Electrocatalytic Reduction of CO2 to Ethylene by Molecular Cu‐Complex Immobilized on Graphitized Mesoporous Carbon

The electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to hydrocarbons is a challenging task because of the issues in controlling the efficiency and selectivity of the products. Among the various transition metals, copper has attracted attention as it yields more reduced and C2 products even while using mononuclear copper center as catalysts. In addition, it is found that reversible formation of copper nanoparticle acts as the real catalytically active site for the conversion of CO₂ to reduced products. Here, it is demonstrated that the dinuclear molecular copper complex immobilized over graphitized mesoporous carbon can act as catalysts for the conversion of CO₂ to hydrocarbons (methane and ethylene) up to 60%. Interestingly, high selectivity toward C2 product (40% faradaic efficiency) is achieved by a molecular complex based hybrid material from CO₂ in 0.1 m KCl. In addition, the role of local pH, porous structure, and carbon support in limiting the mass transport to achieve the highly reduced products is demonstrated. Although the spectroscopic analysis of the catalysts exhibits molecular nature of the complex after 2 h bulk electrolysis, morphological study reveals that the newly generated copper cluster is the real active site during the catalytic reactions.     

Drawn arc aluminum stud welding for automotive applications

Federal regulations have been enacted to significantly reduce atmospheric pollution caused by motor vehicles. This forced the automotive manufacturers to improve fuel efficiency of cars and light trucks by using lightweight materials such as aluminum. The focus of the current study is to develop welding procedures using the drawn arc process for 5754-0 and 6061-T6 aluminum alloys. The mechanical and macrostructural characteristics of the welded joints were evaluated using tensile tests, torque tests, and optical microscopy. Preliminary study indicates that these alloys can be welded with a minimal amount of porosity and good mechanical properties.     

On the improvement of detection characteristics of trans-stilbene crystals by improving crystal perfection

Organic molecular scintillating crystals are noted for their good timing and particle discrimination process. Trans-stilbene is one such candidate noted for its good particle detection characteristics for the past five decades. Progressive strengthening of detection characteristics of trans-stilbene has been attempted by improving crystal perfection. A series of timing resolution studies have been carried out for the Bridgman grown trans-stilbene crystals under different experimental conditions. The results were compared with the previously reported values. Pulse shape discrimination process has been carried out for ²⁴¹Am and ²⁵²Cf sources and good discrimination has been obtained for gamma-alpha and gamma-neutron sources from the grown organic phosphor crystal. Electronic Publication     

Studies on nucleation kinetics of InxGa1−xN/GaN heterostructures

Nucleation kinetics during the growth of In_xGa_1−xN on a GaN substrate have been studied. The behavior of nonequilibrium between the In_xGa_1−xN and the GaN substrate has been analyzed, and hence, the expression derived for the stress-induced supercooling/superheating has been numerically evaluated. The maximum amount of stress-induced supercooling is found to be 1.017 K at x=0.12. These values are incorporated in the classical heterogeneous nucleation theory. Using the regular solution model, the interfacial tension between the nucleus and substrate and, hence, the interfacial tension between nucleus and mother phase and thermodynamical potential of the compounds have been calculated. The amount of driving force available for the nucleation has been determined for different compositions and degrees of supercooling. It has been shown that the value of the interaction parameter of InN-GaN plays a dominant role in nucleation and growth kinetics of In_xGa_1−xN on a GaN substrate. These values have been used to evaluate the nucleation parameters. It is shown that the nucleation barrier for the formation of a In_xGa_1−xN nucleus on a GaN substrate is minimum in the range of x=0.12 to x=0.17, and it has been qualitatively proved that good quality In_xGa_1−xN on GaN can be grown only in the range 0<x≤0.2.     

Modeling electric field transfer of excitation at cell junctions

The electric field (EF) model was first developed on a "breadboard" using physical electric components (e.g., resistors, capacitors, batteries) and was then modeled mathematically by a series of differential equations and matrix equations and simulated on a large computer (CDC-6400). The results obtained by the two methods agreed very closely. However, these two methods of analysis are quite cumbersome. Therefore, in order to simplify the EF simulation, we wanted to model it on the PSpice program. In this article we discuss how we succeeded in demonstrating transmission of excitation from cell to cell in cardiac muscle and smooth muscle based on EF transmission at the cell junctions.     

Triple Metal Surrounding Gate Junctionless Tunnel FET Based 6T SRAM Design for Low Leakage Memory System

Silicon - The promising capability of Triple Material Surrounding Gate Junctionless Tunnel FET (TMSG – JL – TFET) based 6&nbsp;T SRAM structure is demonstrated by employing...     

Effect of adhesive‐coated glass fiber in natural rubber (NR), acrylonitrile rubber (NBR), and ethylene–propylene–diene rubber (EPDM) formulations. II. Effect of cyclic loading,abrasion, and accelerated aging

Treated glass fibers (RICS, 3 and 6 mm in length) were added at a concentrations of 10, 20, and 30 phr in natural rubber (NR), nitrile rubber (NBR), and ethylene–propylene–diene comonomer (EPDM) formulations, in both plain and carbon black mixes. The compounds were mixed in two‐roll mill and were evaluated for their resistance to hot‐air aging, abrasion, compression set, Goodrich heat buildup, De Mattia fatigue, and for NR mixes, adhesion in the tensile mode. The vulcanizates of the three rubbers showed resistance to hot‐air aging. Abrasion resistance was poor for NR, and it improved with carbon black addition in the presence of treated glass fiber in NBR. In carbon‐black‐added EPDM vulcanizates, the abrasion resistance and fatigue resistance were better. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 1124–1135, 2004     

Hydrogen production from used lubricating oils

Used lubricating oils (lube oils) are generated throughout the year and collected in central locations in many communities. Disposing lube oil in an improper manner contaminates environment to a great degree. Used lube oil can be valuable as a re-refined lubricant or as an energy source. Lube oil is a complex mixture of aliphatic and polycyclic hydrocarbons formulated to withstand high service temperatures in internal combustion engines. Both synthetic and mineral oils contain a high concentration of hydrogen (about 13–14 wt%). At the Florida Solar Energy Center, we have developed a process that converts lube oils to hydrogen and other valuable low molecular weight hydrocarbons. The lube oil reformation experiments were carried out using several commercially available dehydrogenation catalysts at a range of reactor temperatures and pressures, residence times and steam to carbon ratios. In this paper, the data obtained to date and the results are presented and discussed.     

HamleDT: Harmonized multi-language dependency treebank

We present HamleDT—a HArmonized Multi-LanguagE Dependency Treebank. HamleDT is a compilation of existing dependency treebanks (or dependency conversions of other treebanks), transformed so that they all conform to the same annotation style. In the present article, we provide a thorough investigation and discussion of a number of phenomena that are comparable across languages, though their annotation in treebanks often differs. We claim that transformation procedures can be designed to automatically identify most such phenomena and convert them to a unified annotation style. This unification is beneficial both to comparative corpus linguistics and to machine learning of syntactic parsing.