Search results for "BEC"

Versatile preparation of silica nanocapsules for biomedical applications

2020

Core–shell nanocapsules are receiving increasing interest for drug delivery applications. Silica nanocapsules have been the focus of intensive studies due to their biocompatibility, versatile silica chemistry, and tunable porosity. However, a versatile one-step preparation of silica nanocapsules with well-defined core–shell structure, tunable size, flexible interior loading, and tailored shell composition, permeability, and surface functionalization for site-specific drug release and therapeutic tracking remains a challenge. Herein, an interfacially confined sol–gel process in miniemulsion for the one-step versatile preparation of functional silica nanocapsules is developed. Uniform nanocap…

Optimization of the carrier concentration in phase-separated half-Heusler compounds

2014

Inspired by the promising thermoelectric properties of phase-separated half-Heusler materials, we investigated the influence of electron doping in the n-type Ti_(0.3−x)Zr_(0.35)Hf_(0.35)NiSn compound. The addition of Nb to this compound led to a significant increase in its electrical conductivity, and shifted the maximum Seebeck coefficient to higher temperatures owing to the suppression of intrinsic carriers. This resulted in an enhancement of both the power factor α^2σ and figure of merit, zT. The applicability of an average effective mass model revealed the optimized electron properties for samples containing Nb. There is evidence in the literature that the average effective mass model i…

Thermoeletric Heusler Compounds

2015

Thermoelectric converters for power generation aim at reducing CO\(_2\) emission via the conversion of a part of the low-grade waste heat generated by engines, industrial furnaces, gas pipes, etc. to electricity. The recovery of waste heat from the exhaust of an automotive engine, in particular, is an attractive, albeit not very efficient way for reduction of fuel consumption. Thermoelectric converters with high overall efficiency convert heat directly into electricity without moving parts and, thus, not only decrease our reliance on fossil fuels but also actively counteract global warming. State-of-the-art converters are simply too inefficient to be economic, partly due to expensive elemen…

Curvature as a Guiding Field for Patterns in Thin Block Copolymer Films

2018

Experimental data on thin films of cylinder-forming block copolymers (BC)—free-standing BCmembranes as well as supported BC films—strongly suggest that the local orientation of the BC patternsis coupled to the geometry in which the patterns are embedded. We analyze this phenomenon using generalsymmetry considerations and numerical self-consistent field studies of curved BC films in cylindricalgeometry. The stability of the films against curvature-induced dewetting is also analyzed. In goodagreement with experiments, we find that the BC cylinders tend to align along the direction of curvature athigh curvatures. At low curvatures, we identify a transition from perpendicular to parallel alignm…

Gold recycling at laboratory scale: from nanowaste to nanospheres

2019

The market for products based on nanotechnology, and with it the use of nanomaterials and the generation of nanowaste, increases day by day. Among the vast variety of nanomaterials available, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are among the most studied and applied in commercial products. This current situation requires both the development of recovery methods to reduce the amount of nanowaste produced, and new synthetic methods that allow the reuse of recovered gold for new nanomaterial production, keeping in mind both economical and ecological considerations. In this work, a methodology to recover gold from aqueous laboratory nanowaste and transform it into an aqueous HAuCl4 solution was develope…

Colloids of naked CH 3 NH 3 PbBr 3 Perovskite Nanoparticles: Synthesis, Ssability, and thin solid film deposition

2018

A novel preparation of lead halide, CH3NH3PbBr3, perovskite nanoparticle solid films from colloidal "naked" nanoparticles, that is, dispersible nanoparticles without any surfactant, is reported. The colloids are obtained by simply adding potassium ions, whose counterions are both more lipophilic and less coordinating than bromide ions, to the perovskite precursor solutions (CH3NH3Br/PbBr2 in dimethylformamide) following the reprecipitation strategy. The naked nanoparticles exhibit a low tendency to aggregate in solution, and they effectively self-assembled on a substrate by centrifugation of the colloid, leading to homogeneous nanoparticle solid films with arbitrary thickness. These results…

2018

An analytical model describing the thermoelectric potential production in magnetic nanofluids (dispersions of magnetic and charged colloidal particles in liquid media) is presented. The two major entropy sources, the thermogalvanic and thermodiffusion processes are considered. The thermodiffusion term is described in terms of three physical parameters; the diffusion coefficient, the Eastman entropy of transfer and the electrophoretic charge number of colloidal particles, which all depend on the particle concentration and the applied magnetic field strength and direction. The results are combined with well-known formulation of thermoelectric potential in thermogalvanic cells and compared to …

High pressure in-situ X-ray diffraction study on Zn-doped magnetite nanoparticles

2018

We have performed high pressure synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction experiments on two different samples of Zn-doped magnetite nanoparticles (formula Fe(3-x)ZnxO4; x = 0.2, 0.5). The structural behavior of then a noparticles was studied up to 13.5 GPa for x = 0.2, and up to 17.4 GPa for x = 0.5. We have found that both systems remain in the cubic spinel structure as expected for this range of applied pressures. The analysis of the unit cell volume vs. pressure results in bulk modulus values lower than in both end-members, magnetite (Fe3O4) and zinc ferrite (ZnFe2O4), suggesting that chemical disorder may favor compressibility, which is expected to improve the increase of the Neel temperatu…

External quantum efficiency measurements used to study the stability of differently deposited perovskite solar cells

2020

The instability exhibited by perovskite solar cells when exposed to the environment under illumination is one of the major obstacles for the entry of perovskite technology in the photovoltaic market. In this work, we use the external quantum efficiency (EQE) technique to study the photoinduced degradation of two types of solar cells having CH3NH3PbI3 as an absorber layer: one deposited by spin coating with an n-i-p architecture and the other deposited by evaporation with an inverted p-i-n structure. We also study the effect of different encapsulants to protect the cells against atmospheric agents. We find that EQE provides information regarding the areas of the cell most susceptible to degr…

Current-induced fingering instability in magnetic domain walls

2015

The shape instability of magnetic domain walls under current is investigated in a ferromagnetic (Ga,Mn)(As,P) film with perpendicular anisotropy. Domain wall motion is driven by the spin transfer torque mechanism. A current density gradient is found either to stabilize domains with walls perpendicular to current lines or to produce finger-like patterns, depending on the domain wall motion direction. The instability mechanism is shown to result from the non-adiabatic contribution of the spin transfer torque mechanism.