Temperature dependent electrophysical characteristics of GaAs-polymer composite varistors

A composition of GaAs-polymer tiny particles was pressed at a temperature of 130 °C and a pressure of 60 MPa and its current–voltage characteristic was studied. The result shows that the prepared disk has varistor behavior and can therefore be used to protect circuits from low overvoltage transients higher than 62 V. Temperature dependence of current-voltage characteristic and the electrical conductivity of the sample were investigated in the temperature range of 25–100 °C. It has been found that increase in temperature results in lower breakdown voltage and nonlinearity coefficient. At high temperatures, nonlinearity in the I–V characteristic of sample disappears and the conductivity becomes Ohmic in nature. The sample has hysteresis which decreases through increase in temperature. Annealing effect on leakage current and breakdown voltage was both investigated and analyzed using SEM micrographs. Finally, the electrical bandgap of the sample was measured.     

Fitting the three-parameter Weibull distribution with Cross Entropy

The Weibull distribution is widely used in applications such as reliability and lifetime studies. Although this distribution has three parameters, for simplicity, literature pertaining to Weibull parameter estimation relaxes one of its parameters in order to estimate the other two. When the three-parameter Weibull distribution is of interest, the estimation procedure is complicated. For example, the likelihood function for a three-parameter Weibull distribution is hard to maximize. In this paper, a Cross Entropy (CE) method is developed in the context of maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of a three-parameter Weibull distribution. Performing a simulation study, a comparative analysis between the newly developed method and two existing methods is conducted. The results show the proposed method has better performance in terms of accuracy, precision and run time for different parameter settings and sample sizes.     

Electrochemical Derivatization of Acetaminophen for Indirect Determination of Eflornithine Using β‐CD Modified Glassy Carbon Electrode

In the present work, the oxidation of acetaminophen in the absence and presence of eflornithine was electrochemically investigated by means of cyclic voltammetry at a glassy carbon electrode (GCE). Our results indicate that N‐acetyl‐p‐benzoquinone imine (NAPQI) produced from two‐electron electrochemical oxidation of acetaminophen participates in a Michael addition reaction with eflornithine via an ECE mechanism. This fact was used for the determination of eflornithine using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) technique on the surface of β‐Cyclodextrin modified glassy carbon (β‐CD/GC) electrode. β‐CD/GC electrode was prepared through an electrodeposition procedure and characterized by Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy (FT‐IR), Cyclic Voltammetry (CV), Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM) and Energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy (EDS) techniques. Under optimum conditions, the β‐CD/GC electrode showed a good linearity as a function of the eflornithine concentration over the range from 5 to 100 μM with detection limit and quantification limit of 1.94 and 5.8 μM, respectively. Finally, the proposed protocol was confirmed to be successful in determination of eflornithine in human urine samples with good recovery, ranging from 97.2 % to 104.8 %.     

Development and application of SBA‐15 assisted electromembrane extraction followed by corona discharge ion mobility spectrometry for the determination of Thiabendazole in fruit juice samples

A new sample preparation method based on SBA‐15 assisted electromembrane extraction coupled with corona discharge ion mobility spectrometer was developed for the determination of Thiabendazole as a model basic pesticide in fruit juice samples. The addition of SBA‐15 in the supported liquid membrane in electromembrane extraction system not only can lead to enhancement of the effective surface area, but also introducing the negatively charged silanol groups into supported liquid membrane might improve migration of positively charged analytes toward the supported liquid membrane and finally into the acceptor solution. To investigate the effect of the presence of SBA‐15 in the supported liquid membrane on the extraction efficiency, a comparative study was carried out between the conventional electromembrane extraction and SBA‐15/electromembrane extraction methods. Under the optimized conditions, SBA‐15/electromembrane extraction method showed higher extraction efficiencies in comparison with conventional electromembrane extraction method. SBA‐15/electromembrane extraction method exhibited a low limit of detection (0.9 ng/mL), high preconcentration factor (167) and high recovery (83%). Finally, the applicability of SBA‐15/electromembrane extraction method was studied by the extraction and determination of Thiabendazole as a model basic pesticide in fruit juice samples.     

Sensitive determination of ethosuximide in human fluids by electromembrane extraction coupled with high performance liquid chromatography ultraviolet spectroscopy

Ethosuximide (ETX) is a common antiepileptic drug in the first line of absence epilepsy. In this study, for the first time, an economical and efficient electro-membrane (EME) method for determination of ETX in a complex biological matrix using HPLC-UV has been developed. Factors affecting conventional EME were evaluated. 1-Octanol was immobilized in a polypropylene membrane and a voltage of 35 V was applied between two platinum electrodes for 15 min. The pH of acceptor and donor phases for ionization of ETX was adjusted to 13 and 11, respectively. Under optimal microextraction conditions, the enrichment factor was 21.02 and the linear range of ETX was 0.25 to 8.00 μg/mL with an acceptable R² ≥ 0.9986. Inter-day and intra-day precision and accuracy of the suggested method were calculated with RSD < 9.5% and relative error <7.0%, respectively. The mean relative recovery of ETX in the human saliva and plasma samples was 81.68% and 74.47, respectively; while limit of detection and quantification concentrations were 0.08 and 0.25 μg/mL, respectively. Furthermore, to evaluate the application of the method, plasma and saliva samples of volunteers administering a single dose of ETX were analyzed successfully by EME-HPLC-UV method.     

Electrochemical Sensing Platform Based on Graphene Oxide-chitosan for Simultaneous Determination of some Antihypertensive Drugs

The development of selective and simple methods for the determination of different analytes is of great interest. This is the first time to show the applicability of graphene oxide-chitosan (GO-CS) nanocomposite for designing an electrochemical nanosensor for determination of Amlodipine, Valsartan, and Hydrochlorothiazide, simultaneously. Differential pulse voltammetrics current of AML, HCT, and VAL increased linearly in the ranges of 0.1–110, 0.1–110, and 1–230 μM with LOD of 5.5×10⁻², 3.5×10⁻² and 8.6×10⁻² μM, respectively. Finally, GO-CS/GCE was used for the detection of these drugs in commercial tablets and compared with the reference method (HPLC).     

A novel method for fast determination of vitamin B6 by fast continuous cyclic voltammetry

In this work a novel method for the determination of Vitamin B6 in flow-injection systems has been developed. The fast Fourier transform continuous cyclic voltammetry (FFTCV) at gold microelectrode in flowing solution system was used for determination of Vitamin B6. This method is rapid, simple and highly sensitive procedures allowing the determination of Vitamin B6 in pharmaceutical analysis. The effects of various parameters on the sensitivity of the method were investigated. The best performance was obtained with the pH value of 2, scan rate value of 30 V/s, accumulation potential of 200 mV and accumulation time of 0.3 s. The proposed method has some advantages over other reported methods such as, no need for the removal of oxygen from the test solution, a sub-nanomolar detection limit, and finally the method is fast enough for the determination of any such compound, in a wide variety of chromatographic methods. To obtain a sensitive determination, the integration range of currents was set for all the potential scan ranges, including oxidation and reduction of the Au surface electrode, while performing the measurements. The potential waveform, consisting of the potential steps for cleaning, accumulation and potential ramp of analyte, was applied on an Au disk microelectrode (12.5 μm in radius) in a continuous way. The detection limit of the method for Vitamin B6 was 2.8 pg/ml. The relative standard deviation of the method at 2.1% was 8 runs. Published in Russian in Elektrokhimiya, 2008, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 173–181. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Cr(VI) ion removal from artificial waste water using supported liquid membrane

In this study, a novel flat-type synergic-supported liquid membrane was evaluated with a mixture of N-methyl-N,N,N-trioctylammonium chloride (Aliquat 336) and tributyl phosphate (TBP) as the carrier and kerosene as the diluent to remove Cr(VI) from synthetic waste water. The main parameters involved in the process were identified and optimised. The parameters were divided into two groups, those that were independent and those having an interaction. The parameters of the carrier/kerosene volumetric proportion and stirring rate were optimised individually due to their nature. The optimal values of these parameters were 0.5 and 500 min^?1, respectively, for a constant carrier/kerosene ratio and stirring rate in the designed experiments using the response surface method (RSM). The four parameters of TBP/Aliquat 336, chromium concentration in the feed phase, feed and product pH were optimised using RSM; it was observed that the TBP/Aliquat 336 ratio, feed pH, pH of the stripping phase and interaction of this parameter with feed concentration have the most important effects on the removal of Cr(VI). The optimal levels of these parameters were 0.61, 71.75 mg L^?1, 3.5 and 12.66 for the ratio of TBP/Aliquat 336, feed chromium concentration, pH of the feed and pH of the product, respectively. An experimental removal rate of 94.63 % at the optimized levels was obtained.     

Charge separation by tetrahexahedron-SrTiO<Subscript>3</Subscript>/TiO<Subscript>2</Subscript> heterojunction as an efficient photocatalyst

Charge separation plays a key role in the conversion of solar energy into chemical energy for use in the redox reaction and as well as in the photocatalytic activity. In this study, SrTiO₃ particles with different morphologies including irregular, tetrahexahedron, and cube were synthesized by an in situ solvothermal method. The photocatalytic activity of the synthesized nanoparticles was investigated in the photocatalytic decomposition of methylene blue under UV light irradiation. Tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃ particles exhibited high decomposition activity (70 %), which is about two times higher than those of the irregular and cubic SrTiO₃ particles. The high decomposition activity of tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃ particles could be attributed to the improvement of charge separation achieved on different crystal facets. To reach a good charge separation, tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃/TiO₂ coupled nanoparticles were fabricated by impregnation method. Results showed that coupling tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃ with TiO₂ could produce efficient charge separation between tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃ and TiO₂ due to their matched band edges. In order to achieve better charge separation, the tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃/90 %TiO₂ sample was calcined at different temperatures in the 450–750 °C range. Tetrahexahedron SrTiO₃/90 %TiO₂ coupled nanoparticles calcined at 650 °C show high photocatalytic activity compared with other samples. The prepared samples were characterized by using various techniques such as X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, photoluminescence emission spectra, and UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy.