Fabrication and nanoindentation properties of TiN/NiTi thin films and their applications in electrochemical sensing

Nanocrystalline TiN/NiTi thin films have been grown on silicon substrate by dc magnetron sputtering to improve the corrosion and mechanical properties of NiTi based shape memory alloys without sacrificing the phase transformation effect. Interestingly, the preferential orientation of the TiN films was observed to change from (1 1 1) to (2 0 0) with change in nature of sputtering gas from 70% Ar + 30% N₂ to 100% N₂. In present study the influence of crystallographic orientation of TiN on mechanical and corrosion properties of TiN/NiTi thin films was investigated. TiN (2 0 0)/NiTi films were found to exhibit high hardness, high elastic modulus, and thereby better wear resistance as compared to pure NiTi and TiN (1 1 1)/NiTi films. Electrochemical test revealed that TiN coated NiTi film exhibits better corrosion resistance in 1 M NaCl solution as compared to uncoated NiTi film. The application of TiN/NiTi films in the electrochemical sensing of dopamine, which has a critical physiological importance in Parkinson's disease, has been demonstrated. A comparison of voltammetric response of dopamine at silicon based electrodes modified with different nanocrystalline coatings indicated that these films catalyze the oxidation of dopamine.     

Waves in Nonlocal Elastic Solid with Voids

In this paper, the governing relations and equations are derived for nonlocal elastic solid with voids. The propagation of time harmonic plane waves is investigated in an infinite nonlocal elastic solid material with voids. It has been found that three basic waves consisting of two sets of coupled longitudinal waves and one independent transverse wave may travel with distinct speeds. The sets of coupled waves are found to be dispersive, attenuating and influenced by the presence of voids and nonlocality parameters in the medium. The transverse wave is dispersive but non-attenuating, influenced by the nonlocality and independent of void parameters. Furthermore, the transverse wave is found to face critical frequency, while the coupled waves may face critical frequencies conditionally. Beyond each critical frequency, the respective wave is no more a propagating wave. Reflection phenomenon of an incident coupled longitudinal waves from stress-free boundary surface of a nonlocal elastic solid half-space with voids has also been studied. Using appropriate boundary conditions, the formulae for various reflection coefficients and their respective energy ratios are presented. For a particular model, the effects of non-locality and dissipation parameter (\(\tau \)) have been depicted on phase speeds and attenuation coefficients of propagating waves. The effect of nonlocality on reflection coefficients has also been observed and shown graphically.     

Nonlinear Interaction of Elliptical Laser Beam with Collisional Plasma:Effect of Linear Absorption

In the present work,nonlinear interaction of elliptical laser beam with collisional plasma is studied by using paraxial ray approximation.Nonlinear differential equations for the beam width parameters of semi-major axis and semi-minor axis of elliptical laser beam have been set up and solved numerically to study the variation of beam width parameters with normalized distance of propagation.Effects of variation in absorption coefficient and plasma density on the beam width parameters are also analyzed.It is observed from the analysis that extent of self-focusing of beam increases with increase/decrease in plasma density/absorption coefficient.     

Synchrotron radiation induced X‐ray production cross sections of 66Dy at energies across its Li (i = 1–3) subshell absorption edges

The X‐ray production (XRP) cross sections for the ₆₆Dy L_k (k = l, α, η, β_2,6,7,15, β_1,6, β_1,3,4,6, β_2,7,15, γ_1,5, γ₂,₃) emission lines have been measured by tuning the incident synchrotron radiation at energies over the range 7.8–9.2 keV and ~10–370 eV above the respective L_i (i = 1–3) absorption edges. These measurements aim to check the reliability of the independent particle approximation models used to generate the theoretical data sets of different physical parameters required to calculate the XRP cross sections and also investigate the influence of many body effects on the photoionization process. The measured values have been compared with 4 sets of XRP cross sections calculated using the Dirac–Fock model‐based X‐ray emission rates, 2 sets of the L_i (i = 1–3) subshell photoionization cross sections deduced from the self‐consistent Dirac–Hartree–Fock model‐based values and the nonrelativistic Hartree–Fock–Slater model‐based values, and 2 sets of the fluorescence (ω_i) and Coster–Kronig (f_ij) yields. The present measured Lγ_2,3 (originating from decay of the L₁ subshell vacancies) XRP cross sections are found to be significantly higher than different sets of theoretical values, whereas a good agreement is generally observed for the various other XRP cross sections and relative intensities.     

Performance analysis of Wilcoxon-based machine learning nonlinear equalizers for coherent optical OFDM

In the recent research on the mitigation of nonlinearities in CO-OFDM systems, it has been seen that various types of non-robust algorithms (based on minimization of least square error principle) are used for learning of nonlinear equalizer. Moreover, it is well known that performance of nonlinear equalizer learned by robust algorithms is not easily affected by the outliers. In this paper, some robust algorithms such as Wilcoxon Multilayer Perceptron (WMLP), Wilcoxon Generalized Radial Basis function (WGRBF) and Wilcoxon Robust Extreme Learning Machine (WRELM) for the performance enhancement of CO-OFDM system have been analyzed. Subsequently, the performance enhancement capability of both the algorithms i.e., robust and non-robust has been compared in this study. It has been observed that the nonlinear equalizers trained with Wilcoxon approach based learning algorithm offer improved performance in terms of Q-Factor as compared to non-robust algorithms. In this study K-means machine learning based training algorithm is used to cluster the points at their desired locations. From obtained numerical results, it has been observed that the improvement in Q-Factor with Wilcoxon multilayer perceptron algorithm w.r.t its non-robust solution is?~?0.65 dB which is significantly higher than the value?~?0.2 dB with both the other mentioned robust algorithms w.r.t their non-robust counterparts. From the comparison of robust algorithms performance on the basis of convergence rate, it has been professed that the WRELM converges 100 and 7 times faster than WMLP and WGRBF respectively.     

Microwave‐assisted facile synthesis of propargylamine library by robust nitro functionalized cross‐linked polystyrene resin supported Cu NPs

In the present investigation, we study catalytic activity of copper nanoparticles stabilized onto a nitro functionalized polystyrene resin (Cu NPs@ Nitro‐Resin). The size of stabilized copper nanoparticles was found between 3 and 9 nm. This work reports a cost‐effective and sustainable protocol for the synthesis of propargylamines. Herein, we have developed microwave‐assisted synthesis of propargylamine from 3 components coupling of aldehyde, alkynes, and amines (A³ coupling) in truly heterogeneous catalytic system. Reaction parameters, such as solvent, catalyst concentration reaction time, and recyclability, were investigated, and reaction conditions were optimized. The present method has advantages such as environmentally benign, ease to handle, short reaction time (≈25 min), excellent yields (98%), low E‐factor (0.15), and high atom economy (94%).     

Modifications induced in the polycarbonate Makrofol KG polymer by Li (50 MeV) ion irradiation

Swift heavy ions interact predominantly through inelastic scattering while traversing any polymer medium and produce excited/ionized atoms. Here samples of the polycarbonate Makrofol of approximate thickness 20 μm, spin coated on GaAs substrate were irradiated with 50 MeV Li ion (+3 charge state). Build-in modifications due to irradiation were studied using FTIR and XRD characterizations. Considerable changes have been observed in the polymer while varying the fluence from 1E11 ion/cm² to 1E13 ion/cm² Li ions. AFM images of the surface modifications caused by ion irradiation on the polymer are also presented.      

Application of functional link artificial neural network for mitigating nonlinear effects in coherent optical OFDM

Artificial Neural Networks are developed as an important technique for equalization and have been widely used to mitigate the nonlinear effects in coherent optical systems. For the compensation of nonlinearities in coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing technique, the most popular artificial neural network model is a multilayer perceptron (MLP), as it is able to perform complex mapping between input and output spaces with significant success. However due to the complexity of multilayer perceptron nonlinear equalizer (MLP-NLE) model training of neural network is difficult. To overcome computational complexity issues of MLP-NLE, a single neuron based functional link artificial neural network nonlinear equalizer (FLANN-NLE) has been developed in this paper. Better performance of an equalizer is attributed to the usage of aPSO-BP algorithm for training the FLANN-NLE. The proposed FLANN-NLE surpasses the existing works both in terms of Q-Factor and computational complexity. For a fiber length of 1000 km and at launch power of ?6 dBm, the improvement in Q-Factor is approximately equal to 3.3 and 1 dB in contrast to the previously reported values of approximately 3 and 0.7 dB at bit rate of 40 and 80 Gbps respectively.     

Modeling and analysis of fully strained and partially relaxed lattice mismatched AlGaN/GaN HEMT for high temperature applications

The paper presents an accurate charge control model for a fully strained (FS), and partially relaxed (PR) lattice mismatched AlGaN/GaN HEMT, taking into consideration the effect of spontaneous and piezoelectric polarization. The model also accounts for the mobility degradation with increase in temperature, which is one of the major causes in deterioration of the driving current. By using the variation of band gap with temperature, the temperature dependence on threshold voltage, sheet carrier concentration and drain current is studied. Further, the temperature variation shows the applicability of the device in a variable thermal environment. A close agreement of calculated data with simulated/experimental data proves the validity of the model.