The World Conference on Materials Science and Nanotechnology held in Munich, Germany on the 1st-3rd of July 2022. The conference was a must-attend Nanotechnology conference for academics, researchers, scientists, and other stakeholders in the field.
Presentations covered a wide range of subjects: photovoltaics, materials beyond silicon, biochemistry, spintronics, innovative alloys, energy systems, new systems for CO2 capture, and many more. To make sure that each attendee leaves the event with a luggage-full of knowledge and inspiration (in addition to the souvenirs from the host city), the event was designed to present the materials in a variety of formats: lecture-style presentations, roundtable discussions, Q&A sessions, and poster presentations.
Oxidative stress induced hardness has been implicated in the collapse and failure of bitumen based road pavement. This study therefore investigated the influence of selected synthetic polymers modification on the thermal aging resistance of Agbabu natural bitumen (ANB) faults linkable to reaction with atmospheric oxygen in order to prolong the road pavement into longer service life. Base ANB sample prepared by purification was modified with 2, 4, and 6 wt% each of High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE), Poly (ethylene-co-vinyl-acetate) (PEVA) and Poly (styrene-co-butadiene) (PSCB) using melt blend technique. The long-term simulated thermal aging on base and polymers modified samples was carried out at 60 oC. The changes in the functional groups of the various samples analyzed with Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy were used to study the effects of aging on physicochemical and to calculate the carbonyl and sulphoxide indexes. The samples were subsequently subjected to Oscillating Disc Rheometer (ODR) test to study the effects of aging on rheological properties. The interactions of the modifiers with the base samples were confirmed in the result by the incorporation of the characteristic peaks of the modifier in the resulting blend. The carbonyl and sulphoxide indexes of unmodified base sample were higher compared to that of modified base samples at various aging periods indicating higher aging effects on the unmodified. The ODR test revealed that PEVA modified samples at 2 and 6 wt.% had highest value of G* before aging and lowest value of G* after aging at low and high temperatures, respectively. This implied comparatively better resistance to both fatigue cracking and rutting. Conclusively, the three polymers positively influenced the thermal aging rate of the base sample.
In this work, we have applied a numerical method to determine the optimum insulation thickness of the tow plaster plane material. The influence of the exchange coefficients at the level of the two faces of the material has been highlighted. The optimum insulation thickness of the material is at the area where the thermal resistance value of the material is the maximum. We added the relative thermal resistance to show how the optimum insulation thickness changes when the exchange coefficients change values.
Additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing, has gained profound attention in the field of energy storage because of its ability to create facile low-cost bespoke electrodes for modern electronics. Among several 3D-printing techniques, fused deposition modeling (FDM) was found to be a simple and versatile way of rapid prototyping using thermoplastic polymers. In this study, we fabricated an electrocatalytically active FDM filament comprised of active 2D material, conductive fillers such as carbon nanotubes and activated carbon, and thermoplastic polymer polylactic acid (PLA). We selected MoS2 as an exemplary 2D material to demonstrate the performance of the 3D electrodes in photo(electro)chemical energy conversion and storage applications. We set up a straightforward way of fabricating customized electrochemically active free-standing 3D-electrodes for solid-state supercapacitors (SS-SCs) applications. Different models of SS-SC cells such as sandwich-shaped, interdigital-shaped, and other complex-shaped are demonstrated to evaluate their performance. The filament fabrication protocol shows the way of optimization of conductive fillers and MoS2 with the PLA to obtain a high flexibility, good printability, and electrochemically active filament. This allows the fabrication of many other tunable 3D-printed electrodes using different 2D materials for energy storage and other electrochemical applications.
We aim in this study to investigate the effect of oxygen/Argon (O2/Ar) ratio on the structural, morphological, optical, and electrical properties of sputtered strontium titanate SrTiO3 (STO) thin films. An RF magnetron sputtering system was used to deposit the films using a ceramic target of STO at a substrate temperature of 200oC. Two different O2/Ar ratios were examined; in particular we used 0% and 10% percentage of O2 to fabricate STO0 and STO10 films, respectively. To improve films properties, some of the sputtered films were subject to post-annealing for 60 minutes at 300oC. Structural, optical and surface morphological properties of the sputtered films were studied by XRD, (UV-Vis), AFM and XPS spectroscopy. The dielectric properties of thin films were investigated by fabricating Au/STO/p+-Si (MOS) capacitors, where gold electrodes were thermal evaporated on STO films through a shadow mask. Electrical properties of the fabricated (MOS) structures were then measured using probe station equipped with (KEITHLEY 4200-SCS) semiconductor analyzer. X-ray diffraction analysis showed that all films (STO0 and STO10) have an amorphous structure and are highly transparent in the visible spectrum. Annealing at 300 °C has led to increase the values of direct band gaps for both sets however the surface morphology in case of STO10 films became smoother as their RMS reduced from 2nm to 1.17nm. Moreover, applying 10% oxygen to the deposition process found to increase the dielectric constant from 19.32 to 28.44. Based on XPS analysis, STO10 films annealed at 300 °C revealed higher percentage of metal-oxygen (M-O) bonds and less oxygen vacancies Vo. These promising results indicate that STO10 films are suitable for applications as insulator layers in electronic devices.