Synthesis and characterizations of poly(ethylene-co-vinylalcohol)-grafted-poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-hydroxyvalerate) copolymers

Poly(ethylene-co-vinylalcohol)-grafted-poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-hydroxyvalerate) (EVOH-g-PHBV) was prepared by a catalyzed grafting of PHBV onto immiscible EVOH. These reactions were performed at high temperature in the molten state. The choices of Tin(II) bis(2-ethylhexanoate) (Sn(Oct)₂) and 1,5,7-Triazabicyclo[4.4.0]dec-5-ene (TBD), as catalyst, were justified by a first study in an internal mixer. The catalyst quantity, reaction temperature and reaction time were optimized to apply them in the conditions of a reactive extrusion process with a co-rotating twin screw extruder. High reaction temperature, from 180 °C to 220 °C, associated to intensive mixing led to efficient grafting of PHBV onto EVOH, compatible with short residence times required.Rheological, thermal and morphological analyses were conducted to characterize the obtained copolymers. Molecular weights were determined by SEC. SEM imaging were made on cryo-fractured surfaces of blends extruded with and without catalyst. In most of reaction conditions, a compatible blend was obtained with a fine micro phase separation. Grafted copolymers were only obtained when well defined and controlled conditions are applied.     

Radical grafting of polar monomers onto polypropylene by reactive extrusion

Polypropylene (PP) was functionalized in the melt by grafting polar monomers using an internal mixer and a corotating twin‐screw extruder. 2,5‐Bis(tertbutylperoxy)‐2,5‐dimethylhexane (Luperox 101) and dicumyl peroxide (DP) were the used radical initiators. The polar monomers were itaconic acid (IAc), 2‐octen‐1‐ylsuccinic anhydride (OY), 2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA), and 3‐allyloxy‐1,2‐propanediol (AP). Grafting was quantified by FTIR combined to Elemental Analysis. Grafting degree depends mainly on monomer and initiator natures and concentrations. Grafting degree maxima were 3.9, 2, 9.5, and 3.9 wt %, respectively, for IAc, OY, HEMA, and AP. Some properties of the modified PP were evaluated. Thermal analysis indicated that the polarity of PP increased by grafting reaction and size‐exclusion chromatography showed that the grafting was not accompanied by a significant M_w and viscosity decrease. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013     

Effect of the host polymer on the nanomechanical and morphological properties of templated polymer films

Atomic force microscopy and nanoindentation have been applied to the study of thin molecularly templated polymer films. The template was chosen to be the readily hydrogen‐bonded cotinine molecule and three different polymer hosts, Elvamide® nylon, Nylon‐6, and poly(4‐vinylphenol) were compared. The host polymer was shown to affect the nature of the template‐host interaction resulting in varying surface morphologies and differences in the nanohardness. These observations were shown to reflect differences in the underlying interaction chemistry, specifically, whether or not the polymer may be imprinted in the film production process. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 130: 877‐883, 2013     

POWER-Area-Performance Characteristics of FPGA-based Sigma-Delta FIR Filters

While one-bit ΣΔ modulators are widely used in Analog to Digital conversion stages due to their inherent linearity and precision, it is less common for the entire digital processing path to operate in single bit mode at the oversampled rate of the conversion system. The conventional approach has been to decimate the signal bit stream after conversion and for the remaining processing to be performed in standard multi-bit binary at the Nyquist rate and with a resolution mandated by the dynamic range and noise. Using a Finite Impulse Response filter design as an example, we compare the area and performance of this conventional approach with the alternative single bit approach that operates directly on the ΣΔ data stream using ternary coefficients {?1, 0, +1} derived from the ΣΔ modulation of the target impulse response. Filters exhibiting approximately equivalent spectral performance in the two alternative approaches were developed using VHDL and simulated using some commercial FPGA types. In these experiments, the single-bit filters using ternary coefficients were found to dissipate less power compared to the conventional approach despite their need to operate at much higher clock rates. They also exhibit up to 40% higher performance and offer useful area savings at lower filter orders. At higher orders, the ΣΔ approach retains its power and performance advantages but exhibits slightly higher chip area. The simplicity and low power of the ΣΔ approach makes it applicable to mobile communication processing using low cost FPGA technology.     

Review of convective heat transfer enhancement with nanofluids

Nanofluids are considered to offer important advantages over conventional heat transfer fluids. Over a decade ago, researchers focused on measuring and modeling the effective thermal conductivity and viscosity of nanofluids. Recently important theoretical and experimental research works on convective heat transfer appeared in the open literatures on the enhancement of heat transfer using suspensions of nanometer-sized solid particle materials, metallic or nonmetallic in base heat transfer fluids. The purpose of this review article is to summarize the important published articles on the enhancement of the forced convection heat transfer with nanofluids.     

An approach for determining surface temperature distributions of solid objects subjected to heating applications

This study presents a simple technique of determining surface temperature values and/or distributions of solid objects of various geometrical shapes (e.g. infinite slab, infinite cylinder, and sphere) during heating in a medium under natural or forced convection conditions. In the model, the boundary condition of the third kind (i.e., 0.1 < Bi < 100) in transient heat transfer, which is commonly encountered, is used. In many practical applications ranging from metallurgy to food engineering processes, the measurement of surface temperatures of such solid objects is a remarkable problem; however, centre temperature measurements are quite easy. For this reason, simple and accurate models are required for use in practice. The proposed model depends on the centre temperature and determines the surface temperatures using the centre temperature measurements. In order to test the present analytical model, an actual example for a slab object was given and the centre and surface temperature profiles were drawn. In addition, the centre and surface temperature distributions for infinite slab, infinite cylinder, and sphere were computed for the values of 0.1, 1, 10, and 100 of the Biot number and were exhibited as reference graphics. As a result, the present model is capable of determing surface temperatures of various geometrical objects heated in any medium using their centre temperature measurements in a simple and accurate manner.     

Plasma-modified multiwalled carbon nanotubes with polyaniline for glucose biosensor applications

Multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) was modified through plasma polymerization of aniline by applying different radio frequency (radio frequency (RF): 13.56?MHz) powers. The modified MWCNTs were investigated in terms of morphology, chemical structure, and thermal behaviors, indicating the formation of composites based on the surface modification of MWCNT with polyaniline (PANI). These composites were then used in amperometric glucose biosensor, which was constructed by immobilizing glucose oxidase on premodified Pt electrode with PANI/MWCNT composites. The biosensor based on the composite obtained under RF power of 60?W exhibited the high sensitivity of 54.91?µA mM^?1 cm^?2 to glucose.     

Atrial fibrillation classification with artificial neural networks

The acquired 72 normal sinus rhythm ECGs and 80 ECGs with atrial fibrillation (AF) are decomposed with ‘db10’ Daebauchies wavelets at level 6 and power spectral density was calculated for each decomposed signal with Welch method. Average power spectral density was calculated for six subbands and normalized to be used as input to the neural network. Levenberg-Marquart backpropagation feed forward neural network was built from logarithmic sigmoid transfer functions in three-layer form. The trained network was tested on 24 normal and 28 AF state ECGs. The classification performance was accomplished as 100% accurate.