Numerical Study on the Influence of the Plasma Properties on the Keyhole Geometry in Laser Beam Welding

Keyhole laser welding is the benchmark for deep-penetration joining processes. It needs high incident laser beam power densities at the workpiece surface to take place. The gaseous phase plays a fundamental role to keep the deep and narrow keyhole cavity open during the process. The plasma created in this process is a mixture of ionized metal vapors and the environmental gas and it develops inside the keyhole (keyhole plasma) and above the workpiece surface (plasma plume). The presence of plasma implicates absorption, scattering, and refraction of laser beam rays. These phenomena alter the power density of the laser beam irradiating the workpiece surface and thus affect the resulting welding process. In this work, a mathematical and numerical model has been developed to calculate the keyhole shape taking into account the plasma absorption effects. The model considers the keyhole walls as the liquid-vapor interface and computes the keyhole geometry applying a local energy balance at this interface. In addition, the model takes into account the multiple reflections effects inside the cavity through an iterative ray-tracing technique, and calculates the absorption mechanism due to inverse Bremsstrahlung for each ray along its segmented path inside the keyhole. Results show the effect of plasma properties on the keyhole shape and depth.

Polymeric Micelles: A Novel Approach towards Nano-Drug Delivery System

Nano delivery systems, polymeric micelles represent one of the most promising delivery platforms for therapeutic compounds. It has shown that a poorly soluble molecule which has high potency and remarkable toxicity can be encapsulated with the polymeric micelle. There are various poorly soluble drugs used in micellar preparations, mostly for their anti-cancer activity. Drugs in the inner core protect the drug from degradation and allow drug accumulation in the tumour site in the case of cancer treatment. Block copolymers are chosen based on the physicochemical characteristics of medicinal drugs. The amphiphilic block copolymer structure has both lipophilic and hydrophilic blocks, which enclose tiny hydrophobic molecules. It is a targeted drug delivery method because of its high effectiveness for drug retention in tissue, prevention of enzymes from degradation, and improvement of the cellular absorption mechanism. In an experimental environment, variations in temperature and solvent polarity stimulate copolymer micelle self-assembly. This is a thermodynamically guided procedure in which self-assembly happens by converting polymeric micelles. These aggregates go from a non-equilibrium to a thermodynamically equilibrium state, and they stay stable for a long time. The balance of thermodynamic and kinetic forces is critical in micelles self-assembly because the kinetic process predicts assembly behaviour and hierarchical structure. The purpose of this special issue is to provide an updated overview of micelles, a number of polymers and drugs commonly used in micellar preparation and their application.

Evaluation of Capability of Some Amino Acid-based Poly (Ionic Liquid)s as Biocompatible Agent for Co2 Absorption

In this study, seven amino acid-based poly(ionic liquid)s (AAPILs) such as poly(1-butyl-3-vinylimidazolium glycinate), P[VBIm][Gly], poly (1-butyl-3-vinylimidazolium alaninate), P[VBIm][Ala], poly(1-butyl-3-vinylimidazolium valinate), P[VBIm][Val], poly(1-butyl-3-vinylimidazolium prolinate) P[VBIm][Pro], poly(1-butyl-3-vinylimidazolium hisdinate), P[VBIm][His], poly(1-butyl-3-vinylimidazolium lysinate), P[VBIm][Lys], and poly(1-butyl-3-vinylimidazolium arginate), P[VBIm][Arg] have been synthesized, characterized, and their CO2 absorption capacities were investigated using quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) at temperature range 288.15–308.15 and pressures up to 5 bar. Based on the absorption mechanism, the reaction equilibrium thermodynamic model is applied to correlating the experimental CO2 absorption capacities. The reaction equilibrium constant and Henry’s law constant were calculated to evaluate the efficiency of the AAPILs for CO2 absorption. In the investigated AAPILs, the CO2 absorption capacity was as follows: P[VBIm][Arg] > P[VBIm][Lys] > P[VBIm][His] > P[VBIm][Pro] > P[VBIm][Gly] > P[VBIm][Val] > P[VBIm][Ala]. The accessibility of available more amine groups in AAPIL with arginate anion is the main factor for the high CO2 absorption capacity. Also, chemical absorption of CO2 via carbamate formation was corroborated by FT-IR spectroscopy.

The Influence of Hydrogen Bond Donors on the CO2 Absorption Mechanism by the Bio-Phenol-Based Deep Eutectic Solvents

Recently, deep eutectic solvents (DESs), a new type of solvent, have been studied widely for CO2 capture. In this work, the anion-functionalized deep eutectic solvents composed of phenol-based ionic liquids (ILs) and hydrogen bond donors (HBDs) ethylene glycol (EG) or 4-methylimidazole (4CH3-Im) were synthesized for CO2 capture. The phenol-based ILs used in this study were prepared from bio-derived phenols carvacrol (Car) and thymol (Thy). The CO2 absorption capacities of the DESs were determined. The absorption mechanisms by the DESs were also studied using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), and mass spectroscopy. Interestingly, the results indicated that CO2 reacted with both the phenolic anions and EG, generating the phenol-based carbonates and the EG-based carbonates, when CO2 interacted with the DESs formed by the ILs and EG. However, CO2 only reacted with the phenolic anions when the DESs formed by the ILs and 4CH3-Im. The results indicated that the HBDs impacted greatly on the CO2 absorption mechanism, suggesting the mechanism can be tuned by changing the HBDs, and the different reaction pathways may be due to the steric hinderance differences of the functional groups of the HBDs.

A Cd(II) Luminescent Coordination Grid as a Multiresponsive Fluorescence Sensor for Cr(VI) Oxyanions and Cr(III), Fe(III), and Al(III) in Aqueous Medium

Hydro(solvo)thermal reactions of Cd(NO3)2, N-(pyridin-3-ylmethyl)-4-(pyridin-4-yl)-1,8-naphthalimide (NI-mbpy-34), and 5-bromobenzene-1,3-dicarboxylic acid (Br-1,3-H2bdc) afforded a luminescent coordination polymer, {[Cd(Br-1,3-bdc)(NI-mbpy-34)(H2O)]∙2H2O}n (1). Single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis showed that 1 features a two-dimensional (2-D) gridlike sql layer with the point symbol of (44·62), where the Cd(II) center adopts a {CdO5N2} pentagonal bipyramidal geometry. Thermogravimetric (TG) analysis confirmed the thermal stability of 1 up to about 340 °C, whereas XRPD patterns proved the maintenance of crystallinity and framework integrity of 1 in CH2Cl2, H2O, CH3OH, and toluene. Photoluminescence studies indicated that 1 displayed intense blue fluorescence emissions in both solid-state and H2O suspension-phase. Owing to the good fluorescent properties, 1 could serve as an excellent turn-off fluorescence sensor for selective and sensitive Cr(VI) detection in water, with LOD = 15.15 μM for CrO42− and 14.91 μM for Cr2O72−, through energy competition absorption mechanism. In addition, 1 could also sensitively detect Cr3+, Fe3+, and Al3+ ions in aqueous medium via fluorescence-enhancement responses, with LOD = 2.81 μM for Cr3+, 3.82 μM for Fe3+, and 3.37 μM for Al3+, mainly through an absorbance-caused enhancement (ACE) mechanism.

Near Centimeter-scale FT-MIR Spectrometer based on NZIM Perfect Absorption using Inverted TanCirc Conformal Mapping Geometry

A long sought objective of MEMS research within the oil & gas industry has been the realization of “FT-IR on a chip,” which could hold the potential to migrate laboratory grade chemical spectroscopy into downhole sensor suites. A fundamental obstacle to this research has been the cooling demands of conventional technologies which conflict with the miniaturized sensor volumes required in downhole logging systems and environmental conditions that routinely exceed 125 • C. Near centimeter scale spectroscopic devices are required by a majority of downhole sensor suites, which stands in stark contrast to multiple-decimeter size conventional devices. Here we report a near-centimeter scale FT-MIR ATR spectrometer compatible with downhole volumetric and temperature constraints. The spectrometer is based upon a high-temperature broadband mid-infrared metasurface detector/source combination derived from a geometric inversion of a set of conformal mapping contours. The metasurface elemental structure is derived from a geometric inversion of the canonical TanCirc conformal mapping contours and was found to exhibit a near zero index metamaterial (NZIM) behavior over a spectral range of interest for downhole chemical spectroscopy. The NZIM properties of the metasurface lead to an absorption phenomenon characterized by surface plasmon resonances which confine the absorption mechanism within the ultrathin (λ /300) metasurface plane and make the absorption properties of the microbolometer design relatively insensitive to the material properties of the remaining laminae. This unusual feature allows the metasurface to be integrated on a single VO 2 material thermometric layer and operated at elevated downhole temperatures despite corresponding to the VO2 metal-insulator-transition (MIT) region. Within this transition region however the VO2 layer exhibits a substantially beneficial property in that the VO 2 layer exhibits more than an order of magnitude enhancement in its ambient thermometric properties, leading to an uncooled microbolometer design with predicted maximum detectivity D * = 1.5 × 10 10 cm √ Hz/W and noise equivalent difference temperature NEDT of 1 mK at a modulation frequency of 500 Hz. A sub-millimeter scale thermal infrared source with intrinsic mid-infrared band-limited emission is formed from the same cellular geometric building block, enabling the spectrometer miniaturization. These performance parameters compare well with lower tier laboratory grade FT-MIR spectroscopic instruments and could represent a significant step in the effort towards deploying miniaturized high-temperature mid-infrared spectroscopy into oilfield downhole logging applications.