Structure-property behavior of polyurethanes,polyurethane ionomers,and their acrylates

Polyurethanes(PU), PU ionomers, PU ionomer acrylates, PU latex interpenetrating polymer network(LIPN), latex AB crosslinked polymers (ABCP), and uv-curable PU ionomer acrylates have been prepared and characterized in terms of structure-property relationship, together with shape memory function of PUs.     

Morphology Development in Polymer Fibers undergoing Solvent/Non-solvent Exchange

Summary: The solvent/non-solvent interchange across the fiber surface affects the morphology of the fiber in various ways. In this paper, simulations have been performed to elucidate the diverse morphologies obtained during spinning of polymer fibers under the presence of a non-solvent. The proposed model deals with a ternary system derived from Cahn-Hilliard equation, alternatively known as Time Dependent Ginzburg Landau-TDGL model B equation, involving the spatio-temporal evolution of concentration order parameter. Depending on the coexistence region of the ternary phase diagram, various fiber morphologies including concentric bands, internal microfibrillar structures, and porous structures were discerned. It may be inferred that the formation of the aforementioned diverse morphologies is a direct consequence of the initial conditions of the starting mixtures in a manner governed by the relative rates of solvent/non-solvent exchange and the dynamics of phase separation.     

Resistance switching properties of In2O3 nanocrystals memory device with organic and inorganic hybrid structure

A memory device with In₂O₃ nanocrystals embedded in a biphenyl-tertracarboxylic dianhydride-phenylen diamine (BPDA-PDA) polyimide layer on a ZnO layer was fabricated, and its electrical properties were evaluated. Then, the transmittance efficiency in the structure of the BPDA-PDA polyimide/In₂O₃ nanocrystals/ZnO/ITO/double polishing sapphire substrate was measured to be about 80% between 440 to 800 nm by ultraviolet-visible transmittance spectroscopy. A bipolar switching current bistability by difference resistance appeared in the sweep voltage rage from −7 to 7 V. It was considered that the bipolar behavior of current-voltage may originate from a resistance fluctuation because of the electron charging effect in In₂O₃ nanocrystals by voltage sweeping, Fowler–Nordheim tunneling, space-charge-limited current, and the migration of O²⁻ ions.     

Polyurea-reinforced polyacrylonitrile

Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers were reinforced with three different types of polyurea (PU), which were synthesized in the presence of PAN dissolved in dimethyl formamide (DMF) (referred to as an in situ blend). Solution viscosity increased with increasing PU content, with viscosity yield seen at high PU content and an extended Newtonian plateau at low PU content. The reinforcing effect was greater with linear PUs, among which PU prepared from toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and ethylene diamine (EDA) gave the greatest improvement.     

Effects of aluminum doping and substrate temperature on zinc oxide thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition

Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films have been deposited on amorphous fused silica substrates by pulsed laser ablation of a Zn:Al metallic targets. We varied the film growth condition such as the substrate temperature and Al concentrations. The films were deposited at substrate temperatures ranging from 20 to 600°C with oxygen partial pressure of 1 torr. The characteristics of the deposited films were examined by analyzing their photoluminescence (PL), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and UV–visible spectra. It is observed that the optical bandgap energy of the deposited films increased with the increase of Al concentration and substrate temperature. Besides, the PL peak energy shifted to blue and the Stokes shift became larger as the Al content increased.     

Performance enhancement using the bipolar capacity of bipolar coded fiber Bragg gratings and balanced detection in the spectral encoded code-division-multiple-access systems

This paper proposes a performance-enhanced code-division-multiple-access (CDMA) system using modified pseudorandom noise (PN) coded fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) with a bipolar optical CDMA encoder/decoder. The data were encoded either by a unipolar signature sequence of modified PN code or by its complement, depending on whether the data bit was ‘1’ or ‘0’. Numerical simulation confirmed that bit error rate (BER) performance largely improved due to the increased decision margin at the receiver. Furthermore, at the BER of 10⁻⁹, the tolerance of spectral power distortion in the optical source appeared to be nearly twice that of conventional optical CDMA systems.     

Effects of the disaccharide concentration and the extrusion speed on the size of unilamella vesicles

We investigated the effects of the concentration of disaccharides (trehalose, maltose, and sucrose) and the extrusion speed on the mean size of the unilamella vesicles (ULVs) by using the photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS). We found that the mean diameters of ULVs prepared in the solution with the same disaccharide concentration and the same extrusion speed were quite different. In the case of trehalose, the mean diameter of ULVs decreased as the disaccharide concentration decreased and the extrusion speed increased. Based on those findings, we could fabricate the uniform sized ULVs in different disaccharide solutions with the same concentration by controlling the extrusion speed.     

Impact of amorphous titanium oxide film on the device stability of Al/TiO2/Al resistive memory

We have investigated the role of amorphous titanium oxide film in the reliable bipolar resistive switching of Al/TiO₂/Al resistive random access memory devices. As TiO₂ deposition temperature decreased, a more stable endurance characteristic was obtained. We proposed that the degradation of the bipolar resistive switching property of Al/TiO₂/Al devices is closely related to the imperfect migration of oxygen ions between the top insulating interface layer and the oxygen-deficient titanium oxide during the set and reset operations. In addition, the dependence of the TiO₂ film thickness on the switching property was also studied. As the thickness of the film increased, a reduction in the resistance of the high resistance state rapidly appeared. We attribute the improved endurance performance of thin and low-temperature grown TiO₂ devices to the amorphous state with a low film density.     

Facile synthesis of titania/hyperbranched polyglycidol nanohybrids with controllable morphologies: from solid spheres,capsules to tubes

Titania/Hyperbranched polyglycidol (HBP) nanohybrids with tunable morphologies have been synthesized via a sol–gel process at ambient temperature. One-shot addition of varied amounts of titanium precursor tetraisopropoxide (TTIP) yields spherical titania/HBP solid particles with tunable size, while a controlled addition of TTIP results in spherical titania/HBP capsules. The average outer and inner diameters of the resultant capsules are also controllable according to the amount of TTIP via an Oswald ripening process. In addition, the modality of additional water supplied in the reaction systems can tune the morphologies of the resulting titania/HBP particles from nanocapsules to nanotubes owing to the accelerated hydrolysis rate of TTIP. The tunability in morphologies of the titania/HBP nanostructures ranging from solid spheres, capsules to tubes could be attributed to the self-assembly of a large amount of titania/HBP aggregates in a rapid, controlled and anisotropic manner, respectively. Surprisingly, by means of HBP contained in the resulting titania/HBP nanostructures, the gold nanoparticles are in situ generated and encapsulated into titania/HBP matrix in the absence of additional reducing agent. The as-prepared gold nanoparticles functionalized titania/HBP hybrids exhibit excellent catalytic function toward the reduction of 4-nitrophenol. This strategy demonstrates a typical example for functionalizing the titania/HBP hybrids targeted to specific applications.     

Assessment of Neutron Star Equation of State by Gravitational Waves

The possibility of assessing the equation of state of the neutron star matter using gravitational waves is briefly sketched. The effective theory recently proposed in the frame work of the scale-invariant hidden local symmetry is discussed to demonstrate its particular feature of a change over in EoS from lower density to higher density. The possible implications on the gravitational waves from coalescing binary neutron stars are discussed.