Electro-Optics and Band Gap Energies of Nanosilver-Coated TiO_2 Nanotubes on Titanium Metal

TiO_2 nanotubes on Ti metal surface were prepared by the electrochemical anodization method. Then, nanosilver was deposited onto the nanotubes by the electroless dip coating and the anodization. The obtained TiO2 nanotubes were examined by using scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, cyclic voltammetry, and UV–Vis. The electrochemical band gap(E_g~(CV)) of the nanosilver-coated TiO_2 nanotubes prepared by the anodization was found as 1.54 eV. Using the UV–Vis measurements, the optical band gap energy(E_g~(op).) was calculated as 1.51 eV for the Ag/TiO_2 nanotubes obtained by electroless dip coating. The electrical conductivity of the TiO_2 nanotubes also increased from 3.0 9 10-4 to 34.7 S/cm after nano Ag deposition by the anodization method.These Ag/TiO_2 nanotubes with low band gap and high electrical conductivity are desirable for the applications in electronics, Li-ion batteries, and solar cells.     

An analytical approach for thermodynamic properties of the six-component systems Ni-Cr-Co-Al-Mo-Ti and their subsystems

In the present study, the results of some thermodynamic prediction methods were applied to the Ni-Cr-Co-Al-Mo-Ti system of six components. The Chou’s general solution model and the traditional models of Kohler and Muggianu were included in the calculation for the comparison and discussion. The excess Gibbs energy dependences on composition for two investigated cross sections at 2000 K, were obtained according to the applied models. The comparison between the results of the three models shows good mutual agreement.     

Room temperature synthesis of PbSe quantum dots in aqueous solution: stabilization by interactions with ligands

An aqueous route of synthesis is described for rapid synthesis of lead selenide quantum dots (PbSe QDs) at room temperature in an attempt to produce water-soluble and stable nanocrystals. Several thiol-ligands, including thioglycolic acid (TGA), thioglycerol (TGC), 3-mercaptopropionic acid (MPA), 2-mercaptoethylamine hydrochloride (MEA), 6-mercaptohexanoic acid (MHA), and l-cysteine (l-cys), were used for capping/stabilization of PbSe QDs. The effects of the ligands on the stability of PbSe QDs were evaluated for a period of two months at room temperature under normal light conditions and at 4 °C in the dark. The TGA- and MEA-capped QDs exhibited the highest stability prior to purification, almost two months when kept in the dark at 4 °C. However, the stability of TGA-capped QDs was reduced substantially after purification to about 5 days under the same conditions, while MEA-capped QDs did not show any significant instability. The stabilization energies of Pb-thiolate complexes determined by theoretical DFT simulations supported the experimental results. The PbSe QDs capped with TGA, MPA and MEA were successfully purified and re-dispersed in water, while those stabilized with TGC, MHA and l-cys aggregated during purification attempts. The purified PbSe QDs possess very susceptible surface resulting in poor stability for about 30-45 min after re-dispersion in water. In the presence of an excess of free ligand, the stability increased up to 5 days for TGA-capped QDs at pH 7.19, 9-12 days for MPA-capped QDs at pH 7.3-7.5 and 45-47 days for MEA-capped QDs at pH 7.35. X-Ray diffraction (XRD) results showed that the QDs possess a cubic rock salt structure with the most intense peaks located at 2θ = 25.3° (200) and 2θ = 29.2° (100). TEM images showed that the size of the QDs ranges between 5 and 10 nm. ICP-MS results revealed that Pb?:?Se ratios were 1.26, 1.28, 3.85, 1.18, and 1.31 for the QDs capped with TGA, MPA, MEA, l-cys, and TGC, respectively. The proposed method is inexpensive, simple and utilizes environmentally friendly chemicals and solvents.     

Nanoconfinement of spider silk fibrils begets superior strength, extensibility, and toughness

Silk is an exceptionally strong, extensible, and tough material made from simple protein building blocks. The molecular structure of dragline spider silk repeat units consists of semiamorphous and nanocrystalline β-sheet protein domains. Here we show by a series of computational experiments how the nanoscale properties of silk repeat units are scaled up to create macroscopic silk fibers with outstanding mechanical properties despite the presence of cavities, tears, and cracks. We demonstrate that the geometric confinement of silk fibrils to diameters of 50 ± 30 nm is critical to facilitate a powerful mechanism by which hundreds of thousands of protein domains synergistically resist deformation and failure to provide enhanced strength, extensibility, and toughness at the macroscale, closely matching experimentally measured mechanical properties. Through this mechanism silk fibers exploit the full potential of the nanoscale building blocks, regardless of the details of microscopic loading conditions and despite the presence of large defects. Experimental results confirm that silk fibers are composed of silk fibril bundles with diameters in the range of 20-150 nm, in agreement with our predicted length scale. Our study reveals a general mechanism to map nanoscale properties to the macroscale and provides a potent design strategy toward novel fiber and bulk nanomaterials through hierarchical structures.     

Influence of Eriophyid mites (Aculus olearius Castagnoli and Aceria oleae (Nalepa) (Acarina: Eriophyidae)) on some physical and chemical characteristics of Ayvalık variety olive fruit

BACKGROUND: Aculus olearius Castagnoli is a recently recorded species that damages olive fruits in the Mediterranean basin of Turkey. Thus, the effects of Eriophyid mites (Aculus olearius Castagnoli and Aceria oleae (Nalepa) (Acarina: Eriophyidae) on the olive fruits from Ayval?k variety in southern Turkey were studied for the first time in terms of some physical parameters and chemical constituents including some individual phenolics. RESULTS: The Eriophyid damaged fruits had higher L* values (lighter colour) and tyrosol level (37.53 mg kg^?1) than the undamaged fruits (28.51 mg kg^?1) in August. In contrast, Eriophyid damaged fruits were darker in colour and had lower levels (25.77 mg kg^?1) of tyrosol than those of undamaged fruits (79.14 mg kg^?1) in October. Eriophyid damaged samples had higher values of vanillic acid than the undamaged samples. An increase in the average concentrations of hydroxytyrosol and p‐coumaric acid was observed in the fruits harvested in August, whilst the oleuropein content decreased. CONCLUSION: The harvest in October can be recommended regarding the higher dimensional values, total oil, dry matter and oleuropein contents. But the interaction between harvest time and Eriophyid damage was found effective in terms of tyrosol content and skin colour; as tyrosol values were lower in the fruits harvested in October and the fruits were darker. The resistance of undamaged fruits against Eriophyid damage can be linked to high tyrosol content of these fruits. Copyright © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry     

Preparation and application of glycidyl methacrylate and methacrylic acid monomer mixture‐grafted poly(ethylene terephthalate) fibers for removal of methylene blue from aqueous solution

A novel fibrous adsorbent that grafts glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) and methacrylic acid (MAA) monomer mixture onto poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) fibers was used for removal of methylene blue (MB) in aqueous solutions by a batch equilibration technique. The operation parameters investigated included, pH of solution, removal time, graft yield, dye concentration, and reaction temperature. The adsorption rate of MB is much higher on the MAA/GMA‐grafted PET fibers than on the ungrafted PET fibers. MB was removed 99% the initial dye concentration at 10 mg L⁻¹ and 93% at 200 mg L⁻¹ by monomers mixture‐grafted PET fibers. Pseudofirst order and pseudosecond order kinetic equations were used to examine the experimental data of different graft yield. It was found that the pseudosecond order kinetic equation described the data of dye adsorption on fibrous adsorbent very well. The experimental isotherms data were analyzed using Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models. The data was that Freundlich isotherm model fits the data very well for the dyes on the fibers adsorbent. The dye adsorbed was easily desorbed by treating with acetic acid/methanol mixture (50% V/V) at room temperature. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010     

Dynamic Fault-Tolerant three-dimensional cellular genetic algorithms

This paper proposes a new dynamic and algorithm-based approach to achieve fault tolerance using 3D cellular genetic algorithms (Dynamic Fault-Tolerant 3D-cGA). The proposed algorithm is an improved version of our previous algorithm (Fault-Tolerant 3D-cGA) that introduces and utilizes a dynamic adaptation feature to achieve further improvement. In Dynamic Fault-Tolerant 3D-cGA, faulty individuals are isolated and the maximum number of fitness evaluations is recalculated to adapt to faults encountered. To improve the performance of the algorithm, a mitigation technique is integrated into our algorithm by introducing an explicit migration operator. A benchmark of well-known real-world and test problems is used to test the effectiveness of the algorithm in order to investigate the influence of adaptation schemes and migration on algorithm performance. Faulty critical system data is tackled in conjunction with various fault ratios. To illustrate the improvement achieved, Dynamic Fault-Tolerant 3D-cGA is compared with Fault-Tolerant 3D-cGA, the previously proposed algorithm. The overall results demonstrate the ability of Dynamic Fault-Tolerant 3D-cGA to maintain system’s functionality despite an increasing number of faults with up to 40% of processing elements (PEs), and clearly illustrate the importance of migration. Significant improvements in the performance of the algorithm, measured as efficiency, efficacy, and speed, are achieved, especially when migration is employed.     

Degradation of Remazol Black B dye and its simulated dyebath wastewater by advanced oxidation processes in heterogeneous and homogeneous media

This study focused on the degradation of hydrolysed Remazol Black B (CI Reactive Black 5), a common diazo reactive dye, in aqueous solution. In the presence of various dye auxiliary chemicals a typical Remazol Black exhausted dyebath liquor simulated, which was then treated with homogeneous [ozonation with hydroxy ions, and Fe(II) or Fe(III) with hydrogen peroxide] and heterogeneous (titanium dioxide with UV-A irradiation) advanced oxidation processes. Treatment performance of the investigated advanced oxidation systems was comparatively assessed in terms of the environmental sum parameters total organic carbon, biochemical oxygen demand and spectrophotometric measurements. The results obtained clearly reveal that the investigated advanced oxidation processes are capable of completely decolourising and partially mineralising the dye solution and its simulated dyebath effluent under predetermined reaction conditions. During the application of alkaline ozonation at an ozone dose of 2340 mg/ml, a three-fold biodegradability enhancement was observed.