Residual stresses in silicon-on-sapphire thin film systems

This paper uses the finite element method to analyse the generation and evolution of residual stress in silicon-on-sapphire thin film systems during cooling. The effects of material properties, thin film structures and processing conditions, on the stress distribution were explored in detail. It was found that under certain conditions, significant stress concentration and discontinuity can take place to initiate crack and/or delamination in the systems. However, these can be minimised by controlling the buffer layer thickness.     

Improving the fidelity of teleportation through noisy channels using weak measurement

We employ the technique of weak measurement in order to enable preservation of teleportation fidelity for two-qubit noisy channels. We consider one or both qubits of a maximally entangled state to undergo amplitude damping, and show that the application of weak measurement and a subsequent reverse operation could lead to a fidelity greater than 2/3 for any value of the decoherence parameter. The success probability of the protocol decreases with the strength of weak measurement, and is lower when both the qubits are affected by decoherence. Finally, our protocol is shown to work for the Werner state too.     

Single step surface modification of highly stable magnetic nanoparticles for purification of His-tag proteins

The aim of this study was to develop a simple, cheap, and rapid method for purification of His-tag recombinant proteins with high yields. The new immobilized metal ion affinity adsorbent containing superparamagnetic nanoparticles and hydrophilic resins are proposed here to improve the purification of His-tagged recombinant proteins. In this report, we have described the preparation of nanosized superparamagnetic nanoparticles (Fe₃O₄) which were prepared by chemical precipitation method followed by surface modification using phosphonomethyl iminodiacetic acid. The stable surface functionalized nanoparticles were further linked with Ni²⁺ for purification of 6× His-tagged proteins. The phosphonate group of the N-phosphonomethyl iminodiacetic acid ligand acts as a surface anchoring agent on magnetite nanoparticles and the remaining free –COOH groups outside for binding with Ni²⁺ ions. The nanoparticles were approximately 6–8 nm in size and were stable and had negligible non-specific binding for protein. The proteins were purified within 1 h and observed on sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide electrophoresis gel.     

An Efficient Simultaneous Electrochemical Detection of Nanomolar Epinephrine and Uric Acid using Low Temperature Synthesized Nano-sized Copper Telluride

Herein we developed a simple, cost effective, electrochemical sensor based on nanosized copper telluride (nps-CuTe) for simultaneous detection of epinephrine (EP) and uric acid (UA). Voltammetric responses suggests dramatical improvement of electrocatalytic properties of both molecules by incorporating CuTe nps into unmodified graphite paste electrode (bare GP). Differential pulse voltammetric (DPV) measurement depicts large potential separation of 128 mV between EP and UA, allows their simultaneous determination from binary mixture. Under optimized condition, CuTe modified graphite paste electrode (CuTe/GP) manifested linear relationships of EP and UA in the range of 5–60 μM and 5–120 μM with detection limit (S/N=3) of 18 nM and 32 nM respectively. Moreover, CuTe/GP showed satisfactory response towards pharmaceutical and clinical samples for determining EP and UA concentrations.     

Acid-promoted multicomponent allylic amidation towards 7-acetamido tetrahydroindole derivatives

An acid-promoted multicomponent reaction for the direct C(sp³)N bond formation was achieved through intermolecular allylic amidation in a one-pot operation to synthesize 7-acetamido tetrahydroindole derivatives from simple and readily available arylglyoxal monohydrates, acetonitriles, and enamines of 5,5-dimethyl-1,3-cyclohexadione (dimedone) has been developed. Here acetonitrile acts both as solvent and reagent. These tetahydroindole derivatives are formed through domino condensation of the enamines and arylglyoxals followed by annulation and allylic amidation.     

Dehydrogenative Silylation of Alcohols Under Pd-Nanoparticle Catalysis

Pd-nanoparticle-catalyzed dehydrogenative coupling between various hydrosilanes and alcohols was shown to provide silyl ethers in good and reproducible yields. The synthetic methodology is effective for a wide range of simple and bulky silanes and secondary alcohols, while keeping various other functional groups intact. The procedure also exhibits high selectivity for the silylation of primary versus secondary alcohols in 1,2-diols, and allows the successive silylation of alkynols and hydrogenation of the triple bond to afford Z-alkenols in good yields.     

Arithmetic Progressions in Sets of Fractional Dimension

Let E ì \mathbbR{E \subset\mathbb{R}} be a closed set of Hausdorff dimension α. Weprove that if α is sufficiently close to 1, and if E supports a probability measure obeying appropriate dimensionality and Fourier decay conditions, then E contains non-trivial 3-term arithmetic progressions.     

A simple fast microwave-assisted synthesis of thermoelectric bismuth telluride nanoparticles from homogeneous reaction-mixture

A new simple chemical method for synthesis of nanocrystalline bismuth telluride (Bi₂Te₃) has been developed by microwave assisted reduction of homogeneous tartrate complexes of bismuth and tellurium metal ions with hydrazine. The reaction is performed at pH 10. The nano-crystallites have rhombohedral phase identified by XRD. The size distribution of nanoparticle is narrow and it ranges between 50 to 70 nm. FESEM shows that the fine powders are composed of small crystallites. The TEM micrographs show mostly deformed spherical particles and the lattice fringes are found to be 0.137 nm. Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) analysis shows the atomic composition ratio between bismuth and tellurium is 2:3. Thermoelectric properties of the materials are studied after sintering by spark plasma sintering method (SPS). The grain size of the material after sintering is in the nanometer range. The material shows enhanced Seebeck coefficient and electrical conductivity value at 300 K. The figure of merit is found to be 1.18 at 300 K.

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