Resilient polymeric materials such as silicone elastomers are currently used for maxillofacial prostheses construction but the strength of these materials and their clinical performance need to be optimized with the addition of reinforcing fillers. This study investigates the effect of zirconia nanopowder addition on tear strength, tensile strength, elongation at break, Shore A hardness, surface roughness and cytotoxicity of VST-50 maxillofacial silicone. Silicone base was mixed with different amounts (1%, 2% and 3%) of zirconia nanopowder using a vacuum mixer. Silicone without filler was used as control for comparison. Scanning Electron Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy were utilized to assess the efficiency of high-shear vacuum mixing as filler dispersion method and the surface topography, respectively. Both SEM and AFM images showed that the zirconia nanopowder were distributed fairly well within the polymer. Statistically, highly significant increase in tear strength, tensile strength and hardness with non-significant decrease in elongation at break and non-significant increase in surface roughness were seen with 1% and 2% groups. Whereas with 3% group, there was significant improvement in tear strength, tensile strength and hardness but there was significant undesirable decrease in elongation and increase in roughness. Cytotoxicity test revealed that the addition of zirconia nanopowder was nontoxic to Rat Embryonic Fibroblast (REF) cells and there was non-significant change in the cell viability of all study groups after 24- and 72-hours incubation periods. In conclusion, the addition of 2% by weight nano zirconia to VST-50 maxillofacial silicone could be beneficial in enhancing its performance.
Zinc Oxide thin film of 2 μm thickness has been grown on glass substrate by pulsed laser deposition technique at substrate temperature of 500 oC under the vacuum pressure of 8×10-2 mbar. The optical properties concerning the absorption, and transmission spectra were studied for the prepared thin film. From the transmission spectra, the optical gap and linear refractive index of the ZnO thin film was determined. The structure of the ZnO thin film was tested with X-Ray diffraction and it was formed to be a polycrystalline with many peaks.
The petrophysical analysis is significant to determine the parameters controlling the production wells and the reservoir quality. In this study, Using Interactive petrophysics software to analyze the petrophysical parameters of five wells penetrated the Zubair reservoir in the Abu-Amood field to evaluate a reservoir and search for hydrocarbon zones. The available logs data such as density, sonic, gamma ray, SP, neutron, and resistivity logs for wells AAm-1, AAm-2, AAm-3, AAm-4, and AAm-5 were used to determine the reservoir properties in Zubair reservoir. The density-neutron and neutron-sonic cross plots, which appear as lines with porosity scale ticks, are used to distinguish between the three main lithologies of sandstone, limesto
... Show MoreThe Catharanthus roseus plant was extracted and converted to nanoparticles in this work. The Soxhlet method was used to extract alkaloid compounds from the Catharanthus roseus plant and converted them to the nanoscale. Chitosan polymer was used as a linking material and converted to Chitosan nanoparticles (CSNPs). The extracted alkaloids were linked with Chitosan nanoparticles by maleic anhydride to get the final product (CSNPs-Linker-alkaloids). The pure Chitosan, Chitosan nanoparticles, and CSNPs-Linker-alkaloids were characterized by X-ray diffractometer, and Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy. X-ray results show that all samples have an orthorhombic structure with crystallite size in nanodimensions. FTIR spectra prove that
... Show MoreA new pavement technology has been developed in Highway engineering: asphalt pavement production is less susceptible to oxidation and the consequent damages. The warm mix asphalt (WMA) is produced at a temperature of about (10-40) oC lower than the hot asphalt paving. This is done using one of the methods of producing a WMA. Although WMA's performance is rather good, according to previous studies, as it is less susceptible to oxidation, it is possible to modify some of its properties using different materials, including polymers. Waste tires of vehicles are one of the types of polymers because of their flexible properties. The production of HMA, WMA, and WMA modified with proportions of (1, 1.5, and 2%) of rub
... Show Morein this paper, the current work was devoted to the manufacture of TiO2 nanoparticles doped with manganese, synthesis by the sol-gel technique using a dip-conting device, for their hydrophilic properties and photocatalytic activity, and the products were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and Uv-Visible absorption, and the results XRD showed an phase Anatase , and the results of the SEM Explained the shape of the morphology of the samples after the doping process compared with pure TiO2, and the results of a shift in light absorption from ultraviolet rays to visible light were evident. The results showed that the thin films have a high wettability under visible rays
... Show MoreZinc Oxide (ZnO) is considered as one of the best materials already used as a window layer in solar cells due to its antireflective capability. The ZnO/MgF2 bilayer thin film is more efficient as antireflective coating. In this work, ZnO and ZnO/MgF2 thin films were deposited on glass substrate using pulsed laser deposition and thermal evaporation deposition methods. The optical measurements indicated that ZnO thin layer has an energy gap of (3.02 eV) while ZnO/MgF2 bilayer gives rise to an increase in the energy gap. ZnO/MgF2 bilayer shows a high energy gap (3.77 eV) with low reflectance (1.1-10 %) and refractive index (1.9) leading to high transmittance, this bilayer could be a good candidate optical material to improve the performance
... Show MoreIn 2010, Long and Zeng introduced a new generalization of the Bernstein polynomials that depends on a parameter and called -Bernstein polynomials. After that, in 2018, Lain and Zhou studied the uniform convergence for these -polynomials and obtained a Voronovaskaja-type asymptotic formula in ordinary approximation. This paper studies the convergence theorem and gives two Voronovaskaja-type asymptotic formulas of the sequence of -Bernstein polynomials in both ordinary and simultaneous approximations. For this purpose, we discuss the possibility of finding the recurrence relations of the -th order moment for these polynomials and evaluate the values of -Bernstein for the functions , is a non-negative integer
Colloidal crystals (opals) made of close-packed polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) were fabricated and grown by Template-Directed methods to obtain porous materials with well-ordered periodicity and interconnected pore systems to manufacture photonic crystals. Opals were made from aqueous suspensions of monodisperse PMMA spheres with diameters between 280 and 415 nm. SEM confirmed the PMMA spheres crystallized uniformly in a face-centered cubic (FCC) array. Optical properties of synthesized pores PMMA were characterized by UV–Visible spectroscopy. It shows that the colloidal crystals possess pseudo photonic band gaps in the visible region. A combination of Bragg’s law of diffraction and Snell’s law of refraction were used to calculate t
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