Solar power is a sustainable and affordable source of energy, has gained interest from academies, companies, government institutions as potential efficient alternative for next-generation energy production. To promote the penetration solar in market, solar-generated electricity needs to be cost-competitive with fossil fuels other renewables. Development new materials absorbers able collect high...

Article history: Received 18 March 2016 Revised 16 July 2016 Accepted in revised form 28 July 2016 Available online xxxx Photoluminescence piezospectroscopy (PLPS) was used as a non-destructive technique for the measurement of residual stresses within the thermally grown oxide (TGO) layer beneath plasma-spray thermal barrier coatings (TBC). The technique has proved to be very effective for such...

Fe-based amorphous/nanocrystalline coatings were prepared on the AISI 321 steel substrate by the high-velocity oxygen-fuel (HVOF) thermal spraying technology. The effect of selected parameters (oxygen flow, kerosene flow and spray distance) on the cavitation erosion resistance (denoted as Rc) of the coating were investigated by using the Taguchi method. Statistical tools such as design of exper...

The formation mechanism of a spray-coated film is different from that of a spin-coated film. This study employs grazing incidence small- and wide-angle X-ray Scattering (GISAXS and GIWAXS, respectively) quantitatively and systematically to investigate the hierarchical structure and phase-separated behavior of a spray-deposited blend film. The formation of PCBM clusters involves mutual interacti...

The properties of particles formed during spray drying are largely determined by the properties of the precursors and the drying conditions. The thermal and mass transfer histories significantly affect the structure formation (and subsequent functionality) and the processes are indeed very complex, particularly when dealing with polydisperse droplets as in conventional spray driers. Here a more...