Alumina thin films have significant applications in the areas of optoelectronics, optics, electrical insulators, sensors and tribology. The novel aspect of this work is that the homogeneous alumina thin films were prepared in several stages to generate a plasma jet. In this paper, aluminium nanoparticles suspended in vinyl alcohol were prepared using exploding wire plasma. TEM analysis was used to determine the size and shape of particles in aluminium and vinyl alcohol suspensions; the TEM images showed that the particle size is 17.2 nm. Aluminium/poly vinyl alcohol (Al/PVA) thin films were prepared using this suspension on quartz substrate by plasma jet technique at room temperature with an argon gas flow rate of 1 L/min. The Al/PVA thin films were thermally converted to alumina films, where they were annealed at different temperatures (700, 800, or 900°C). X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) techniques were used to characterise these thin films before and after annealing process. The diffraction patterns of the prepared thin films before subjecting them to the annealing process indicated the presence of peaks belonging to aluminium and PVA; however, the diffraction patterns and FTIR spectra obtained for these films after the annealing process showed peaks indicating the formation of alumina films of different phases. AFM and SEM investigations proved that the formed particles for all prepared films before and after the annealing process were similar in size and almost spherical; the diameter of the particles was on the order of a few nanometres. To control the properties of prepared thin films, the plasma which was used to produce thin films is diagnosed spectrophotometrically. The generated plasma was diagnosed using optical emission spectroscopy to estimate the electron temperature Te; the electron temperature was 1.925 eV.
The main idea of this paper is to define other types of a fuzzy local function and study the advantages and differences between them in addition to discussing some definitions of finding new fuzzy topologies. Also in this research, a new type of fuzzy closure has been defined, where the relation between the new type and different types of fuzzy local function has been studied
The general assumption of linear variation of earth pressures with depth on retaining structures is still controversial; investigations are yet required to determine those distributions of the passive earth pressure (PEP) accurately and deduce the corresponding centroid location. In particular, for rigid retaining walls, the calculation of PEP is strongly dependent on the type of wall movement. This paper presents a numerical analysis for studying the influence of wall movement on the PEP distribution on a rigid retaining wall and the passive earth thrust location. The numerical predictions are remarkably similar to existing experimental works as recorded on scaled test models and ful
To achieve sustainability in the field of civil engineering, there has become a great interest in developing reactive powder concrete RPC through the use of environmentally friendly materials to reduce the release of CO2 gas produced from cement factories as well as contribute to the recycling of industrial wastes that have a great impact on environmental pollution.
In this study, reactive powder concrete was prepared using total binder content of 800 kg/m3, water to binder ratio (0.275), and micro steel fibers 1% by volume of concrete. The experimental program included replacing fly ash with (8, 12, 16) % by cement weight to find the optimal ratio, which achieved the best mechanical proper
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The present investigation aimed to formulate a liquid self-microemulsifying drug delivery system (SMEDDS) of tacrolimus to enhance its oral bioavailability by improving its dispersibility and dissolution rate. Four liquid SMEDDS were prepared using maisine CC as oil phase, labrasol ALF as surfactant and transcutol HP as co-surfactant based on the solubility studies of tacrolimus in these components. The phase behavior of the components and the area of microemulsion were evaluated using pseudoternary phase diagrams. The formulations were also assessed for thermodynamic stability, robustness to dilution, self-emulsification time, drug content, globule size and polydispersity index. The prepared SMEDDS formulations exhibi
... Show MoreMassive multiple-input multiple-output (m-MIMO) is considered as an essential technique to meet the high data rate requirements of future sixth generation (6G) wireless communications networks. The vast majority of m-MIMO research has assumed that the channels are uncorrelated. However, this assumption seems highly idealistic. Therefore, this study investigates the m-MIMO performance when the channels are correlated and the base station employs different antenna array topologies, namely the uniform linear array (ULA) and uniform rectangular array (URA). In addition, this study develops analyses of the mean square error (MSE) and the regularized zero-forcing (RZF) precoder under imperfect channel state information (CSI) and a realist
... Show MoreIn this study, the effect of the annealing temperature on the material properties and the structural properties of cuprous oxide was studied in order to investigate how the annealing temperature affects the material properties, and the temperature varied between 200℃, 300℃, 400℃ and 500 ℃ and was unannealed. The physical properties of the cuprous oxide were measured by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The XRD patterns showed that the Cu2O nanoparticles were highly pure, crystalline, and nano-sized. From the XRD results, we found the pure cuprite (Cu2O) phase. The values of crystal size were discovered and calculated by the Halder-Wagner and Size-Strain Plot (SSP) methods, respectively. The crystallite size increased
... Show Morepriorities of materials research due to their promising properties, especially in the field of thermoelectricity. The efficiency or performance of thermoelectric devices is expressed in terms of the thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) – a standard indicator of a material’s thermoelectric properties for use in cooling systems. The evaluation of ZT is principally determined by the thermoelectric characteristics of the nanomaterials. In this paper, a set of investigative computations was performed to study the thermoelectric properties of monolayer TMDCs according to the semiclassical treatment of the Boltzmann transport equation. It was confirmed that the thermoelectric properties of 2D materials can be greatly improved compared with thei
... Show MoreGlucoamylase from black Aspergillus niger isolate was purified by ammonium sulfate precipitation and sephadex G 200 filtration. A trial for the purification of glucoamylase resulted in an enzyme with a specific activity of 6472 unit/mg protein with 10 times fold. The main goal of the present work was to test this enzyme in hydrolyzing the raw starch. Two substrates were used: corn starch and potato starch 2% (w/v). The effect of enzyme dosage and thermal processing of substrate on kinetics and efficiency of hydrolysis were studied. The results suggested that the glucoamylase activity is increased as the increase of enzyme concentration and the enzyme was sufficiently effective in hydrolyzing tested raw starch, and thermal modification of
... Show MoreConcentrations of four heavy metals, Zinc , Copper , Lead and Cadimium were determed in water and sediment samples collected bi-weekly from six sampling sites on the lower part of River Diyala during low flow period (August to October) and high flow period (April to June). A reference point site (1) was situated upstream the effects of the effluent. Present work describes the e
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