Iron pyrite films prepared by sulfur vapor transport

Iron films deposited via thermal evaporation, with a thickness between 100 and 250 nm, were converted into FeS₂ by open sulfur transport using nitrogen as a gas vector. The films thus obtained constituted a single pyrite phase and were optically highly absorbing. The sulfurization process was optimized. As a result, sample temperature and conversion time were found to be the major determining parameters. The films were characterized using several methods. The crystallinity and phase identification were determined by X-ray diffractometry. Scanning electron microscopy showed a homogeneous surface of both iron and pyrite layers. Optical transmission measurements confirmed the highly absorbing character of FeS₂ and allowed the determination of direct (1.35 eV) and indirect (0.82 eV) transitions.     

Synthesis and characterization of cellulose nanowhisker-reinforced-poly(ε-caprolactone) scaffold for tissue-engineering applications

Poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) is a bioresorbable and biocompatible polymer with assorted medical applications. However, remarkable hydrophobicity and nonosteoconductivity have stood as a barrier to limit its applications. The present study aims to modify the bulk characteristics of PCL to develop a polymeric scaffold with adequate structural and mechanical properties to support regenerated tissues. For this purpose, functionalized bacterial cellulose nanowhiskers (BCNW-g-βCD-PCL₂₀₀₀) are synthesized. Reinforcing PCL matrix with 4 wt % of the nanowhiskers resulted in a bionanocomposite with promoted bulk properties. Compared to neat PCL, the obtained bionanocomposite shows improvements of 115 and 51% in tensile strength and Young's modulus, respectively; 20% increase in hydrophilicity; 7% increase in degradation rate; and 6% decrease in crystallinity. Gas foaming/combined particulate leaching technique is used to develop highly porous structures of 86–95% porosity with interconnected macropores of mean pore diameters of 250–420 μm. Porous scaffolds showed compression modulus values of 5.3–9.1 MPa and would have promising applications in regenerative medicine. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2020 , 137, 48481.     

Effects of a solar heating and climatisation system on agricultural greenhouse microclimate

An experiment on a solar heating system based on selective absorption of solar energy by a selective collector was conducted inside a greenhouse which contained a strawberry crop. The solar heating system has induced a 13 day precocity for the crop. By reducing the internal temperature during the day and increasing it during the night, the system behaves more like a climatisation system than a simple heating one.     

Iron pyrite FeS2 for flexible solar cells

We used the vacuum thermal evaporation technique to grow iron thin films on heated glass substrates. Thick fresh iron layers (1000–3000 Å) sulfurized under nitrogen flux were converted into iron pyrite FeS₂ phase identified by X-ray study.Reproducible 1–2 kω (10⁻² ω-cm) FeS₂ layers showed P type coductivity. Nevertheless, iron films previously oxidized showed N type behaviour when submitted to the same sulfurization process. Optical transmission measurements had been carried out on several thicknesses before and after layer conversion. The results confirmed the highly absorbing character of the pyrite FeS₂ and also the presence, in the explored spectral range (UV-Visible) of two competitive transitions: the first at 1.31 eV (indirect gap) abd the second at 1.45 eV (direct gap). Some interpretations are given concerning the origin of the opacity of the FeS₂ obtained from Fe films. Comparison is made with iron pyrite results obtained by spray pyrolysis as reported by some workers.     

Touch sensor and photovoltaic characteristics of CuSbS2 thin films

Spin-coated chalcostibite CuSbS₂ thin films (≈500 nm thick) were fabricated and the influence of the drying temperature on the structural, morphological, optical and thermoelectric properties of the films was investigated. Crystalline phase-pure chalcostibite has been obtained for the films dried at 180 °C and 210 °C, while below 180 °C these films are partially amorphous. Surprisingly, at drying temperature of 240 °C, a Cu_xS secondary phase appeared. The increase of the drying temperature leads to the increase of the particle size and the decrease of the optical band gap, which is interesting for optoelectronic applications. The highest power factor value was achieved for the film dried at 210 °C, due to the inexistence of secondary phases, which allowed realizing a stable thermoelectric touch sensor with a V_signal/_noise of 5. In addition, this film was tested as a photovoltaic (PV) device and a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 0.030% with an open-circuit voltage (V_OC) of 0.36 V, a short-circuit current density (J_SC) of 0.278 mAcm^?2 and a fill factor (FF) of 0.27 were obtained. Therefore, this work evidences a pathway toward developing bi-functional devices with simultaneously thermoelectric touch sensor and photovoltaic functions.     

Smart gateways switching control algorithms based on tropospheric propagation forecasts

The use Q/V band spectrum for the feeder links of high throughput satellites and the need to cope with the significant propagation impairments at those frequencies motivate the development of smart diversity techniques. Those techniques aim at improving the availability level of the overall feeder link with a limited level of redundancy. The combinatorial gain of availability provided by those techniques can be obtained only if efficient switching methodologies are developed, performing the best trade‐off between system flexibility and channel prediction accuracy. This paper proposes various propagation forecast mechanisms for the control of switching between gateways in smart diversity, corresponding to various system assumptions in terms of required anticipation time for the triggering of the switches. The performances of those algorithms are then assessed against measured attenuation and meteorological data. It enables to evaluate the performance degradation regarding an idealized case.     

Incremental Learning Framework for Mining Big Data Stream

At this current time, data stream classification plays a key role in big data analytics due to its enormous growth. Most of the existing classification methods used ensemble learning, which is trustworthy but these methods are not effective to face the issues of learning from imbalanced big data, it also supposes that all data are pre-classified. Another weakness of current methods is that it takes a long evaluation time when the target data stream contains a high number of features. The main objective of this research is to develop a new method for incremental learning based on the proposed ant lion fuzzy-generative adversarial network model. The proposed model is implemented in spark architecture. For each data stream, the class output is computed at slave nodes by training a generative adversarial network with the back propagation error based on fuzzy bound computation. This method overcomes the limitations of existing methods as it can classify data streams that are slightly or completely unlabeled data and providing high scalability and efficiency. The results show that the proposed model outperforms state-of-the-art performance in terms of accuracy (0.861) precision (0.9328) and minimal MSE (0.0416).     

The effect of co-dopants on the processability of intrinsically conducting polymers

Using a combination of functionalized dopants was found to be a simple method to improve the processability of intrinsically conducting polymers while retaining relatively high levels of conductivity. Two intrinsically conducting polymers, poly(3-octylthiophene) and polyaniline were co-doped with various combinations of dopants. In both systems, solubility was improved and coherent films were formed directly from common organic solvents without the need for a post-processing doping step. Co-doped intrinsically conducting polymer films exhibited conductivities up to 10^?2 S/cm. Additionally, certain polyaniline complexes were capable of being melt processed without loss of conductivity.