Looseness is defect that affects the quality of a significant proportion of leather, particularly bovine leather. This defect causes a wrinkled appearance on the leather surface and results in a significant reduction in the leathers value. The structural mechanism and causes of looseness in leather are not well understood; therefore this study aims to gain a better understanding of this. We hav...

It is well known that the properties of shape memory alloys, such as binary Ni-Ti (nitinol), are very sensitive to composition.[1-3] Especially on the Ni-rich side of stoichiometry, the martensite/austenite phase transformation temperature decreases abruptly when Ni is increased only a few tenths of a weight percent.[4] In ternary high temperature shape memory alloys (HTSMAs) containing Pt, Pd,...

The 700 °C power plants currently under development will utilize Ni-base alloys such as alloy 617 for components to be operated at temperatures >650 °C. Due to economic reasons for components or parts of components which are subjected to temperatures <650 °C, 2% Cr or 9-12% Cr steels is used, depending on the required mechanical properties. This makes the dissimilar joining of Ni-base alloys an...

The microstructures and microchemistry of four US International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition ice cores were examined, at three depths (30, 60, 90m) each, using scanning electron microscopy, including electron backscattered patterns and energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), in order to assess the relationship between chemical and physical properties. The physical characteristics (grain ...

This review seeks to summarize the recent developments in the synthesis, structural characterization, properties, and applications in the ®elds of amorphous, bulk amorphous, and nanocrystalline soft magnetic materials. Conventional physical metallurgical approaches to improving soft ferromagnetic properties have relied on the optimization of chemical and microstructural features. Within the las...

A summary of our recent progress in the growth and characterization of magnetic and magnetooptic garnet heterostructures is presented in this paper. The similarity in crystal chemistry and lattice parameters among the various garnets (yttrium iron garnet, bismuth iron garnet, etc.) is utilized to create artificially layered heterostructures and superlattices. Rare earth (especially Eu) substitu...

Recent years have seen an ever increasing interest in organic photovoltaics (OPV) [1]. As a result there is a high scientific demand for microstructural characterization of the various fabricated devices. Here we introduce several new techniques for examining OPV materials in a (scanning) transmission electron microscope (TEM/STEM) capable of electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS). The materi...

Strontium sulfide (SrS) is known to have an indirect bandgap of ~ 4.32 eV. When doped with tellurium (Te), ultraviolet emission occurs at 360 nm (for Tes singlet) and 400nm (for TesTes dimers) due to radiative recombination from bound exciton states. In this paper we discuss the ultraviolet emission of pulsed laser deposited thin films of SrS:Te grown as SrS-Te and SrSTe-SrS multi-layer structu...

This paper discusses the current problems of assessing the pipeline integrity from an identification of the causal factors associated to various pipeline failure mechanisms and damages, such as corrosion, SCC, buckling, soil movement, and fatigue. The paper explains, furthermore, how emerging applications of Neutron Diffraction and Small Angle Neutron Scattering techniques can be carried out to...

The influence of different cooling regimes (quenching in water and cooling in air) on the residual mechanical properties of engineered cementitious composite (ECC) subjected to high temperature up to 800°C was discussed in this paper. The ECC specimens are exposed to 100, 200, 400, 600, and 800°C with the unheated specimens for reference. Different cooling regimens had a significant influence o...