A study on the heat-treatments of nanocrystalline nickel substituted BaW hexaferrite produced by low combustion synthesis method

The novel low temperature combustion synthesis (LCS) method for the preparation of nanocrystalline W-type BaW hexaferrite i.e. BaNi₂Fe₁₆O₂₇ has been carried out by citrate precursor using the sol-to-gel (S–G) followed by gel-to-nanocrystalline (G–N) conversion. Decomposition behaviors and the phases associated therein are investigated by means of thermal analysis (DTA/DTG/TG) and XRD, respectively. Atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) has been used to determine the elemental analysis in different conditions. Surface morphology of the nonporous ultra fine particles have been examined by SEM. The TEM micrographs show that the particles of the size of 10 nm were seemed to be agglomerated in the ‘as synthesized’ condition. Room temperature Fe-57 Mossbauer spectrum, MS has showed doublet of ‘as synthesized’ nanocrystalline powder that indicates the superparamagnetic behavior of the material. This effect is further confirmed by vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) wherein it was noticed that the magnetic field (10 KG max) did not have any effect on the material. The material was annealed at 400, 700 and 1000 °C in the furnace for 4 h. The grain size is found to increase from 10 to 70 nm after annealing at 1000 °C for 4 h. MS after annealing at 700–1000 °C for 4 h, showed that the doublets of ‘as synthesized’ is further resolved into broad sextets due to the presence of both superparamagnetic and ferrimagnetic particles, in the wide size range from 10 to 70 nm. Only slight increase in particle size (from 10 to 15 nm) is noticed after the heat-treatment for 1–3 and 5 min in microwave oven (2.45 GHz with 760 W) but with predominant phase changes. TEM after the heat treatment revealed the presence of microcrystalline nature of grains of the size ∼70 nm. The transformation of the magnetic properties i.e. from superparamagnetic to ferrimagnetic behaviour after heating in microwave oven has been revealed by hysteresis loops under VSM study. The saturation magnetisation, M_s after heat treatment has been seen to increase from 26.7 to 44.5 emu/gm. Remanence and coercivity have also increased four and seven times, respectively. M_s of the as synthesised hexaferrite nano powder and heat-treated powder in microwave oven for 5 min show doublets, confirming the presence of superparamagnetic relaxation in the nano particles as only slight increase in the particle size is associated with the heat treatment.     

Saccharin as a salt former. Enhanced solubilities of saccharinates of active pharmaceutical ingredients

Saccharin, acting as a weak acid, forms salts with basic APIs and these salts have the desirable property of enhanced water solubility.     

Production of $\eta_c$ and dimuon enhancement in heavy ion collisions

Dilepton production in heavy ion collisions in the intermediate mass region (IMR) has consistently shown an excess over theoretical estimates. An attempt to understand this discrepancy between the observed dilepton pairs and the theoretical estimate is made here through the production of the meson and estimates obtained by NRQCD calculations. We find that production offers a satisfactory quantitative picture for explaining the discrepancy.Received: 13 August 2003, Revised: 9 February 2004, Published online: 23 March 2004     

Jet–jet and hadron–jet correlations in hadro- and electroproduction

We discuss, in the framework of perturbative QCD at next to leading order, two related observables which are usually considered to provide tests of the BFKL dynamics: jet–jet correlations at Tevatron energies and forward particle–jet correlations at HERA. In the first case we study the rapidity gap dependence of the azimuthal correlations and find slightly too strong correlations at large gap. In the second case we discuss the cross section as well as the azimuthal correlations over a rapidity gap range of 5 units. We find that the requirement of a forward particle imposes strong kinematical constraints which distort the distributions, notably at small rapidity gaps. We also show that the decorrelation is stronger in electroproduction than in hadron–hadron collisions. Unfortunately data are not yet available for comparison.     

Completion of linear differential games

The concept of completion of differential games was introduced by Pontryagin in Ref. 1. Here, necessary and sufficient conditions for completion of linear differential games are presented.This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Contract No. AFOSR 68-1547.     

Organic chlorine as a hydrogen-bridge acceptor: evidence for the existence of intramolecular O--H...Cl--C interactions in some gem-alkynols

The acceptor capabilities of "organic" halogen, CX (X=F, Cl, Br, I), with respect to hydrogen bonding are controversial, and unactivated organic chlorine is generally deemed to be a poor acceptor. Hydrogen bridges of the type O--H...Cl--C are uncommon and occur mainly in an intramolecular situation when the donor group is sterically hindered, so that the formation of intermolecular interactions is difficult. In this paper, intramolecular O--H...Cl--C interactions in a series of chloro-substituted gem-alkynols are studied. We describe various features of this interaction using crystallographic, spectroscopic and computational methods. The O--H...Cl--C interaction occurs in five of the six compounds under consideration here (CDDA, 14DDDA, 15DDDA, 18DDDA, 15MKA). Solution (1)H NMR spectroscopy shows that the interaction is intramolecular and that it is a true hydrogen bond. DFT calculations give a stabilisation energy around 4.0 kcal mol(-1). In the crystal structures of the compounds studied, the intramolecular O--H...Cl--C interactions fit into the overall scheme of cooperative interactions. These structures may be derived from that of the unsubstituted compound DDA by means of synthon exchange and the O--H...Cl--C interaction fares surprisingly well in the presence of competing stronger acceptors. The crystal structures show an unusual degree of modularity for compounds that generally form interactions that are weak and variable. It is noteworthy that the so-called "weak" acceptor, organic chlorine, is able to sustain a good intramolecular hydrogen bridge that is of an attractive and stabilizing nature and which is of potential importance in crystal engineering and supramolecular chemistry.     

Laser-induced above-band-gap transparency in GaAs

We report the observation of large (approximately 40%) laser-induced above-band-gap transparency in GaAs at room temperature. The induced transparency is present only during the pulse width of the driving midinfrared laser pulses and its spectral shape is consistent with a laser-induced blueshift of the band edge. Our simulations based on the dynamic Franz-Keldysh effect reproduce the salient features of the experimental results, demonstrating, in particular, that the amount of the band edge shift is approximately given by the ponderomotive potential.     

Robust optimization of Random Early Detection

Random Early Detection (RED) is the most widely used Adaptive Queue Management (AQM) mechanism in the internet. Although RED shows better performance than its predecessor, DropTail, its performance is highly sensitive to parameter settings. Under non-optimum parameter settings, the performance degrades and quickly approaches that of DropTail gateways. As the network conditions change dynamically and since the optimum parameter settings depend on these, the RED parameters also need to be optimized and updated dynamically. Since the interaction between RED and TCP is not well understood as analytical solutions cannot be obtained, stochastic approximation based parameter optimization is proposed as an alternative. However, simulation based approaches may yield a sub-optimal solution since for these to work, the network needs to be accurately simulated which is, however, infeasible with today’s internet. In this paper, we present an optimization technique for optimizing RED parameters that makes use of direct measurements in the network. We develop a robust two-timescale simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation algorithm with deterministic perturbation sequences for optimization of RED parameters. A proof of convergence of this algorithm is provided. Network simulations, using direct implementation of the algorithm over RED routers, are carried out to validate the proposed approach. The algorithm presented here is found to show better performance as compared to a recently proposed algorithm that adaptively tunes a RED parameter.