Studies of solvent effect on the conductivity of 2‐mercaptopyridine‐doped solid polymer blend electrolytes and its application in dye‐sensitized solar cells

Solvents and electrolytes play an important role in the fabrication of dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). We have studied the poly(ethylene oxide)‐poly(methyl methacrylate)‐KI‐I₂ (PEO‐PMMA‐KI‐I₂) polymer blend electrolytes prepared with different wt % of the 2‐mercaptopyridine by solution casting method. The polymer electrolyte films were characterized by the FTIR, X‐ray diffraction, electrochemical impedance and dielectric studies. FTIR spectra revealed complex formation between the PEO‐PMMA‐KI‐I₂ and 2‐mercaptopyrindine. Ionic conductivity data revealed that 30% 2‐mercaptopyridine‐doped PEO‐PMMA‐KI‐I₂ electrolyte can show higher conductivity (1.55 × 10^?5 S cm^?1) than the other compositions (20, 40, and 50%). The effect of solvent on the conductivity and dielectric of solid polymer electrolytes was studied for the best composition (30% 2‐mercaptopyridine‐doped PEO‐PMMA‐KI‐I₂) electrolyte using various organic solvents such as acetonitrile, N,N‐dimethylformamide, 2‐butanone, chlorobenzene, dimethylsulfoxide, and isopropanol. We found that ac‐conductivity and dielectric constant are higher for the polymer electrolytes processed from N,N‐dimethylformamide. This observation revealed that the conductivity of the solid polymer electrolytes is dependent on the solvent used for processing and the dielectric constant of the film. The photo‐conversion efficiency of dye‐sensitized solar cells fabricated using the optimized polymer electrolytes was 3.0% under an illumination of 100 mW cm^?2. The study suggests that N,N‐dimethylformamide is a good solvent for the polymer electrolyte processing due to higher ac‐conductivity beneficial for the electrochemical device applications. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015 , 132, 42489.     

Role of magnetic resonance methods in the evaluation of prostate cancer: an Indian perspective

The challenges in detection, localization, and staging of prostate cancer have prompted the investigation of the role of various magnetic resonance (MR) methodologies in a large cohort of men prior to biopsy. The identification of suspicious areas of malignancy was carried out using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). Our data shows that apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) may be a reliable marker to differentiate normal, benign, and malignant prostate tissues similar to the metabolite ratio. Also, the combined use of MRSI and DWI improves the diagnosis of prostate cancer. In this review, we present our experience on the use of MRI, MRSI and DWI methods in the assessment of prostate cancer in Indian men. Further, analysis of the comparison of the ADC and the metabolite ratio values reported in the literature across various patient populations are presented. An erratum to this article can be found at     

A suite of robust controllers for the manipulation of microscale objects.

A suite of novel robust controllers is introduced for the pickup operation of microscale objects in a microelectromechanical system (MEMS). In MEMS, adhesive, surface tension, friction, and van der Waals forces are dominant. Moreover, these forces are typically unknown. The proposed robust controller overcomes the unknown contact dynamics and ensures its performance in the presence of actuator constraints by assuming that the upper bounds on these forces are known. On the other hand, for the robust adaptive critic-based neural network (NN) controller, the unknown dynamic forces are estimated online. It consists of an action NN for compensating the unknown system dynamics and a critic NN for approximating a certain strategic utility function and tuning the action NN weights. By using the Lyapunov approach, the uniform ultimate boundedness of the closed-loop manipulation error is shown for all the controllers for the pickup task. To imitate a practical system, a few system states are considered to be unavailable due to the presence of measurement noise. An output feedback version of the adaptive NN controller is proposed by exploiting the separation principle through a high-gain observer design. The problem of measurement noise is also overcome by constructing a reference system. Simulation results are presented and compared to substantiate the theoretical conclusions.     

Integration of an Axially Continuous Graphene with Functional Metals for High-Temperature Electrical Conductors

Demands for effective high-temperature electrical conductors continue to increase with the rapid adoption of electric vehicles. However, the use of conventional copper-based conductors is limited to relatively low temperatures due to their poor oxidation resistance and microstructural instability. Here, a highly conductive and thermally stable nickel-graphene-copper (NiGCu) wire that combines the advantages of graphene and its metallic components is developed. The NiGCu wire consists of a conductive copper core, an oxidation-resistant nickel shell, and axially continuous graphene embedded between them. The experiments on 10–80 µm diameter NiGCu wires demonstrate substantial enhancements in electrical properties and thermal stability across a variety of metrics. For instance, the smallest NiGCu wires have a 61.2% higher current density limit, 307.6% higher conductivity, and an order of magnitude smaller change in resistivity compared to conventional Ni-coated Cu counterparts after annealing at 650 °C. By performing both innovative experiments and simulations using different sizes of NiGCu wires, the diffusion coefficients of metals are quantified, for the first time to the best knowledge, through continuous graphene. These results indicate that the dramatic improvement in thermo-electrical properties is enabled by the embedded graphene layer which reduces Ni Cu interdiffusion by ≈10⁴ times at 550 °C and 650 °C.