Direct Transformation of Metallized Paper into Al-Si Nano-Rod and Al Nano-Particles Using Thermal Micronizing Technique.

The abundant application of metallized paper and the quick growth of their wastes lead to the removal of a huge amount of valuable resources from economic cycle. In this work, for the first-time, the thermal micronizing technique has been used to directly transform the metallized paper wastes to Al-Si nano-rod and Al nano-particles for use as the input in different manufacturing sectors such as additive manufacturing or composite fabrication. Structure of metallized paper has been investigated using FT-IR analysis and first-principle plane-wave calculation.

Enhancing steel properties through in situ formation of ultrahard ceramic surface.

Abrasion and corrosion resistant steel has attracted considerable interest for industrial application as a means of minimising the costs associated with product/component failures and/or short replacement cycles. These classes of steels contain alloying elements that increase their resistance to abrasion and corrosion. Their benefits, however, currently come at a potentially prohibitive cost; such high performance steel products are both more technically challenging and more expensive to produce.

Trimethyltin-mediated covalent gold-carbon bond formation.

We study the formation of covalent gold-carbon bonds in benzyltrimethylstannane (C10H16Sn) deposited on Au in ultra-high-vacuum conditions. Through X-ray photoemission spectroscopy and X-ray absorption measurements, we find that the molecule fragments at the Sn-benzyl bond when exposed to Au surfaces at temperatures as low as -110 °C. The resulting benzyl species is stabilized by the presence of Au(111) but only forms covalent Au-C bonds on more reactive Au surfaces like Au(110).

Interface effects on tunneling magnetoresistance in organic spintronics with flexible amine-Au links.

Organic spintronics is a promising emerging field, but the sign of the tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) is highly sensitive to interface effects, a crucial hindrance to applications. A key breakthrough in molecular electronics was the discovery of amine-Au link groups that give a reproducible conductance. Using first-principles calculations, we predict that amine-Au links give improved reproducibility in organic spintronics junctions with Au-covered Fe leads.

Non-coherent transport in carbon chains.

The effect of electron-phonon (e-ph) interaction on the conductance of carbon chains is investigated by a non-equilibrium Green's function technique combined with a four-orbitals-per-atom tight-binding Hamiltonian. The optimized structure of the chain is found to be the semiconducting polyyne type (···-C≡C-C≡C-···). Our results show that the conductance of a carbon chain attached to two fixed contacts decreases due to e-ph interaction, and this reduction is stronger for longitudinal phonon modes which decrease the hopping energy between carbon atoms.

The effects of defects on the conductance of graphene nanoribbons.

The quantum conductance of graphene nanoribbons that include vacancy and adatom-vacancy defects is studied for both armchair and zigzag edge structures. The conductance is calculated by using the Green's function formalism combined with a tight-binding method for the description of the system. Our results reveal that, owing to the localized states that appear near the defect sites, the conductance of the defected nanoribbons generally decreases.