Cathodic electrodeposition of Y(OH)3 and Y2O3 nanostructures from chloride bath. Part II: Effect of the bath temperature on the crystal structure,composition and morphology

Ultra-fine nanoparticles, mono-dispersed nanospheres and nanorods of Y(OH)₃ and Y₂O₃ were successfully prepared via electrodeposition from chloride bath at different temperatures of 10, 25, 40 and 80 °C followed by heat-treatments at 600 °C in dry air atmosphere. Thermal behavior of the hydroxide samples was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric (TG) analysis. The structural and morphological characteristics of the products were determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), FT-IR, scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM). Effects of bath temperature on the mechanism of base electrogeneration and deposit formation on the cathode surface were proposed and discussed. The results showed that the crystal structure, composition and morphology of the products are mainly affected by the temperature of electrodeposition bath.     

Electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol on mono and bimetallic composite films: Pt and Pt–M (M = Ru,Ir and Sn) nano-particles in poly(o-aminophenol)

Mono and bimetallic composite catalysts have been formed by a three-step process, whereby the surface of aluminum electrode was pretreated upon immersion into a Pd(NH₃)₄Cl₂ solution (p-Al), was subsequently coated with a thin poly(o-aminophenol) (PoAP) layer by potentiodynamic electropolymerization of o-aminophenol and Pt and Pt alloys nano-particles were finally dispersed into the PoAP film by electrochemical methods. The electrocatalytic properties of the platinum doped (Pt/PoAP/p-Al) and Pt alloys doped (Pt–M/PoAP/p-Al, M = Ru, Ir and Sn) electrodes towards the methanol oxidation were investigated by cyclic voltammetry and compared with the electrocatalytic properties of pristine Pt and Pt particles on pretreated Al (Pt/p-Al) electrodes. The enhancement of the electrocatalytic activity of the Pt nano-particles, when Ru, Ir and Sn, are co-deposited in the polymer is also studied in detail. The effects of various parameters on the electrooxidation of methanol as well as the long-term stability of doped electrodes have also been investigated.     

Significant improvement of semi-solid microstructure and mechanical properties of A356 alloy by ARB process

Accumulative roll bonding (ARB) process was used in this study as an effective method for manufacturing high-strength, finely-dispersed and highly-uniform A356 alloy. It was found that when the number of ARB cycles was increased, the uniformity of silicon particles in the aluminum matrix improved, the particles became finer and spheroider and therefore, the tensile strength (TS) and ductility of the samples improved. The microstructure of the manufactured A356 alloy after five ARB cycles indicated a totally modified structure such that it's TS and elongation values reached 269 MPa and 5.3% which were 2.6 and 2.5 times greater than those of the as-cast material, respectively. Also, the hardness value increased from 55.4 (for as-cast sample) to 100.2 HV (after the fifth cycle of ARB), and registered 81% increase.     

Analysis and optimization of the asynchronous modulated light detection pixel

Detection of modulated light signals transmitted by active image markers can be used in object localization tasks and machine vision applications. The asynchronous demodulation pixel is able to detect the signal transmitted by these modulated markers. The modulated marker position in a two-dimensional pixel array can be used to identify the marker location in the field. In this paper the asynchronous demodulation pixel is analyzed and its operation is investigated in the presence of non-ideal effects such as parasitic elements, device mismatches and process variations. The effect of demodulator bias conditions and different switch pulsing techniques are examined and a modified demodulator controlling method is presented to increase the dynamic range and sensitivity of the pixel compared with the common operation schemes. The different demodulator structures are also simulated as 64 × 64 pixel array sensors using a 0.18 μm standard CMOS process and their operation is compared regarding sensitivity, filter transfer function, pixel size and power consumption.     

Nanostructure silver-doped zinc oxide films coating on glass prepared by sol–gel and photochemical deposition process: Application for removal of mercaptan

Silver-doped zinc oxide (SDZO) films have been grown on glass substrate by a novel combination of sol–gel and photochemical deposition processes (SGPD). The effect of sintering on structural, electrical and optical properties was investigated. The films were characterized by UV–vis absorption spectroscopy (UV–vis), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The result of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) revealed that the binding energy of Ag 3d_5/2 for SDZO shifts remarkably to the lower binding energy compared to the pure metallic Ag due to the interaction between silver and zinc oxide. The XRD spectra of the SDZO films indicate that silver was incorporated in the hexagonal crystal structure of zinc oxide. SEM micrographs show the uniform distribution of spherical grains of about 73 nm grain size for the pure zinc oxide thin films. The results indicated that silver doping photochemical deposition was a feasible method to tune the optical properties of zinc oxide nanostructures. SDZO films coated on glass were applied for the photodegradation of mercaptan in water. SDZO films were applied for degradation of mercaptobenzoxazole which reduced the mercaptan concentration to more than 98%.     

Analytical Study of Quantum Magnetic and Ion Viscous Effects on p11B Fusion in Plasma Focus Devices

In this article we studied the feasibility of proton-boron (p¹¹B) fusion in plasmoids produced by plasma pinch devices like plasma focus facility as commercially sources of energy. In plasmoids fusion power for 76 keV < T_i < 1,500 keV exceeds bremsstrahlung loss (W/P_b = 5.39). In such situation gain factor and the ratio of Te to Ti for a typical 150 kJ plasma focus will be 7.8 and 4.8 respectively. Also with considering the ion viscous heating effect W/P_b and T_i/T_e will be 2.7 and 6 respectively. Strong magnetic field will reduces ion–electron collision rate due to quantization of electron orbits. While approximately there is no change in electron–ion collision rate, The effect of quantum magnetic field makes ions much hotter than electrons which enhances the fraction of fusion power to bremsstrahlung loss.     

Multiattribute group decision-making based on Pythagorean fuzzy Einstein prioritized aggregation operators

Pythagorean fuzzy set (PFS) is a powerful tool to deal with the imprecision and vagueness. Many aggregation operators have been proposed by many researchers based on PFSs. But the existing methods are under the hypothesis that the decision-makers (DMs) and the attributes are at the same priority level. However, in real group decision-making problems, the attribute and DMs may have different priority level. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce multiattribute group decision-making (MAGDM) based on PFSs where there exists a prioritization relationship over the attributes and DMs. First we develop Pythagorean fuzzy Einstein prioritized weighted average operator and Pythagorean fuzzy Einstein prioritized weighted geometric operator. We study some of its desirable properties such as idempotency, boundary, and monotonicity in detail. Moreover we propose a MAGDM approach based on the developed operators under Pythagorean fuzzy environment. Finally, an illustrative example is provided to illustrate the practicality of the proposed approach.     

A new hybrid control technique for operation of DC microgrid under islanded operating mode

This study proposes a novel combined primary and secondary control approach for direct current microgrids, specifically in islanded mode. In primary control, this approach establishes an appropriate load power sharing between the distributed energy resources based on their rated power. Simultaneously, it considers the load voltage deviation and provides satisfactory voltage regulation in the secondary control loop. The proposed primary control is based on an efficient droop mechanism that only deploys the local variable measurements, so as to overcome the side effects caused by communication delays. In the case of secondary control, two different methods are devised. In the first, low bandwidth communication links are used to establish the minimum required data transfer between the converters. The effect of communication delay is further explored. The second method excludes any communication link and only uses local variables. Accordingly, a self-sufficient control loop is devised without any communication requirement. The proposed control notions are investigated in MATLAB/Simulink platform to highlight system performance. The results demonstrate that both proposed approaches can effectively compensate for the voltage deviation due to the primary control task. Detailed comparisons of the two methods are also provided.     

Reservoir Inflow Prediction by Ensembling Wavelet and Bootstrap Techniques to Multiple Linear Regression Model

In this study, a new hybrid model, bootstrap multiple linear regression (BMLR) is suggested to investigate the potential of bootstrap resampling technique for daily reservoir inflow prediction. The proposed model compares with three other models: Multiple linear regression (MLR), wavelet multiple linear regression (WMLR) and wavelet bootstrap multiple linear regression (WBMLR). River stage data of monsoon season (1st July 2010 to 30 September 2010) from three gauging stations of Chenab river basin are used. In wavelet transformation, input vectors are decomposed using discrete wavelet transformation (DWT) into discrete wavelet components (DWCs). Then suitable DWCs are used to provide input to MLR model to develop WMLR model. Bootstrap technique coupled with MLR model to build up BMLR model. While WBMLR model is the conjunction of suitable DWCs and bootstrap technique to MLR model. Performance indices namely root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient of efficiency (NSC), and persistence index (CP) are used in study to evaluate the performance of model. Results showed that hybrid model BMLR produce significantly better results on performance indices than other models MLR, WMLR and WBMLR.

     

Road Oriented Traffic Information System for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

Over the last few years, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have gained popularity for their interesting applications. To make efficient routing decisions, VANET routing protocols require road traffic density information for which they use density estimation schemes. This paper presents a distributed mechanism for road vehicular density estimation that considers multiple road factors, such as road length and junctions. Extensive simulations are carried out to analyze the effectiveness of the proposed technique. Simulation results suggested that, the proposed technique is more accurate compared to the existing technique. Moreover, it facilitate VANET routing protocols to increase packet delivery ratio and reduce end-to-end delay.