Bentonite is the most widely used foundry binder. Most of the iron castings are made in greensand systems which make use of bentonite as a binder. The bentonite used in greensand moulding is usually activated with sodium carbonate to achieve desirable properties. Activation of bentonite is known to improve mould related properties like giving a high wet tensile strength and improving the durability. The practice of activation is more common with calcium bentonite. A number of bentonite deposits tend to remain unbeneficiated due to their low cation exchange capacity (CEC) which are regarded as low quality commercial grade. The primary characteristic that shows the increased activation is the swelling index of the bentonite. This study investigated the influence of rehydration and activation in improving the quality of low commercial grade sodium bentonite. The bentonite samples were activated with sodium carbonate. Rehydration and activation was seen to improve the CEC and swelling index. The increase in CEC and swelling index was however not consistent with the gains in sodium.

Observation of the dynamic interaction between dislocations and carbon atoms is important in steel design. Some steel materials are bake-hardened in several manufacturing processes. Solute carbons are known to segregate on dislocations; this hardens the steel even after low-temperature treatments. The purpose of this study was to develop a method of monitoring a series of microstructural changes in strain aging by in-situ measurement of the electrical resistance in low-carbon steel. In tensile deformation, elastic, Lüders, and uniform plastic deformations could be distinguished by monitoring the changes in electrical resistance. Electrical resistance rapidly increased in the plastic deformation region in the strain-aged specimen. Although the deformation stress hardly changed, the amount of lattice defects monotonously increased. These analyses provide useful information in steel design related to thermomechanical treatments of bake-hardenable steel.

A new constant contact pressure (CCP) indentation creep method is presented, which is based on keeping the mean contact pressure as defined through Sneddon’s hardness constant, until a steady-state strain rate is achieved. This is in contrast to the conventional constant load–hold (CLH) creep experiments, where the load is held constant and relaxation in both hardness and strain rate occurs at the same time. Besides controlling the mean contact pressure, the dynamic stiffness is furthermore used to assess the indentation depth, thereby minimizing thermal drift influence and pile-up or sink-in effects during long-term experiments. The CCP method has been tested on strain rate sensitive ultrafine-grained (UFG) CuZn30 and UFG CuZn5 as well as on fused silica, comparing the results with those of strain rate jump tests as well as the CLH nanoindentation creep tests. With the CCP method, strain rates from 5 × 10−4 s−1 down to 5 × 10−6 s−1 can be achieved, keeping the mean contact pressure constant over a long period of time, in contrast to the CLH method. The CCP technique thus offers the possibility of performing long-term creep experiments while retaining the contact stress underneath the tip constant.

Molybdenum sulfide hydrotreating catalysts promoted with nickel over tridimensional mesoporous silica (KIT-6 post synthesis modified with alumina) were prepared with three different chelating agents. Citric acid and EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) were used as typical chelates and the new suggestion, polyacrylic acid as a polymeric agent. The catalysts were synthesized by the incipient wetness impregnation method, and two different activation methods were applied to determine the correlation between the chelating agent and activation conditions. The beneficial use of chelating agents was evaluated in their performance on HDS (hydrodesulfurization) of DBT (dibenzothiophene). To determine the properties of catalysts, nitrogen physisorption, X-ray diffraction, HRTEM (high-resolution transmission electron microscopy), and TGA (thermogravimetric analysis) were used. The beneficial effect of chelating Ni during impregnation to avoid NiSx formation and thus promoting NiMoS arrangement was clearly observed in the catalytic HDS performance, and the TGA analysis of Ni-chelate complexes also confirms this theory. The catalyst with the best performance in the HDS reaction of DBT was the synthesized with citric acid and a slow rate temperature sulfidation.

Activation of persulfate (PS) by ultraviolet light or transition metal catalysts has been extensively studied. However, little is known about the activation of PS by iron oxychloride (FeOCl) in the presence of visible light irradiation. Herein, the catalytic activity of FeOCl was developed for oxidative degradation of rhodamine B (RhB) with the FeOCl/PS/Vis process. The characterization of FeOCl for reaction kinetics, degradation mechanism, and catalyst stability was investigated. It is found that the redox cycle of iron species and photoinduced electrons formed on the FeOCl catalyst surface can effectively activate PS, to generate radicals. Based on quenching experiments and electron paramagnetic resonance, the photogenerated holes (h+) and sulfate radicals (SO4−•) are the predominant reactive oxidants for RhB decolorization, while superoxide radicals (•O2−) and hydroxyl radicals (•OH) are also involved. Moreover, FeOCl shows good catalytic performance in a wide range of pH values (pH = 3–10) and excellent reusability and stability, as well.

This paper reports on the progress of an ongoing strategy for dissemination of a set of science communication workshops targeted to students participating in undergraduate research experiences on university campuses. Previous MRS Proceedings papers by the first author and collaborators focused on (1) the development and validation of the REU Science Communication Workshop (REU SCW) model through iterative practice, research and evaluation between 2005 and 2009, and (2) the 2012 testing of a scaffolded and piggybacked "beyond train-the-trainer” mode of dissemination of the REU SCW model to multiple university campuses, as compared to a highly-validated but less efficient one-to-one transfer process deployed between Boston and Madison between 2010 and 2012. This new paper reports on the follow-up effort to confirm and validate the success of the REU SCW workshop model as implemented at the second-wave of dissemination sites by the new cohort of participating undergraduate research program directors. We analyze data gathered in 2013 and 2014 from the participating students, faculty, and providers. The results indicate that the second-wave providers were able to reproduce the successful results achieved at the origination and first dissemination sites, and that providers and stakeholders at these additional sites value the model enough to continue providing it and in some cases to laterally expand it to other programs on campus. These findings suggest that it is possible to greatly expand the number of undergraduate research experience students receiving quality coaching in professional science communication skills by providing their program directors with a comprehensive professional development experience, employing the scaffolded, piggybacked, “beyond train-the-trainer” professional development model.

This paper presents the first attempts to study the large conductance mechano-sensitive channel (MscL) activity in an artificial droplet interface bilayer (DIB) system. A novel and simple technique is developed to characterize the behavior of an artificial lipid bilayer interface containing mechano-sensitive (MS) channels. The experimental setup is assembled on an inverted microscope and consists of two micropipettes filled with PEG-DMA hydrogel and containing Ag/AgCl wires, a cylindrical oil reservoir glued on top of a thin acrylic sheet, and a piezoelectric oscillator actuator. By using this technique, dynamic tension can be applied by oscillating axial motion of one droplet, producing deformation of both droplets and area changes of the DIB interface. The tension in the artificial membrane will cause the MS channels to gate, resulting in an increase in the conductance levels of the membrane. The results show that the MS channels are able to gate under an applied dynamic tension. Moreover, it can be concluded that the response of channel activity to mechanical stimuli is voltage-dependent and highly related to the frequency and amplitude of oscillations.

Polymer-based, degradable microparticles (MP) are attractive delivery vehicles for vaccines as the polymer properties can be specifically tailored and the carrier can be loaded with adjuvant. For all newly developed carrier systems it is important to analyze cellular uptake efficiency and the specific effects mediated by the encapsulated agent when phagocytosed by the cells, which is barely reported so far. By the encapsulation of N-acetylmuramyl-L-alanyl-D-isoglutamine (MDP) labeled with fluoresceinisothiocyanat (FITC) in poly[(rac-lactide)-co-glycolide] (PLGA) MP, the MP was fluorescent and used to visualize the phagocytic uptake. Since encapsulated MDP can activate dendritic cells (DC) via the cytosolic nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain receptors (NOD), it can be investigated whether only cells that have phagocytosed the MP are activated or whether bystander effects occur, resulting in activation of cells, which did not take up MDP-FITC loaded MP. Here, it is demonstrated that increasing MP concentrations in the culture medium had no impact on the viability of DC and that the MP uptake efficiency was dose dependent. Interestingly, it could be shown by the CD86 expression, that only DC, which had engulfed MP, were significantly stronger activated than DC, which had not phagocytosed MDP-FITC loaded MP. On the one hand these results indicate that sufficient amounts of MDP were released from the PLGA carriers into the cytosol of the DC. On the other hand, based on the correlation of uptake and activation on the single cell level, minimal MP induced bystander effects may be expected for in vivo applications.

A major goal in the field of regenerative medicine is to improve our understanding of how biomaterial properties affect cells of the immune system. Systematic variation of defined chemical properties could help to understand which factors determine and modulate cellular responses. A series of copolymers poly[acrylonitrile-co-(N-vinylpyrrolidone)]s (P(AN-co-NVP)) served as model system, in which increasing hydrophilicity was adjusted by increasing the content related to the NVP based repeating units (nNVP) (0, 4.6, 11.8, 22.3, and 29.4 mol%). The influence of increasing nNVP contents on cellular response of human primary monocyte derived dendritic cells (DC), which play a key role in the initiation of immune responses, was investigated. It was shown using the LAL-Test as well as a macrophage-based assay, that the materials were free of endotoxins and other microbial contaminations, which could otherwise bias the readout of the DC experiments. The increasing nNVP content led to a slightly increased cell death of DC, whereas the activation status of DC was not systematically altered by the different P(AN-co-NVP)s as demonstrated by the expression of co-stimulatory molecule and cytokine secretion. Similarly, under inflammatory conditions mimicked by the addition of lipopolysaccharides (LPS), neither the expression of co-stimulatory molecules nor the release of cytokines was influenced by the different copolymers. Conclusively, our data showed that this class of copolymers does not substantially influence the viability and the activation status of DC.

An analysis of indentation hardness data from three ceramic materials, zirconium diboride, silicon carbide, and titanium nitride, is presented to extract the fundamental deformation parameters at 295 to 623 K. The measured activation volume was of the order of 1 × b3 to 4 × b3 (b is the Burgers vector). The calculated activation energies were in the range of 0.75 to 1.61 eV and are typical of lattice-controlled dislocation glide mechanism. Using finite difference simulations, it was demonstrated that there is a significant difference between the plastic strain rate and the total strain rate for materials showing substantial elastic deformation (i.e., large hardness/elastic modulus ratio). Therefore, the measured total strain rates must be converted into plastic strain rates, which require a reduction during loading and an increase during the dwell at maximum load. Additionally, importance of quantification of instrumental thermal drift was discussed and use of either short duration indentation tests or high loads was emphasized.

Indentation tests involving a constant-loading rate stage followed by a constant-load stage were performed on annealed and 20% cold-worked Au to investigate the effect of indentation depth and initial dislocation density on the indentation deformation process. The indentation strain rate data were analyzed in terms of an obstacle-limited dislocation glide mechanism. The apparent activation energy was of the order of 0.16 μb3 and was neither a function of initial indentation depth nor cold work. The results of Haasen plot activation analysis and direct transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observations indicate that more mechanical work must be applied during the constant-loading rate stage due to the large amount of work hardening compared with the constant-load stage where considerably more dislocation recovery occurs.

Glassy polymeric carbon (GPC) is a material commonly used for making electrodes for cyclic voltammetric (CV) and amperometric measurements. Previous work done at Alabama A&M University (AAMU) has shown that high energy ion beams can be used to improve the physical properties of GPC in general. In this work, we fabricated a glassy polymeric carbon electrode and we used carbon ions to activate it. Surface analyses including Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were performed to compare the changes in surface morphology and structure before and after carbon ion bombardment.

InP-based HBTs for ultrahigh speed optical communications systems operation at over 40 GHz require a long-term stability under high current injection conditions, such as current densities of 2 or 5 mA/μm2. We achieved high reliability by suppressing surface recombination and emitter-metal-related crystalline degradation.

Changes in the electric properties of devices due to temperature and bias stress were evaluated. The reduction in DC current gain due to surface recombination had the activation energy of 1.7 eV without current density dependence, and the lifetime of HBTs for this degradation mode is predicted to be over 1×108 hours at 125°C. The emitter metal diffusion and disruption of uniformity of the atomic composition were observed by transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy in HBTs with the conventional Ti/Pt/Au emitter, whereas suppression of those degradations was observed in HBTs with refractory metal of Mo and W. The emitter resistance was estimated to evaluate the contact layer degradation. The critical time was one order larger for HBTs with refractory metal than for HBTs with conventional metal. The activation energies for resistance increases were 2.0 and 1.65 eV for the current density of 2 and 5 mA/μm2, respectively, for all types of emitter electrodes.

The effectiveness of the refractory metal electrode for improving device reliability was confirmed, especially in high-current-density operation, which is essential for applying InP HBTs in high-speed ICs.

The activation behaviour of dopants in ultra-shallow junctions on strained silicon is investigated from a simulation vantage point. Process models available in commercial simulation tools are typically developed for junctions formed with high implantation energies (> 50 keV) and for long anneal times. Hence the question arises as to whether these models and parameter sets can accurately predict the active profile for highly doped, ultra-shallow junctions formed thin strained silicon layers using short rapid thermal anneals (RTA, <10 seconds) at temperatures below 800 °C. By incorporating the results from experimental data, we develop modified models allowing for improved predictions of antimony activation within both bulk and strained silicon.

An application of the nuclear kinematics selective reaction is the usage of the recoil nuclear reaction in generating radioactive ion beams which may de used for MEMS and fine machinery parts labeling used for ultra thin layer activation techniques. The classical Thin or Ultra Thin Layer method relies in creation of a very thin layer on the technologic surface that to exhibit radioactivity of short life radioisotopes. For classical material loss applications concentrations of the order of ppb of different material generated by nuclear reaction were offering plenty of gamma or X radiation to be easily detected over the natural background level directly by a radiation gauge placed above the entire functional mechanism, or by accumulating these in the third tribologic medium – a lubricant or a fluid. In the case of MEMS devices the material concentrations are required to be high enough in order to produce a good radioactive signal or other methods based on resonant energies on isotopic materials may be used such as particle activated prompt gamma, connected with the possibility of the MEMS device of removing from the spot of the dislocated material that becomes technologically useless but carrying out tracer material. There are various possibilities of applying tracer materials on the MEMS devices in order to clearly determine in-situ and in operation the material loss and to correlate with the operation regime.

The impact of low temperature plasma resist strip on doped silicon surface and microelectronic device performance is investigated using different chemical gas mixtures. In this investigation, different plasma treatments where applied on non-structured and structured silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers post ultra shallow surface implants .The main surface impacts dopant bleaching and oxide loss in conjunction with plasma enhanced re-oxidation are analyzed by time of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) and electrical measurements of microelectronic test devices. As the result, a long range plasma radiation induced dopant activation and deactivation is separated as the main effect from surface oxide loss and re-oxidation processes. This implies further optimization of plasma resist strip processes for device improvements.

Junction formation in FinFET-based 3D-devices is a challenging problem as one targets a complete conformal doping of the source/drain regions in order to produce equal gate-profile overlaps (and thus transistor behavior) on all sides of the fins. Due to the lack of predictive modeling for several of the doping strategies explored (plasma immersion, cluster implants, vapor phase deposition, etc…) it becomes difficult to correctly predict the performance of the devices and hence, accurate 3D-doping profile determination is desired. Although several dopant/carrier profiling methods exist with excellent one- or two-dimensional resolution and properties, there is an urgent need to extend these towards a quantitative three-dimensional geometry. In this work, we use scanning spreading resistance microscopy (SSRM) with dedicated FinFET test structure to obtain three-dimensional information from successive two-dimensional scanning spreading resistance maps. We also assess the validity of our methodology by comparing various sections along the fins which represent the variability due to the processing and measurement procedure.

High-temperature constant-force indentation creep tests of 200 seconds duration were performed on an annealed gold specimen at 473K to 773K, to investigate the dependence of the micro-/nano-indentation deformation kinetics upon indentation stress, temperature and time. The indent stress displayed a clear indentation size effect at 473 K. An analysis of the measured indentation creep rate, and its dependence upon temperature and stress, indicate that the strength of the deformation rate limiting obstacles increases with temperature. This is consistent with the expected temperature dependent evolution of the dislocation cell structure whose boundaries become the primary obstacles to dislocation glide.

We studied stress effects on As activation in silicon using density functional theory. Based on lattice expansion coefficient, we calculated formation energy change due to applied stress and plotted the stress dependence of AsmV concentration. We found that biaxial stress results in minimal impact on As activation, which is consistent with experimental observation by Sugii et al. [J. Appl. Phys. 96, 261 (2004)], who found no significant change in As activation under tensile stress.

An analysis of the length-scale and temperature dependence of Haasen plots obtained from constant-force nano- and micro-indentation creep tests performed are reported here. The operative deformation mechanism for all the systems studied involved dislocation glide limited by dislocation-dislocation interactions. Our findings illustrate the potential usefulness of Haasen plot activation analysis for interpreting data from constant-force pyramidal indentation creep tests.