Sintering studies of nano-crystalline zinc oxide

Sintering and grain growth of nano-crystalline undoped ZnO has been studied in detail over a wide range of temperature and holding time. Below 800 °C, sintering of over 70% theoretical density is not observed, irrespective of particle size. At 900 °C for 6 h, the nano-crystalline sample sinters to 99% of theoretical density whereas the density for as received sample is 93% of theoretical density. However, at 1300 °C or higher, the densification is found to be much faster and after a few hours becomes independent of holding time. Grain growth studies reveal a similar feature of attaining saturation over holding time. The average saturated grain size is found to be ∼1.5 and ∼2.2 μm at 800 and 900 °C, respectively, while at 1300 °C or higher, it is in between 12 and 13 μm.     

High‐Tg Carbazole Derivatives as Blue‐Emitting Hole‐Transporting Materials for Electroluminescent Devices

A series of dicarbazolyl derivatives bridged by various aromatic spacers and decorated with peripheral diarylamines were synthesized using Ullmann and Pd‐catalyzed C–N coupling procedures. These derivatives emit blue light in solution. In general, they possess high glass‐transition temperatures (T_g > 125 °C) which vary with the bridging segment and methyl substitution on the peripheral amine. Double‐layer organic light‐emitting devices were successfully fabricated using these molecules as hole‐transporting and emitting materials. Devices of the configuration ITO/HTL/TPBI/Mg:Ag (ITO: indium tin oxide; HTL: hole‐transporting layer; TPBI: 1,3,5‐tris(N‐phenylbenzimidazol‐2‐yl)benzene) display blue emission from the HTL layer. The EL spectra of these devices appear slightly distorted due to the exciplex formation at the interfaces. However, for the devices of the configuration ITO/HTL/Alq₃/Mg:Ag (Alq₃ = tris(8‐hydroxyquinoline)aluminum) a bright green light from the Alq₃ layer was observed. This clearly demonstrates the facile hole‐transporting property of the materials described here.     

Image estimation using fast modified reduced update Kalman filter

The authors have proposed some modifications of the reduced update Kalman filter (RUKF) as applied to filtering of images corrupted by additive noise. They have reduced the computational complexity by reducing the state dimensionality. By doing so, it is shown that the computational requirement is reduced by an order of magnitude while the loss of performance is only marginal. Next, the RUKF is modified using the score function based approach to accommodate non-Gaussian noise. The image is modeled as a nonstationary mean and stationary variance autoregressive Gaussian process. It is shown that the stationary variance assumption is reasonable if the nonstationary mean is computed by an edge and detail preserving efficient estimator of local nonstationary mean. Such an estimator, called the hybrid multistage medium D (HMSMD) filter, is also described. Detailed experimental results are provided which indicate the success of the new filtering scheme     

III–V super-lattice SPST/SPMT pin switches for THz communication: theoretical reliability and experimental feasibility studies

Microsystem Technologies - A physics-based Quantum-Modified CLassical Drift–Diffusion (QMCLDD) non-linear mathematical model has been developed for design and characterisation of GaN/AlGaN...     

Biobased thermosets from the free‐radical copolymerization of conjugated linseed oil

New polymeric thermosets were prepared through the bulk free‐radical copolymerization of 100% conjugated linseed oil, acrylonitrile, and divinylbenzene. Under the appropriate reaction conditions and with the appropriate curing sequence, 61–96 wt % of the oil was incorporated into the crosslinked thermosets. The resulting yellow, transparent thermosets varied from being soft and flexible to being hard and brittle. Dynamic mechanical analysis and thermogravimetric analysis showed that these thermosets had good mechanical properties and thermal stability. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 104: 979–985, 2007     

Influence of mixing cycle on the degree of mixing of calcite‐filled polyethylene upon stretching

The mixing cycle‐dependent degree of dispersion and degree of mixing of a calcite (calcium carbonate) agglomerate in high‐density polyethylene (HDPE), low‐density polyethylene (LDPE), and linear low‐density polyethylene (LLDPE) matrices upon stretching was investigated using three different techniques: mechanical property, morphological behavior, and image analyzer analyses. The mechanical properties analyzed in terms of the tensile strength and maximum elongation resulted in that the second mixing was the best for giving a better property for all systems except the LDPE system, which exhibited no significant difference between the second and third mixings. The morphological behavior of the three compounds were different, but no distinctive difference was observed to differentiate the degree of mixing from system to system. The number‐, weight‐, and z + 1‐average diameters of the air hole and the aspect ratio upon the stretching and mixing cycle were calculated to analyze the degree of mixing of the calcite‐filled composites. As a consequence, no difference in the average diameter of the air hole was obtained among the three systems, but the aspect ratios of the air hole varied significantly. Thus, the degree of dispersion and the degree of mixing may be influenced by the average calcite agglomerate size, the average diameter of the air hole, and the aspect ratio upon stretching and mixing cycles. Those factors would be formed by the difference in chemical characteristics upon various microstructures of polyethylene and its molecular weight and molecular weight distribution. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 87: 311–321, 2003     

Prediction of dispersed phase holdup in a modified multi‐stage bubble column scrubber

This paper reports on the experimental investigation carried out to evaluate fractional dispersed phase holdup for a gas‐liquid mixture in a modified multi‐stage bubble column (with contraction and expansion disks), which has been conceived, designed and fabricated as a wet scrubber for control of air pollution; in addition it has versatile use as a gas‐liquid contactor in chemical process industries. A correlation developed for predicting fractional dispersed phase holdup has been found to be encouraging and highly significant from statistical analysis.     

Solvent Crystallization of the Fat and Fatty Acids of Schleichera trijuga Seed

The crystallizations of the kusum oil and the mixed fatty acids thereof were studied from several solvents at various temperatures (+10° C to ?60° C). The results indicate in general that in the range of temperatures studied, petroleum ether as a single solvent is comparable in efficiency to methanol and superior to both acetone and ethanol in respect of separation of the saturated and unsaturated components of the fatty acid mixture. The saturated and unsaturated fractions of the oil also are better separated by petroleum ether than acetone. Further, oleic acid essentially free from linoleic acid is obtainable by a preliminary crystallization of the fatty acid mixture from petroleum ether at ca. ?12° C, followed by two additional crystallizations from acetone at ca. ?55° C.     

BLAST-SSAHA Hybridization for Credit Card Fraud Detection

A phenomenal growth in the number of credit card transactions, especially for online purchases, has recently led to a substantial rise in fraudulent activities. Implementation of efficient fraud detection systems has thus become imperative for all credit card issuing banks to minimize their losses. In real life, fraudulent transactions are interspersed with genuine transactions and simple pattern matching is not often sufficient to detect them accurately. Thus, there is a need for combining both anomaly detection as well as misuse detection techniques. In this paper, we propose to use two-stage sequence alignment in which a profile analyzer (PA) first determines the similarity of an incoming sequence of transactions on a given credit card with the genuine cardholder's past spending sequences. The unusual transactions traced by the profile analyzer are next passed on to a deviation analyzer (DA) for possible alignment with past fraudulent behavior. The final decision about the nature of a transaction is taken on the basis of the observations by these two analyzers. In order to achieve online response time for both PA and DA, we suggest a new approach for combining two sequence alignment algorithms BLAST and SSAHA.     

Extraction efficiency of saturated-gain high-power dye laser amplifiers: effect of nonlinear signal absorption

The effect of nonlinear signal absorption (NLSA) due to ground-state absorption and excited-state absorption in a transversely pumped high-power dye laser amplifier is theoretically examined with a one-dimensional steady-state model for a dye amplifier pumped by a copper vapor laser. A well-approximated analytical expression for the extraction efficiency is derived, from which the effect of NLSA in reducing the amplifier efficiency can be appreciated immediately and can also be interpreted in terms of certain characteristic lengths. The reduction in efficiency due to NLSA is found to be largely independent of the pump power, provided that the signal power is increased linearly with the pump power to continue to saturate the amplifier gain and suppress amplified spontaneous emission.