Need of Alcohol Reference Materials and Reliable Measurement of Alcohol Content by Breath Alcohol Analyzer in India: An Overview

Breath alcohol analyser is used to detect alcohol content in end-expiratory breaths in order to enforce driving regulations under the influence of alcohol legislation. The accuracy and reliability of the routine measurements of alcohol content performed with breath alcohol analyser can be achieved by the calibration of the breath alcohol analyser using standards traceable to SI reference material. Proper calibration is essential for transparency in legal verification for which reference material is needed. At international level, a number of NMIs are active to address this important measurement issue of providing accurate measurements. Several international key comparison programs have been organized so far for the determination of ethanol content in aqueous and in nitrogen/air matrix. NIST, USA; BAM, Germany; IRMM, Belgium, Portugal, INMETRO, Brazil, LGC, UK etc. have developed certain reference materials of ethanol in water solution/air with different concentration ranges. However, no such reference material is introduced in India as an indigenous standard, rather, being procured from abroad or using high purity alcohol for calibration purposes. CSIR-NPL, India, being the NMI is now focusing on establishing the calibration facility and development of SI traceable aqueous alcohol standard to provide test reliability for the testing in breath alcohol analyser. This program has a societal impact which contributes to human health and regulatory needs for the nation.     

Triboelectric nanogenerator based on polyaniline nanorods incorporated PDMS composites through a facile synthetic route

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) open up a new technique for developing green power sources through effective harvesting and conversion...     

A Probabilistic Model of Clock Offset Estimator (PMCOE) for Clock Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Personal Communications - Synchronization of clock within a wireless sensor network epitomizes crucial problems in the efficient and reliable operation of the sensors. This paper discusses...     

Multi-scale graph-transformer network for trajectory prediction of the autonomous vehicles

Intelligent Service Robotics - The accurate trajectory prediction is a crucial task for the autonomous vehicles that help to plan and fast decision making capability of the system to reach their...     

Enhanced deep-joint segmentation with deep learning networks of glioma tumor for multi-grade classification using MR images

Pattern Analysis and Applications - The crucial imaging modality employed in medicinal diagnostic tools to detect the tumors is magnetic resonance image (MRI). Based on the glioma anatomical...     

Multi-hop in Clustering with Mobility Protocol to Save the Energy Utilization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Personal Communications - Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) gain popularity owing to their capability to access remote areas hard to be reached. Given that, the energy consumption with...     

Two-dimensional photonic crystal ring resonator-based channel drop filter for CWDM application

In this paper, a channel drop filter based on two-dimensional photonic crystal ring resonator (PCRR) is proposed. The proposed structure consists of bus waveguide, dropping waveguide and a ring resonator. We have focused on improving the dropping efficiency and quality factor of the structure by applying different optimization techniques. Optimized channel drop filter using PCRR is designed, and it is extended to drop three different channels by changing the inner rods radius in each ring resonator that act as a demultiplexer. As designed structure drops three different channels such as 1524, 1544 and 1565 nm, the band gap for the structure is calculated and observed by plane-wave expansion method. The normalized transmission spectra and resonance wavelengths for different radius are obtained using two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. The proposed PCRR-based demultiplexer has the channel spacing of about 20 nm which fulfils the requirements of coarse wavelength-division multiplexing systems. The size of the demultiplexer is small; hence, it can be utilized for photonic integrated circuits.     

The Impact of Sequential Fluorination of π‐Conjugated Polymers on Charge Generation in All‐Polymer Solar Cells

The performance of all‐polymer solar cells (all‐PSCs) is often limited by the poor exciton dissociation process. Here, the design of a series of polymer donors ( P1 – P3 ) with different numbers of fluorine atoms on their backbone is presented and the influence of fluorination on charge generation in all‐PSCs is investigated. Sequential fluorination of the polymer backbones increases the dipole moment difference between the ground and excited states (Δµ_ge) from P1 (18.40 D) to P2 (25.11 D) and to P3 (28.47 D). The large Δµ_ge of P3 leads to efficient exciton dissociation with greatly suppressed charge recombination in P3 ‐based all‐PSCs. Additionally, the fluorination lowers the highest occupied molecular orbital energy level of P3 and P2 , leading to higher open‐circuit voltage (V_OC). The power conversion efficiency of the P3 ‐based all‐PSCs (6.42%) outperforms those of the P2 and P1 (5.00% and 2.65%)‐based devices. The reduced charge recombination and the enhanced polymer exciton lifetime in P3 ‐based all‐PSCs are confirmed by the measurements of light‐intensity dependent short‐circuit current density (J_SC) and V_OC, and time‐resolved photoluminescence. The results provide reciprocal understanding of the charge generation process associated with Δµ_ge in all‐PSCs and suggest an effective strategy for designing π‐conjugated polymers for high performance all‐PSCs.     

Improving the photocatalytic performance of TiO2 via hybridizing with graphene

In this paper an improvement in the photocatalytic performance of TiO₂ was carried out via hybridizing with graphene. Graphene-TiO₂ (GR-TiO₂)nanocomposites with different weight addition ratios of graphene oxide (GO) have been prepared via a facile microwave irradiation of GO and tetrabutyl titanate in isopropyl alcohol. Raman spectroscopy (RS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis), Fourier transform infrared spectra (FTIR), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and photoluminescence spectra (PL) are employed to determine the properties of the samples. Microwave irradiation can heat the reactant to a higher temperature in a short time, simultaneously GO is reduced to graphene and TiO₂ nanoparticles grown on the surface of GR. GR-TiO₂ nanocomposites synthesized via this approach have efficient electron conductivity in GR, resulting in a reduced electron-hole recombination rate. Among the synthesized nanocomposites, GT-8wt% exhibited the best photocatalytic activity toward photocatalytic degradation of MB. Our current work provides a new insight for the fabrication of GR-TiO₂ nanocomposites within a short reaction time and also explains the mechanism of photocatalysis employing radical and hole scavengers.