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In this dissertation, the effect of cold plasma treatment on the comfort properties of P/C blend fabric has been studied in a low pressure plasma reactor. The plasma treatment was conducted on the samples of 65% polyester and 35% cotton blend fabric using argon, oxygen and air, separately, as well as mixtures of O2/HMDSO, N2/HMDSO, H2O/HMDSO and HMDSO monomer alone as working gases. Special attention was given to oxygen plasma due to its wide application for various textile/polymer materials. Due to this reason, the Taguchi method was used to design, analyze and optimize the oxygen plasma process. Other plasma parameters including working pressure, discharge power, duration of treatment and flow rate were also considered. The various comfort properties of plasma treated and untreated P/C blend fabric have been studied. In particular, thermal comfort such as, water vapor, air permeability, thermal resistance and wickability as well as tactile comfort including hand-feel and electro-physical properties were investigated. As the results showed that the oxygen plasma treatment had a positive effect on the thermal comfort and resistivity properties of P/C the blend fabric.

In spite of its high cost and technical importance, plasma equipment is still largely designed empirically, with little help from computer simulation. Plasma process control is rudimentary. Optimization of plasma reactor operation, including adjustments to deal with increasingly stringent controls on plant emissions, is performed predominantly by trial and error. There is now a strong and growing economic incentive to improve on the traditional methods of plasma reactor and process design, optimization, and control. An obvious strategy for both chip manufacturers and plasma equipment suppliers is to employ large-scale modeling and simulation. The major roadblock to further development of this promising strategy is the lack of a database for the many physical and chemical processes that occur in the plasma. The data that are currently available are often scattered throughout the scientific literature, and assessments of their reliability are usually unavailable. Database Needs for Modeling and Simulation of Plasma Processing identifies strategies to add data to the existing database, to improve access to the database, and to assess the reliability of the available data. In addition to identifying the most important needs, this report assesses the experimental and theoretical/computational techniques that can be used, or must be developed, in order to begin to satisfy these needs.

In this paper, three types of optical textured glass substrates were prepared at the glass/transparent conductive oxide interface using polydimethylsiloxane nanoimprint lithography to increase the conversion efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). There were three types of textures: nanotexture, microtexture, and micro/nano double texture. In terms of optical characteristics, it was confirmed that the reflectance of all of the textured glass substrates was lower than that of flat glass in the mean value of the 400–800 nm wavelength band. Further, the diffuse transmittance was higher than that of flat glass for all of the textured glass substrates, and the D-Tx was particularly high. DSSCs were fabricated using N749 and N719 dyes; their size was 6 mm2. The conversion efficiencies of the N749 DSSCs were improved by 11% for the N-Tx (η of 2.41%) and 10% for the D-Tx (η of 2.38%) compared with flat glass (η of 2.17%) DSSCs. On the other hand, the M-Tx did not improve it. The conversion efficiencies of the N719 DSSCs with textured glass substrates were improved by 7.5% for the M-Tx (η of 2.74%), 18% for the N-Tx (η of 3.01%), and 26% for the D-Tx (η of 3.22%) compared with flat glass (η of 2.55%) DSSCs.

Resonant antennas are increasingly employed by the plasma industry, and the theory has now developed alongside the technological applications to the extent that it is timely to document the progress in this field to aid antenna design for future novel RF plasma sources. This reference text explains the complete theory of resonant antennas, from fundamental circuits to mutual partial inductance coupling with plasma. It describes industrial applications, and covers state-of-the-art research in helicon wave physics and sources with plasma diagnostics. The book is divided into four parts, covering resonant network antennas without plasma, antennas in magnetized and non-magnetized plasma, and finally, technology and future developments of resonant network antennas. Part of IOP Series in Plasma Physics.

HighlightsSingle-atom M-N4/N-doped carbons (M = Fe, Co) prepared as OER/ORR catalysts.Ultrasonication-assisted plasma engineering used for catalyst synthesis.Co-N4/NC outperformed benchmark commercial catalysts in practical Zn–air battery test.DFT calculations provided insights into the origin of superior ORR/OER performance.As bifunctional oxygen evolution/reduction electrocatalysts, transition-metal-based single-atom-doped nitrogen–carbon (NC) matrices are promising successors of the corresponding noble-metal-based catalysts, offering the advantages of ultrahigh atom utilization efficiency and surface active energy. However, the fabrication of such matrices (e.g., well-dispersed single-atom-doped M-N4/NCs) often requires numerous steps and tedious processes. Herein, ultrasonic plasma engineering allows direct carbonization in a precursor solution containing metal phthalocyanine and aniline. When combining with the dispersion effect of ultrasonic waves, we successfully fabricated uniform single-atom M-N4 (M = Fe, Co) carbon catalysts with a production rate as high as 10 mg min−1. The Co-N4/NC presented a bifunctional potential drop of ΔE = 0.79 V, outperforming the benchmark Pt/C-Ru/C catalyst (ΔE = 0.88 V) at the same catalyst loading. Theoretical calculations revealed that Co-N4 was the major active site with superior O2 adsorption–desorption mechanisms. In a practical Zn–air battery test, the air electrode coated with Co-N4/NC exhibited a specific capacity (762.8 mAh g−1) and power density (101.62 mW cm−2), exceeding those of Pt/C-Ru/C (700.8 mAh g−1 and 89.16 mW cm−2, respectively) at the same catalyst loading. Moreover, for Co-N4/NC, the potential difference increased from 1.16 to 1.47 V after 100 charge–discharge cycles. The proposed innovative and scalable strategy was concluded to be well suited for the fabrication of single-atom-doped carbons as promising bifunctional oxygen evolution/reduction electrocatalysts for metal–air batteries.

Hydrogen energy is one of the key technologies that can help to prevent global warming. A water electrolysis process can be used to produce hydrogen, in which hydrogen is produced at one electrode of the electrochemical cell, and oxygen is produced at the other electrode. On the other hand, the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) requires multiple reaction steps and precious-metal-based catalysts (e.g., Ru/C, Ir/C, RuO2, and IrO2) as electrocatalysts to improve the reaction rate. Their high cost and limited supply, however, limit their applications to the mass production of hydrogen. In this study, boron, nitrogen-doped carbon incorporated with molybdenum carbide (MoC-BN/C) was synthesized to replace the precious-metal-based catalysts in the OER. B, N-doped carbon with nanosized molybdenum nanoparticles was fabricated by plasma engineering. The synthesized catalysts were heat-treated at 600, 700, and 800 °C in nitrogen for one hour to enhance the conductivity. The best MoC-BN/C electrocatalysts (heated at 800 °C) exhibited superior OER catalytic activity: 1.498 V (vs. RHE) and 1.550 V at a current density of 10 and 100 mA/cm2, respectively. The hybrid electrocatalysts even outperformed the noble electrocatalyst (5 wt.% Ru/C) with higher stability. Therefore, the hybrid electrocatalyst can replace expensive precious-metal-based catalysts for the upcoming hydrogen economy.

Iron selenides with high capacity and excellent chemical properties have been considered as outstanding anodes for alkali metal-ion batteries. However, its further development is hindered by sluggish kinetics and fading capacity caused by volume expansion. Herein, a series of FeSe 2 nanoparticles (NPs)-encapsulated carbon composites were successfully synthesized by tailoring the amount of Fe species through facile plasma engineering and followed by a simple selenization transformation process. Such a stable structure can effectively mitigate volume changes and accelerate kinetics, leading to excellent electrochemical performance. The optimized electrode (FeSe 2 @C 2 ) exhibits outstanding reversible capacity of 853.1 mAh g −1 after 150 cycles and exceptional rate capacity of 444.9 mAh g −1 at 5.0 A g −1 for Li + storage. In Na + batteries, it possesses a relatively high capacity of 433.7 mAh g −1 at 0.1 A g −1 as well as good cycle stability. The plasma-engineered FeSe 2 @C 2 composite, which profits from synergistic effect of small FeSe 2 NPs and carbon framework with large specific surface area, exhibits remarkable ions/electrons transportation abilities during various kinetic analyses and unveils the energy storage mechanism dominated by surface-mediated capacitive behavior. This novel cost-efficient synthesis strategy might offer valuable guidance for developing transition metal-based composites towards energy storage materials. Graphical abstract

Under extreme conditions such as high speed and heavy load, 18Cr2Ni4WA steel cannot meet the service requirements even after carburizing and quenching processes. In order to obtain better surface mechanical properties and tribological property, a hollow cathode ion source diffusion strengthening device was used to nitride the traditional carburizing and quenching samples. Unlike traditional ion carbonitriding technology, the low-temperature ion carbonitriding technology used in this article can increase the surface hardness of the material by 50% after 3 h of treatment, from the original 600 HV0.1 to 900 HV0.1, while the core hardness only decreases by less than 20%. The effect of post-ion carbonitriding treatment on mechanical properties and tribological properties of the carburized and quenched 18Cr2Ni4WA steel was investigated. Samples in different treatment are characterized using optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), optimal SRV-4 high temperature tribotester, as well as Vickers hardness tester. Under two conditions of 6N light load and 60 N heavy load, compared with untreated samples, the wear rate of ion carbonitriding samples decreased by more than 99%, while the friction coefficient remained basically unchanged. Furthermore, the careful selection of ion nitrocarburizing and carburizing tempering temperatures in this study has been shown to significantly enhance surface hardness and wear resistance, while preserving the overall hardness of the carburized sample. The present study demonstrates the potential of ion carbonitriding technology as a viable post-treatment method for carburized gears.