X-ray,SEM, and DSC studies of ferroelectric Pb<Subscript>1−<Emphasis Type="Italic">X</Emphasis></Subscript>Ba<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">X</Emphasis></Subscript>TiO<Subscript>3</Subscript> ceramics

The polycrystalline ferroelectric compounds of general formula Pb_1−X Ba _X TiO₃ with X = 0.00, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.5 were prepared by high temperature solid-state reaction technique using high purity oxides and carbonates. The compounds formation was confirmed by X-ray diffraction and all the X-ray peaks were indexed with tetragonal structure of space group P4mm. Morphology and particle size of the compounds were obtained using scanning electron microscopy. Ferroelectric phase transition, enthalpy change, and specific heat of the compounds were obtained using modulated differential scanning calorimetry. It was observed that the phase transition temperature decreased linearly with the increase of substitution concentration.     

X-ray, scanning electron microscopy and electrical properties of synthetic fresnoite (Ba2TiSi2O8) ceramics

Polycrystalline ceramic samples of fresnoite (Ba₂TiSi₂O₈ or BTS) have been prepared by a standard solid-state reaction method using high-purity oxides and carbonates. For one set of compounds, in stoichiometric ratio BaCO₃, TiO₂ and SiO₂ were melted at 1300°C and then sintered into pellet form, whereas the other set of compounds have been prepared without melting and sintered into pellet form at 1250°C. The formation of the single-phase compound and its structural parameters were investigated by X-ray diffraction followed by Rietveld refinement and scanning electron microscopic (SEM) techniques. A better agreement between the observed and calculated X-ray diffraction patterns was obtained by performing the Rietveld refinement with a structural model using the non-centrosymmetric space group P4bm. A better agreement between observed and calculated d-values shows that the lattice parameters calculated using the Rietveld refinement analysis are better than that of the earlier report so far. The activation energies of both compounds were calculated by measuring its dc electrical conductivities. The results are discussed in detail.     

Dielectric relaxation phenomena of rigid polar liquid molecules under giga hertz electric field

The dielectric relaxation phenomena of rigid polar liquid molecules chloral and ethyltrichloroacetate (j) in benzene, n-hexane and n-heptane (i) under 4.2, 9.8 and 24.6 GHz electric fields at 30°C are studied to show the possible existence of double relaxation times τ ₂ and τ ₁ for rotations of the whole and the flexible parts of molecules. The probability of showing double relaxation is more in aliphatic solvents indicating their nonrigidity. The symmetric and asymmetric distribution parameters γ and δ are obtained from X _ij ^′ /X _0ij and X _ij ^″ /X _0ij and w _j →0 where X _ij ^′ and X _ij ^″ are real and imaginary parts of the complex orientational susceptibility X _i ^* and X _0ij is the low frequency susceptibility which is real. X _ij ’s are involved with the measured dielectric relative permittivities ε _ij ^′ , ε _in ^″ , ε _0ij and ε _∞ij of solutions. The theoretical weighted contributions c ₁ and c ₂ towards dielectric dispersions by Fröhlich’s method are compared with the experimental ones obtained from the graphical variation of X _ij ^′ /X _0ij and X _ij ^″ /X _0ij with weight fractions w _j ’s at w _j → 0. The measured dipole moments μ ₂ and μ ₁ of the whole and the flexible part of a polar molecule in terms of the linear coefficients β’s of X _ij ^′ ’s with w _j ’s and the estimated τ ₂ and τ ₁ reveal their associations with aliphatic solvents. The theoretical dipole moments μ _theo’s from the available bond angles and bond moments of the substituent polar groups of the molecules with the estimated μ’s suggest the mesomeric, inductive and electromeric effects in them under GHz electric field.     

Microwave absorption studies of MgB2 superconductor

Microwave absorption studies have been carried out on MgB₂ superconductor using a standard X-band EPR spectrometer. The modulated low-field microwave absorption signals recorded for polycrystalline (grain size ∼ 10 μm) samples suggested the absence of weak-link character. The field dependent direct microwave absorption has been found to obey a ✓H dependence with two different slopes, which indicated a transition from strongly pinned lattice to flux flow regime.     

New modifications in 15 UD pelletron at nuclear science centre

The 15 UD pelletron at NSC has been operational and performed well during the last 11 years. There have been major modifications performed for upgradation of pelletron system over this period. Major upgradations which have been implemented are new resistor network system for voltage gradient, doublet to singlet unit conversion for accelerator units, turbopump based gas stripper system etc. In addition accelerator mass spectroscopy program has also been started. A new multi-cathode source, Wien filter etc. have been procured and will be added soon in the system. An overview of the most significant upgradations undertaken and other activities for the system are being reported in the present paper.     

Effect of substrate temperature on electrical and magnetic properties of epitaxial La1−x Pb x MnO3 films

Epitaxial La_1−x Pb _x MnO₃ (LPMO) thin films, grown on (100) SrTiO₃ substrates by laser ablation technique at different temperatures between 600 and 850°C, have been characterized for electrical and magnetic properties. The temperature dependence of resistivity showed that the metal-insulator transition temperature (T _MI) decreases with increasing substrate temperature, which has been attributed to decrease in Pb content in the filsm. The YBa₂Cu₃O _x /La_1−x MnO₃ heterostructures, exhibiting both superconductivity and ferromagnetism, have been fabricated.     

Physicochemical characterization of a modified cellulose acetate membrane for the design of oil-in-water emulsion disruption devices

In this paper, a new membrane separation process is presented. This process is based on a multiple chamber cell that allows the separation of oil from water by placing two membranes of different hydrophobicity in contact with the emulsion. Further chemical modifications of the membranes have been performed in order to vary their hydrophobicity in the perspective of optimizing the fractionation process via specific interactions between membrane and emulsion components. For this purpose, methylcellulose was modified with 1,2-epoxydodecane and incorporated in the membrane elaboration process. The modification of membrane surface chemical structure was demonstrated by ATR-FTIR and XPS experiments. Preliminary filtration tests are presented as well as future perspectives to optimize the membrane modification procedure.     

Provably secure dynamic identity-based three-factor password authentication scheme using extended chaotic maps

With the aim of guaranteeing secure communication through public networks, three-factor password authentication (TF-PWA) scheme plays a key role in many internet applications. Since in TF-PWA scheme, the communicating entities can mutually authenticate each other and generate a shared session key, which will be used for secure exchange of messages in succeeding communication among them. As a result, the TF-PWA schemes gain enormous consideration in recent years. More recently, due to light-weight features of the extended chaotic map, it is also extensively applied in designing of public key encryption, key agreement, image encryption, S-box, hash function, digital signature, password authentication, etc. The aim of this paper was to design a dynamic identity-based three-factor password authentication scheme using extended chaotic map (ECM-TF-PWA) in the random oracle model. The proposed scheme is provably secure based on the intractability assumption of chaotic map-based Diffie–Hellman problem. The informal security analysis gives the evidence that our scheme protects all attacks and provides functionality attributes that are needed in a three-factor authentication system. Besides, the performance discussion shows that our scheme performs better than others in respect of computation and communication cost.     

Simple theoretical model of shear viscosity in isotopic fluid mixtures

We propose a simple hybrid model for the shear viscosity of isotopic fluid mixtures by coupling the contribution of the Stokes–Einstein relation with the existing linear model of Roults's law for the shear viscosity. The calculated values of shear viscosity using this simple hybrid model are found to be in excellent agreement with the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation results. The calculated value of the shear viscosity obtained from the theoretical model as well as the MD simulation increases with increasing mass ratio.