Mechanism of the oxidation of d-glucose onto colloidal MnO2 surface in the absence and presence of TX-100 micelles

Aqueous colloidal manganese dioxide (MnO₂) was prepared via titration by using potassium permanganate and sodium thiosulphate in aqueous neutral medium. The kinetics of oxidation of d-glucose onto the surface of colloidal MnO₂ have been studied spectrophotometrically. The results show that the rate of initial stage (nonautocatalytic path) increases with increasing the [d-glucose], [H⁺], and temperature and also upon addition of nonionic surfactant Triton X-100 (TX-100), which indicates that the surfactant enhances the concentration of d-glucose at the surface of the colloidal MnO₂. Hydrogen bonding interaction seemingly arises between –OH groups of d-glucose and oxygen of the ether linkages of polyoxyethylene chain of TX-100. A possible mechanism of the oxidative degradation of d-glucose is discussed in terms of d-glucose/TX-100 and colloidal MnO₂ interaction.     

Hybrid GR-SVM for prediction of surface roughness in abrasive water jet machining

This paper presents a hybridization model of support vector machine (SVM) and grey relational analysis (GRA) in predicting surface roughness value of abrasive water jet (AWJ) machining process. The influential factors of five process parameters in AWJ, namely traverse speed, water jet pressure, standoff distance, abrasive grit size and abrasive flow rate, need to be analyzed using GRA approach. Then, the irrelevance factors of process parameters are eliminated. There is a need of determining the influential factors of process parameters to the surface roughness as to develop a robust prediction model. GRA acts as feature selection method in preprocessing process of hybrid grey relational-support vector machine (GR-SVM) prediction model. Efficiency of the proposed model is demonstrated. GR-SVM presents more accurate result than conventional SVM as it removes the redundant features and irrelevant element from the experimental datasets.     

Effects of tip gap and amplitude of piezoelectric fans on the performance of heat sinks in microelectronic cooling

Piezoelectric fan is a promising option for cooling microelectronic devices owing to its unique features such as no electromagnetic noise, low power consumption and minimum space requirement. The recent interest is to integrate the piezoelectric fans (piezofans) with heat sink; this idea is widely accepted and researches are still underway. This article presents experimental analysis on the effects of tip gap (δ) and amplitude of piezofan vibration (α) on the heat transfer characteristics of finned heat sinks. Two heat sink configurations, namely A and B (with two and four fins respectively) each of which is arranged with three piezofans, are considered for the study. The transient temperature distributions for cases with and without piezofans are obtained for both the configurations, and compared. The heat transfer coefficient, thermal impedance, Nusselt number and Reynolds number are investigated as functions of δ and α. The effect of α on the fan effectiveness is also analyzed. It is observed that the configuration B has better cooling performance compared to A. Among the tested ranges of δ and α, the case with least tip gap (δ?=?0.03) and highest amplitude (α?=?5.29) is found to be the best; at this setting, the fan effectiveness is increased to almost 4?times compared to the case without piezofans.     

Abundant Exact Traveling Wave Solutions of Generalized Bretherton Equation via Improved (G′/G)-Expansion Method

In this article, we construct abundant exact traveling wave solutions involving free parameters to the generalized Bretherton equation via the improved (G′/G)-expansion method. The traveling wave solutions are presented in terms of the trigonometric, the hyperbolic, and rational functions. When the parameters take special values, the solitary waves are derived from the traveling waves.     

Effect of variation of different nanofillers on structural,electrical, dielectric,and transport properties of blend polymer nanocomposites

In the present work, the effect of various nanofillers with different particle sizes and dielectric constants (BaTiO₃, CeO₂, Er₂O₃, or TiO₂) on blend solid polymer electrolyte comprising PEO and PVC complexed with bulky LiPF₆ has been explored. The XRD analysis confirms the polymer nanocomposite formation. FTIR provides evidence of interaction among the functional groups of the polymer with the ions and the nanofiller in terms of shifting and change of the peak profile. The highest ionic conductivity is ~?2.3?×?10^?5 S cm^?1 with a wide electrochemical stability window of ~?3.5 V for 10 wt% Er₂O₃. The real and imaginary parts of dielectric permittivity follow the identical trend of the decreasing value of dielectric permittivity and dielectric loss with increase in the frequency. The particle size and the dielectric constant show an abnormal trend with different nanofillers. The AC conductivity follows the universal Jonscher power law, and an effective mechanism has been proposed to understand the nanofiller interaction with cation coordinated polymer.     

Growth and characterization of glycine picrate—Remarkable second-harmonic generation in centrosymmetric crystal

Remarkable second-harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency has been observed in the glycine picrate (GP) though it crystallizes in centrosymmetric structure. Bulk single crystals of GP with a good size of ~20×10×3 mm³ have been successfully grown by the slow cooling method in aqueous medium. Powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and FT-Raman studies have confirmed, respectively, the crystal structure and functional groups of the grown crystal. Crystalline perfection of single crystals has been evaluated by high-resolution X-ray diffractometry (HRXRD) using a multicrystal X-ray diffractometer and found that the grown crystals are nearly perfect. Nonlinear optical (NLO) behavior of glycine picrate crystals has been studied for the first time by Kurtz powder technique and its second-harmonic generation efficiency is found to be 2.34 times higher than that of KDP. Transparency of crystals in UV–vis–NIR region has also been studied. Dielectric measurements have been carried out using an impedance analyzer over a wide range of frequency (100 Hz–3 MHz) at room temperature. The slight decrease in dielectric constant has been observed as the frequency is increased and the dielectric loss is very low for the entire frequency range. The ac conductivity is almost constant up to 1 MHz and sudden increase has been observed above this frequency.     

Role of gemini surfactants (m‐s‐m type; m = 16, s = 4–6) on the reaction of [Zn(II)‐Gly‐Phe]+ with ninhydrin

In the present paper, reaction of zinc‐glycylphenylalanine ([Zn(II)‐Gly‐Phe]⁺) with ninhydrin has been investigated in gemini (m‐s‐m type; m = 16, s = 4–6) surfactants at temperature (70 °C) and pH (5.0). Monitoring the appearance of product at 400 nm was used to follow the kinetics, spectrophotometrically. The order of the reaction with respect to [Zn(II)‐Gly‐Phe]⁺ was unity while with respect to [ninhydrin] was fractional. The reaction constants involved in the mechanism were obtained. In addition to the rate constant (k_Ψ) increase and leveling‐off regions are observed with the geminis, just like as seen with conventional surfactant hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), the former produced a third region of increasing k_Ψ at higher concentrations. A close agreement between observed and calculated rate constants was found under varying experimental conditions. A suitable mechanism consistent with the experimental findings has been proposed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Electrical field analysis of metal‐surface plasmon resonance using a biaxially strained Si substrate

Electrical field components of metal‐surface plasmon resonance were analyzed in detail. Both longitudinal optical (LO) and transverse optical (TO) phonon modes of a biaxially strained Si layer can be excited by surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). The z to y polarization ratio in SERS measurements was calculated to be 0.78 using the intensity ratio of TO to LO phonon modes. The electrical field components of SERS were also calculated by the finite‐difference time‐domain method. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of Andrographis paniculata leaf extract on wound healing in rats

This work was carried out to study the effect of topical application of Andrographis paniculata on the rate of wound enclosure and its histological features. A wound was created in four groups of rat in posterior neck region. Blank placebo was applied topically to the wounds of Group 1. Groups 2 and 3 were dressed with placebo containing 5% and 10% extracts of A. paniculata, respectively. Intrasite gel was applied topically to the wounds of Group 4. Macroscopical examination revealed that the rate of wound healing was significantly accelerated in the wound dressed with A. paniculata extract compared to the blank placebo. The wounds dressed with 10% extract or Intrasite gel healed earlier compared to the wounds dressed with placebo containing 5% A. paniculata extract. Histologically, wounds dressed with A. paniculata extracts showed markedly less scar width and contained large amounts of fibroblast proliferation. More collagen and less angiogenesis with absence of inflammatory cells were seen for wounds dressed with 10% A. paniculata compared to the blank placebo. Conclusion, A. paniculata extracts significantly enhanced rate of wound healing in rats.