Quasi sub-subregular solution model with additional ternary parameters, used by Sharma et al. to model the thermodynamic properties of the liquid phases in the ternary Al-Ga-Sb, Al-In-Sb, and GaIn-Sb systems, has been extended to predict the thermodynamic properties of the liquid phase in the quaternary Al-Ga-In-Sb system. The (AlGaln)Sb compound phase in the quaternary Al-Ga-In-Sb system is considered a quasi-regular solution of AlSb, GaSb, and InSb compounds. Phase equilibria in the quaternary Al-Ga-In-Sb system are then calculated and compared with the limited experimental data available in the literature. The ternary Al-Ga-In phase diagram, required for the quaternary calculations, has also been modeled and calculated.     

Thermodynamic evaluation of phase equilibria in the CaCl2-MgCl2-CaF2-MgF2 system

The phase diagram of the CaCl₂-CaF₂-MgCl₂-MgF₂ reciprocal ternary system was calculated thermodynamically from available data on the common-ion binary subsystems and from available data on the CaCl₂-MgF₂ join. This join is very nearly quasibinary and divides the system into two quasiternary systems: the CaCl₂-MgF₂-CaF₂ system with a ternary eutectic calculated at 724 +-5 °C and the CaC₂-MgF₂-MgCl₂ system with a ternary eutectic calculated at 561 +-5 °C.     

Dual polarized triple band hybrid MIMO cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna for LTE2500/WLAN/WiMAX applications

In this communication, triple band hybrid multi‐input–multi‐output (MIMO) cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (CDRA) with high isolation is examined. The proposed MIMO antenna includes two symmetric folded microstrip line feeding structures along with CDRA at two different ends of substrate. Two inverted L‐shaped strips on the ground plane are used to enhance the isolation (S₁₂ < ?15 dB) as well as to generates 2.7 GHz frequency band. Metallic strip on the ground plane act as an electromagnetic reflector and also enhance the isolation between two antennas (S₁₂ < ?20 dB). Archetype of proposed MIMO antenna design has been fabricated and tested to validate the simulated results. The proposed antenna operates at three different frequency bands 2.24–2.38 GHz, 2.5–3.26 GHz, and 4.88–7.0 GHz (S₁₁ < ?6 dB) with the fractional bandwidth 6.06%, 26.4%, and 35.7%, respectively. Folded microstrip lines generate path delay between the electric field lines and originate circular polarization characteristics in the frequency range 5.55–5.75 GHz with the fractional bandwidth of 3.55%. In order to satisfy the different performance requirement of MIMO antenna such as envelop correlation coefficient, mean effective gain, effective diversity gain, peak gain are also examined. The proposed antenna is found suitable for LTE2500, WLAN, and WiMAX applications. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2016.     

Realization of a quantum gate using gravitational search algorithm by perturbing three-dimensional harmonic oscillator with an electromagnetic field

The aim of this paper is to design a current source obtained as a representation of p information symbols \(\{I_k\}\) so that the electromagnetic (EM) field generated interacts with a quantum atomic system producing after a fixed duration T a unitary gate U(T) that is as close as possible to a given unitary gate \(U_g\). The design procedure involves calculating the EM field produced by \(\{I_k\}\) and hence the perturbing Hamiltonian produced by \(\{I_k\}\) finally resulting in the evolution operator produced by \(\{I_k\}\) up to cubic order based on the Dyson series expansion. The gate error energy is thus obtained as a cubic polynomial in \(\{I_k\}\) which is minimized using gravitational search algorithm. The signal to noise ratio (SNR) in the designed gate is higher as compared to that using quadratic Dyson series expansion. The SNR is calculated as the ratio of the Frobenius norm square of the desired gate to that of the desired gate error.     

Wavelet based sub-band parameters for classification of unaspirated Hindi stop consonants in initial position of CV syllables

This paper proposes a new feature extraction technique using wavelet based sub-band parameters (WBSP) for classification of unaspirated Hindi stop consonants. The extracted acoustic parameters show marked deviation from the values reported for English and other languages, Hindi having distinguishing manner based features. Since acoustic parameters are difficult to be extracted automatically for speech recognition. Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) based features are usually used. MFCC are based on short time Fourier transform (STFT) which assumes the speech signal to be stationary over a short period. This assumption is specifically violated in case of stop consonants. In WBSP, from acoustic study, the features derived from CV syllables have different weighting factors with the middle segment having the maximum. The wavelet transform has been applied to splitting of signal into 8 sub-bands of different bandwidths and the variation of energy in different sub-bands is also taken into account. WBSP gives improved classification scores. The number of filters used (8) for feature extraction in WBSP is less compared to the number (24) used for MFCC. Its classification performance has been compared with four other techniques using linear classifier. Further, Principal components analysis (PCA) has also been applied to reduce dimensionality.