Sol-gel derived SrBi2Ta2O9 thin films and electrical properties

Ferroelectric SrBi₂Ta₂O₉ thin films were prepared from Sr metals, Ta-ethoxide and Bi, 2-ethylhexanoate. The films were prepared from both stoichiometric and 10 mol% Bi rich solutions. The stoichiometric film crystallized at 800°C had a spontaneous polarization value of 5 μC/cm2. The Bi rich film had lower crystallinity, finer grains and a smaller polarization. It was found to be necessary to anneal the films at high temperatures or for long time to achieve ferroelectricity. The non-crystalline states of sol-gel derived films differ from that observed in films deposited by physical vapor deposition. Crack free films were produced with the film thicknesses of 0.4 μm.     

Formation and characteristics of zinc phosphate coatings obtained by electrochemical treatment: Cathodic vs. anodic

Electrochemical treatment and galvanic coupling are some of the possible modes of acceleration of low temperature phosphating process. The cathodic and anodic treatments during phosphating influence the deposition mechanism, characteristic properties and the corrosion resistance of the resultant coatings in a different way. The present paper aims to compare these aspects and to identify the possible applications of phosphate coatings obtained by these treatments.     

Experimental Investigation and Analysis of Properties and Dry Sliding Wear Behavior of Al -Fe-Si Alloy Matrix Composites

Silicon - Aluminium alloy finds widespread applications in numerous engineering industries because of its tremendous properties. However aluminium alloy possess poor wear resistance. This study...     

Synthesis,Characterization and Wire Electric Erosion Behaviour of AA7178-10 wt.% ZrB2 Composite

Silicon - In this work, AA7178-10 wt.% ZrB2 Metal Matrix Composite was produced using stir casting route and the mechanical properties of the composites were studied. The microstructure and...     

Cloud vendor selection for the healthcare industry using a big data-driven decision model with probabilistic linguistic information

Applied Intelligence - The role of cloud services in the data-intensive industry is indispensable. Cision recently reported that the cloud market would grow to 55 billion USD, with an active...     

Effect of Fe doping on the photocatalytic activity of ZnO nanoparticles: experimental and theoretical investigations

Pure and Fe doped ZnO nanoparticles were prepared by a facile and cost-effective co-precipitation method. The X-ray diffractograms (XRD) reveal that the grown nanoparticles are hexagonal in structure and the crystallite sizes are in the range of 27–28 nm. The transmission electron microscope (TEM) micrographs confirmed the spherical nature of the grown particles and the Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) studies confirmed the presence of Zn–O bonding in the prepared nanoparticles. Additionally, the presence of the constituent elements is confirmed with XPS analysis. The optical bandgap of the prepared nanoparticles are calculated as 3.28, 3.19 and 3.08 eV for ZnO, ZnO–Fe 10 at.% and ZnO–Fe 20 at.%, respectively. The photocatalytic dye degradation efficiency against methylene blue, is 68.52, 73.96, and 87.92, respectively. To validate the photocatalytic activity, a DFT based calculation was performed to measure the band edge positions of the pure and Fe doped ZnO nanostructures, and the obtained results are well supported by the experimental results.     

Brightness preserving bi‐level fuzzy histogram equalization for MRI brain image contrast enhancement

In this article, brightness preserving bi‐level fuzzy histogram equalization (BPFHE) is proposed for the contrast enhancement of MRI brain images. Histogram equalization (HE) is widely used for improving the contrast in digital images. As a result, such image creates side‐effects such as washed‐out appearance and false contouring due to the significant change in brightness. In order to overcome these problems, mean brightness preserving HE based techniques have been proposed. Generally, these methods partition the histogram of the original image into sub histograms and then independently equalize each sub‐histogram. The BPFHE consists of two stages. First, fuzzy histogram is computed based on fuzzy set theory to handle the inexactness of gray level values in a better way compared to classical crisp histograms. In the second stage, the fuzzy histogram is divided into two sub‐histograms based on the mean intensities of the multi‐peaks in the original image and then equalizes them independently to preserve image brightness. The quantitative and subjective enhancement of proposed BPBFHE algorithm is evaluated using two well known parameters like entropy or average information contents (AIC) and Feature Similarity Index Matrix (FSIM) for different gray scale images. The proposed method have been tested using several images and gives better visual quality as compared to the conventional methods. The simulation results show that the proposed method has better performance than the existing methods, and preserve the original brightness quite well, so that it is possible to be utilized in medical image diagnosis.     

A Highly Emissive Surface Layer in Mixed‐Halide Multication Perovskites

Mixed‐halide lead perovskites have attracted significant attention in the field of photovoltaics and other optoelectronic applications due to their promising bandgap tunability and device performance. Here, the changes in photoluminescence and photoconductance of solution‐processed triple‐cation mixed‐halide (Cs_0.06MA_0.15FA_0.79)Pb(Br_0.4I_0.6)₃ perovskite films (MA: methylammonium, FA: formamidinium) are studied under solar‐equivalent illumination. It is found that the illumination leads to localized surface sites of iodide‐rich perovskite intermixed with passivating PbI₂ material. Time‐ and spectrally resolved photoluminescence measurements reveal that photoexcited charges efficiently transfer to the passivated iodide‐rich perovskite surface layer, leading to high local carrier densities on these sites. The carriers on this surface layer therefore recombine with a high radiative efficiency, with the photoluminescence quantum efficiency of the film under solar excitation densities increasing from 3% to over 45%. At higher excitation densities, nonradiative Auger recombination starts to dominate due to the extremely high concentration of charges on the surface layer. This work reveals new insight into phase segregation of mixed‐halide mixed‐cation perovskites, as well as routes to highly luminescent films by controlling charge density and transfer in novel device structures.     

Exploring the relationships between IT competence,innovation capacity and organizational agility

Business environments today are characterized as being very dynamic and hyper competitive. Organizations in these environments have to be agile in order to adapt their strategies and actions to be successful. While it is recognized that information technology can enable firms to be agile, there is a limited understanding of the mechanisms through and the contexts in which Information Technology (IT) enhances agility. This study examines two key antecedents of organizational agility, namely the IT competence of a firm and its innovation capacity and, examine their independent and joint effects on agility. We test our model using data collected from large firms in the US. The results provide strong support for our model. We found that firms with superior IS capabilities coupled with an aggressive IT investment orientation create digital platforms that enable them to be agile. We also found that the innovation capacity of the firm has a positive relationship with organizational agility and that firms with higher innovation capacity are better able to leverage their digital platforms to enhance agility. Our results indicate that organizational agility has a strong positive impact of firm performance. We interpret and discuss these results and their theoretical and practical implications.     

Indirect electroreduction of o-nitrophenol to o-aminophenol on titanium dioxide coated titanium electrodes

The heterogeneous catalytic redox behaviour of a titanium dioxide coated titanium electrode surface was investigated with and without o-nitrophenol using cyclic voltammetry. A comparison of the cyclic voltammograms recorded in the absence and in the presence of o-nitrophenol confirmed the catalytic reduction of o-nitrophenol by the surface Ti⁴⁺/Ti³⁺ redox system present on the electrode surface. Preparative scale experiments were also carried out using a Ti/TiO₂ electrode of large surface area and the redox behaviour of the electrode was confirmed by the isolation of o-aminophenol with high current efficiency and yield.