Sharif Digital Repository

A simple and efficient method was developed for fabricating spherical granules of CuO catalyst via a three-step procedure. In the first step, copper oxide nanoparticles were synthesized by hydrothermal decomposition of copper nitrate solution under supercritical condition. Then, they were immobilized in the polymeric matrix of calcium alginate, and followed by high-temperature calcination in an air stream as the third step, in which carbonaceous materials were oxidized, to result in a pebble-type catalyst of high porosity. The produced CuO nanoparticles were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) that revealed an average size of 5 nm, X-ray diffractometry (XRD), and thermo... 

CuO nanoparticles with average diameter of about 20. nm were accumulated on surface of sol-gel silica thin films heat treated at 300 °C in air. Heat treatment of the CuO nanoparticles at 600 °C in a reducing environment resulted in effective reduction of the nanoparticles and penetration of them into the film. While the thin films heat treated at 300 °C exhibited a strong antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli bacteria, the reducing process decreased their antibacterial activity. However, by definition of normalized antibacterial activity (antibacterial activity/surface concentration of coppers) it was found that Cu nanoparticles were more toxic to the bacteria than the CuO... 

We have investigated various geometrical design dependencies for rapid single-flux-quantum (RSFQ) circuits in high- Tc superconductors (HTS) technology, including the characteristics of the intermediate inductances. Structural- and temporal-dependent combinations of Cn - Rn (capacitance and normal resistance of the Josephson junctions, JJs) in the HTS technology are also investigated. Relatively favorable combinations of normal resistance and low capacitance of the JJs needed in the HTS technology for RSFQ circuits have been made possible by recent fabrication methods of high-quality YBCO films. Obtaining these devices is made achievable by using the grain boundary structures and high... 

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) decorated with Cu2O particles were grown on a Ni catalyst layer deposited on a Cu substrate by thermal chemical vapor deposition from liquid petroleum gas. Ni catalyst nanoparticles with different sizes were produced in an electroplating system at 45 °C using the corrosive effect of H2SO4 which was added to solution. These nanoparticles provide the nucleation sites for CNT growth avoiding the need for a buffer layer. The surface morphology of the Ni catalyst films and CNT growth over this catalyst was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). High temperature surface segregation of the Cu substrate into the Ni catalyst layer and its exposition to O2 at... 

In this study, electrochromic properties of cuprous oxide nanoparticles, self-accumulated on the surface of a sol-gel silica thin film, have been investigated by using UV-visible spectrophotometry in a lithium-based electrolyte cell. The cuprous oxide nanoparticles showed a reversible electrochromic process with a thin film transmission reduction of about 50% in a narrow wavelength range of 400-500 nm, as compared to the bleached state of the film. Using optical transmission measurement, we have found that the band gap energy of the films reduced from 2.7 eV for Cu2O to 1.3 eV for CuO by increasing the annealing temperature from 220 to 300 °C in an N2 environment for 1 h. Study of the band... 

Epitaxial cerium oxide (CeO2) buffer layer has been grown on lanthanum aluminate (LAO) single crystal substrates for fabrication of c-axis oriented YBa2Cu3O7-x (YBCO). Precursor solution of cerium acetylacetonates with viscosity of 0.6 centipoises was spin coated on the 1×1 cm area LAO substrates. The calcination was carried out by very slow ramp (1°C per minute) until the final temperature of 500°C in oxygen flow to remove most of the organic compounds. The final heat treatment has been done at 780°C by a ramp of 20° per minute in gas flow of mixed argon-oxygen with 5 Pa partial pressure of oxygen. The thickness of the deposited CeO2 buffer layer was 20 nm. Then, 100 nm thick YBCO film was... 

We theoretically demonstrate the tunabiltiy of terahertz random lasers composed of high temperature superconductor YBCO and ruby layers as active medium. The considered system is a one-dimensional disordered medium made of ruby grain and YBCO. Finite-difference time domain method is used to calculate the emission spectrum and spatial distribution of electric field at different temperatures. Our numerical results reveal that the superconductor based random lasers exhibit large temperature tunability in the terahertz domain. The emission spectrum is significantly temperature dependent, the number of lasing modes and their intensities increase with decreasing temperature. Also, we make some... 

The application of flat superconductor rings has been investigated in the structure of inductive shield-type high temperature superconducting fault current limiters, HT c-SFCL. A laboratory scale inductive shield-type HT c-SFCL has been designed and fabricated using flat superconductor rings. The fabrication process has been fully presented. YBCO powder has been used for the fabrication of superconductor rings. This fabrication process, being quite innovative, is introduced completely. The method of the trapped field measurement has been used for the critical current density measurement of the fabricated superconductor rings. The device with nominal current of 2 A was tested in a 30 V... 

Nanofluid is the term applied to a suspension of solid, nanometer-sized particles in conventional fluids; the most prominent features of such fluids include enhanced heat characteristics, such as convective heat transfer coefficient, in comparison to the base fluid without considerable alterations in physical and chemical properties. In this study, nanofluids of aluminum oxide and copper oxide were prepared in ethylene glycol separately. The effect of forced convective heat transfer coefficient in turbulent flow was calculated using a double pipe and plate heat exchangers. Furthermore, we calculated the forced convective heat transfer coefficient of the nanofluids using theoretical... 

An easy method for preparing CuO nanoparticles incorporated in a mesoporous structure was presented based on the thermal decomposition of a copper complex. The novel copper coordination compound of [Cu(anic)2]·0.75H2O (anic= 2-aminonicotinate) with the microflake morphology was synthesized through the reaction of 2-aminonicotinic acid (Hanic) and copper(II) nitrate. Using elemental analysis and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, the chemical composition of CuC12H11.5N4O4.75 was proposed. Calcination process at 550 °C for 4 h transformed the microflakes into CuO nanoparticles incorporated in a mesoporous structure. The FTIR peaks assigned to 2-aminonicotinate were completely... 

The noise level of the magnetometer and gradiometer RF SQUIDs were investigated using different shielding methods. The used methods include different active and passive shielding, such as Helmholtz configurations, locally compensation coils, superconducting bulks and μ-metal shields. For the passive shielding approach, using FEM simulation we have investigated the shielding effectiveness of superconducting bulks versus the use of μ-metal shielding. The superconducting shield is a YBCO circular bulk, which was made using melt-texture method and located in a distance in front of the SQUID. In this work the results of these shielding methods are presented and compared, while their effectiveness... 

Incorporating an efficient approach for the finite-element simulation of eddy current superconductive quantum interface device (SQUID) nondestructive evaluation (NDE) systems, an appropriate finite-element method (FEM) has been presented for simulating and analyzing such systems. We have introduced a new model for the planar double-D coils, which are used as the excitation source in eddy current SQUID NDE systems, and also another model for the description of the flaw effect on the induced current. We have also examined our simulation results with their associated measurements. Our system is based on a high-TC YBCO gradiometer RF-SQUID sensor with a flux noise level below 100 μΦ0 √Hz at 100... 

We report the results of the electronic structure calculation of a newly discovered member of the YBCO high-T c family, i.e., Y 3Ba 5Cu 8O 18 (Y358) with T c>100, based on the full-potential linearized augmented plane waves method (FP-LAPW) of density functional theory in the generalized gradient approximation (GGA). The evolution of the number of hole carriers in different sites of the CuO 2 planes and CuO chains has been investigated in comparison with the other YBCO family members, i.e., Y123, Pr123, Y124, and Y247. The results suggest that pumping hole carriers out of the chains toward the planes enhances the transition temperature. The band structure calculations have been performed for... 

In order to achieve stable operation for a developed high-Tc SQUID-based magnetocardiography system, a two-stage active magnetic shielding technique is implemented. This technique is based on a combination of fluxgate and high-Tc SQUID magnetometers feedback loops. While two YBCO rf SQUIDs in a gradiometric configuration are used at liquid Nitrogen temperature as the main sensors for the heart signal detection and low-amplitude noise signals cancellation in one stage, a fluxgate is used to cancel large far-field environmental noise in the other stage feedback loop. The fluxgate sensors working in the fundamental mode under the optimized bias conditions have white noise levels less than 10... 

The authors propose a new design for monolayer superconducting planar flux transformer integrated with a coplanar resonator serving as a gigahertz range tank circuit for high-Tc rf-SQUID magnetometers. Based on the proposed design, which is optimized using the finite element method, the transformer-resonator configuration is made of 200-nm-thick monolayer YBCO film on a crystalline LaAlO3 substrate. In this optimized design, the SQUID magnetometer is coupled through flip-chip configuration with the configuration providing high coupling coefficient between the devices. The design permits coupling of the rf signals to the SQUID efficiently, whereas the transformer is designed to couple the dc... 

We present a new approach for depth detection of hidden defects based on the analysis of the frequency spectrum of the output waveform in a nondestructive testing (NDT) system. In our eddy current Superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) based NDT system, we apply multiple frequencies to its single excitation coil in a magnetically unshielded environment. The excitation coil is a planar D-shaped printed circuit board coil, and a high-Tc gradiometer YBCO rf-SQUID is used as the electromagnetic sensor in this system. An automated two-dimensional nonmagnetic scanning robot is used to test samples with intentional defects at different depths. In this approach, a diagram labeled 'FFT...