scholarly journals Non-Equilibrium Crystallization of Monotectic Zn-25%Bi Alloy under 600 g

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (15) ◽  
pp. 4341
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Boczkal ◽  
Pawel Palka ◽  
Piotr Kokosz ◽  
Sonia Boczkal ◽  
Grazyna Mrowka-Nowotnik

This study investigated the influence of supergravity on the segregation of components in the Zn–Bi monotectic system and consequently, the creation of an interface of the separation zone of both phases. The observation showed that near the separation boundary, in a very narrow area of the order of several hundred microns, all types of structures characteristic for the concentration range from 0 to 100% bismuth occurred. An additional effect of crystallization in high gravity is a high degree of structural order and an almost perfectly flat separation boundary. This is the case for both the zinc-rich zone and the bismuth-rich zone. Texture analysis revealed the existence of two privileged orientations in the zinc zone. Gravitational segregation also resulted in a strong rearrangement of the heavier bismuth to the outer end of the sample, leaving only very fine precipitates in the zinc region. For comparison, the results obtained for the crystallization under normal gravity are given. The effect of high orderliness of the structure was then absent. Despite segregation, a significant part of bismuth remained in the form of precipitates in the zinc matrix, and the separation border was shaped like a lens. The described method can be used for the production of massive bimaterials with a directed orientation of both components and a flat interface between them, such as thermo-generator elements or bimetallic electric cell parts, where the parameters (thickness) of the junction can be precisely defined at the manufacturing stage.

Clay Minerals ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. E. Rathossi ◽  
P. G. Lampropoulou ◽  
K. C. Skourlis ◽  
C. G. Katagas

AbstractThe mineralogical composition, microfabrics and geochemistry of a set of eight samples derived from a narrow area of NE Peloponnese (Greece), where engineering works are presently in progress, were investigated in this study. No important mineralogical differences were observed between the samples other than a variation in the proportions of the participating phases. Analyses reveal that these sediments consist mainly of carbonates (calcite, dolomite), quartz and feldspars (albite, orthoclase). Carbonate minerals exhibit a micritic texture and a high degree of cementation bonding. Phyllosilicates and clay minerals are also common, with smectite and mixed-layer smectite-chlorite being the prevailing phases, followed by chlorite and white mica (muscovite, illite). According to the physical properties measured on bulk samples, the samples were found to exhibit a low to medium expansion, low to intermediate plasticity, normal activity and brittle behaviour. The porosity does not exceed 46% and the organic matter ranges between 3.80 and 5.00%. The high degree of cementation, the dispersed appearance of clays, the small pores (<10 μm) and the common occurrence of smectite in a mixed-layer with chlorite are all favourable characteristics, positively influencing the sediment's stability for engineering constructions.


2007 ◽  
Vol 46 (02) ◽  
pp. 142-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Durand

Summary Objectives : The field of neural engineering focuses on an area of research at the interface between neuroscience and engineering. The area of neural engineering was first associated with the brain machine interface but is much broader and encompasses experimental, computational, and theoretical aspects of neural interfacing, neuroelectronics, neuromechanical systems, neuroinformatics, neuroimaging, neural prostheses, artificial and biological neural circuits, neural control, neural tissue regeneration, neural signal processing, neural modelling and neuro-computation. One of the goals of neural engineering is to develop a selective interface for the peripheral nervous system. Methods : Nerve cuffs electrodes have been developed to either reshape or maintain the nerve into an elongated shape in order to increase the circumference to cross sectional ratio. It is then possible to place many electrodes around the nerve to achieve selectivity. This new cuff (flat interface nerve electrode: FINE) was applied to the hypoglossal nerve and the sciatic nerve in dogs and cats to estimate the selectivity of the interface. Results : By placing many contacts close to the axons, three different types of selectivity were achieved: 1) The FINE could generate a high degree of stimulation selectivity as estimated by the individual fascicle recording. 2) Similarly, recording selectivity was also demonstrated and blind source algorithms were applied to recover the signals. 3) Finally, by placing arrays of electrodes along the nerve, small fiber diameters could be excited before large fibers thereby reversing the recruitment order. Conclusion : Taking advantage of the fact that nerves are not round but oblong or flat allows a novel design for selective nerve interface with the peripheral nervous system. This new design has found applications in many disorders of the nervous system such as bladder incontinence, obstructive sleep apnea and stroke.


Author(s):  
Adrian F. van Dellen

The morphologic pathologist may require information on the ultrastructure of a non-specific lesion seen under the light microscope before he can make a specific determination. Such lesions, when caused by infectious disease agents, may be sparsely distributed in any organ system. Tissue culture systems, too, may only have widely dispersed foci suitable for ultrastructural study. In these situations, when only a few, small foci in large tissue areas are useful for electron microscopy, it is advantageous to employ a methodology which rapidly selects a single tissue focus that is expected to yield beneficial ultrastructural data from amongst the surrounding tissue. This is in essence what "LIFTING" accomplishes. We have developed LIFTING to a high degree of accuracy and repeatability utilizing the Microlift (Fig 1), and have successfully applied it to tissue culture monolayers, histologic paraffin sections, and tissue blocks with large surface areas that had been initially fixed for either light or electron microscopy.


Author(s):  
Cecil E. Hall

The visualization of organic macromolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, viruses and virus components has reached its high degree of effectiveness owing to refinements and reliability of instruments and to the invention of methods for enhancing the structure of these materials within the electron image. The latter techniques have been most important because what can be seen depends upon the molecular and atomic character of the object as modified which is rarely evident in the pristine material. Structure may thus be displayed by the arts of positive and negative staining, shadow casting, replication and other techniques. Enhancement of contrast, which delineates bounds of isolated macromolecules has been effected progressively over the years as illustrated in Figs. 1, 2, 3 and 4 by these methods. We now look to the future wondering what other visions are waiting to be seen. The instrument designers will need to exact from the arts of fabrication the performance that theory has prescribed as well as methods for phase and interference contrast with explorations of the potentialities of very high and very low voltages. Chemistry must play an increasingly important part in future progress by providing specific stain molecules of high visibility, substrates of vanishing “noise” level and means for preservation of molecular structures that usually exist in a solvated condition.


Author(s):  
P.R. Swann ◽  
A.E. Lloyd

Figure 1 shows the design of a specimen stage used for the in situ observation of phase transformations in the temperature range between ambient and −160°C. The design has the following features a high degree of specimen stability during tilting linear tilt actuation about two orthogonal axes for accurate control of tilt angle read-out high angle tilt range for stereo work and habit plane determination simple, robust construction temperature control of better than ±0.5°C minimum thermal drift and transmission of vibration from the cooling system.


Author(s):  
Willem H.J. Andersen

Electron microscope design, and particularly the design of the imaging system, has reached a high degree of perfection. Present objective lenses perform up to their theoretical limit, while the whole imaging system, consisting of three or four lenses, provides very wide ranges of magnification and diffraction camera length with virtually no distortion of the image. Evolution of the electron microscope in to a routine research tool in which objects of steadily increasing thickness are investigated, has made it necessary for the designer to pay special attention to the chromatic aberrations of the magnification system (as distinct from the chromatic aberration of the objective lens). These chromatic aberrations cause edge un-sharpness of the image due to electrons which have suffered energy losses in the object.There exist two kinds of chromatic aberration of the magnification system; the chromatic change of magnification, characterized by the coefficient Cm, and the chromatic change of rotation given by Cp.


Author(s):  
Robert F. Dunn

Receptor cells of the cristae in the vestibular labyrinth of the bullfrog, Rana catesbiana, show a high degree of morphological organization. Four specialized regions may be distinguished: the apical region, the supranuclear region, the paranuclear region, and the basilar region.The apical region includes a single kinocilium, approximately 40 stereocilia, and many small microvilli all projecting from the apical cell surface into the lumen of the ampulla. A cuticular plate, located at the base of the stereocilia, contains filamentous attachments of the stereocilia, and has the general appearance of a homogeneous aggregation of fine particles (Fig. 1). An accumulation of mitochondria is located within the cytoplasm basal to the cuticular plate.


Author(s):  
E. R. Macagno ◽  
C. Levinthal

The optic ganglion of Daphnia Magna, a small crustacean that reproduces parthenogenetically contains about three hundred neurons: 110 neurons in the Lamina or anterior region and about 190 neurons in the Medulla or posterior region. The ganglion lies in the midplane of the organism and shows a high degree of left-right symmetry in its structures. The Lamina neurons form the first projection of the visual output from 176 retinula cells in the compound eye. In order to answer questions about structural invariance under constant genetic background, we have begun to reconstruct in detail the morphology and synaptic connectivity of various neurons in this ganglion from electron micrographs of serial sections (1). The ganglion is sectioned in a dorso-ventra1 direction so as to minimize the cross-sectional area photographed in each section. This area is about 60 μm x 120 μm, and hence most of the ganglion fit in a single 70 mm micrograph at the lowest magnification (685x) available on our Zeiss EM9-S.


Author(s):  
T. A. Welton

An ultimate design goal for an improved electron microscope, aimed at biological applications, is the determination of the structure of complex bio-molecules. As a prototype of this class of problems, we propose to examine the possibility of reading DNA sequence by an imaginable instrument design. This problem ideally combines absolute importance and relative simplicity, in as much as the problem of enzyme structure seems to be a much more difficult one.The proposed technique involves the deposition on a thin graphite lamina of intact double helical DNA rods. If the structure can be maintained under vacuum conditions, we can then make use of the high degree of order to greatly reduce the work involved in discriminating between the four possible purine-pyrimidine arrangements in each base plane. The phosphorus atoms of the back bone form in projection (the helical axis being necessarily parallel to the substrate surface) two intertwined sinusoids. If these phosphorus atoms have been located up to a certain point on the molecule, we have available excellent information on the orientation of the base plane at that point, and can then locate in projection the key atoms for discrimination of the four alternatives.


Author(s):  
Kemining W. Yeh ◽  
Richard S. Muller ◽  
Wei-Kuo Wu ◽  
Jack Washburn

Considerable and continuing interest has been shown in the thin film transducer fabrication for surface acoustic waves (SAW) in the past few years. Due to the high degree of miniaturization, compatibility with silicon integrated circuit technology, simplicity and ease of design, this new technology has played an important role in the design of new devices for communications and signal processing. Among the commonly used piezoelectric thin films, ZnO generally yields superior electromechanical properties and is expected to play a leading role in the development of SAW devices.


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