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The widely used stainless steels and their deformed variants are anticorrosive in ambient conditions due to passivation layers composed of chromium oxides. Conventionally, corrosion and erosion of the steels are attributed to the breakdown of such layers but seldomly to the origin that depends on surface heterogeneity at the microscopic level. In this work, the nanometer-scaled chemical heterogeneity at the surface unveiled via spectro-microscopy and chemometric analysis unexpectedly dominates the breakdown and corrosion behavior of the cold-rolled Ce-modified 2507 super-duplex stainless steels (SDSS) over its hot-deformed counterpart. Though relatively uniformly covered by a native Cr2O3 layer revealed by X-ray photoemission electron microscopy, the cold-rolled SDSS behaved poorly in passivity because of locally distributed Fe3+ rich nano-islands over the Fe/Cr oxide layer. This atomic-level knowledge provides a deep understanding of corrosion of stainless steel and is expected to benefit corrosion controls of similar high-alloyed metals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intriguing spherical conformation of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) embedded with CdS nanocrystals in CdS-PVP nanocomposites grown via facile chemical bath deposition is probed using simultaneous Raman and AFM mapping. Observance of isolated or coagulated PVP spheres embedded with CdS nanocrystals at room temperature (RT) due to polymer collapse or clouding, respectively, is attributed to relative variation in Cd+/PVP concentration in the bath. With an additional external stimulus of temperature (70 °C) and subsequent growth at RT in the same chemical bath, observed only isolated and dimer PVP spheres are ascribed to opening (high temperature) and reformation (RT) of PVP spheres with dominating collapse mechanism of polymer. Formation of dimer PVP sphere due to lock and key binding mechanism is facilitated by the temperature. Transformation of RT grown mixed-phase structure to purely hexagonal phase further confirming the change in conformation of CdS-PVP nanocomposites on the application of an external stimulus. Stronger resonance Raman scattering for CdS nanocrystals embedded in the isolated PVP spheres is attributed to strain-related band gap tuning. The understanding developed of the application of the external stimulus leading to change in polymer conformation can be gainfully used in macromolecular actuators and biomedical field as delivery systems. Application of an external stimulus of temperature and subsequent growth at room temperature led to formation of only isolated and dimer PVP spheres embedded with CdS nanocrystals, wherein formation of dimer PVP spheres happen due to lock and key binding mechanism between two isolated PVP spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, the unique plastic deformation behavior of T2 rolled copper foils under ultrasonic impact (UI) and ultrasonic rolling (UR) has been studied systematically. The numerical simulation and test results show that with the decrease of the thickness of copper sheet, the equivalent plastic strain (PEEQ) value and plastic strain εp formed by UI or UR increase exponentially, and its distribution changes from gradient to uniform on the cross section, which is distinctive from the commonly observed gradient structure in ultrasonically treated bulk materials. Correspondingly, characterized by EBSD and TEM, the 100-μm-thick copper foil treated by UR shows the overall strengthening and forming a sub-micron grain structure with significant refinement and uniform distribution on the cross section. The microstructure homogenization of copper foil is attributed to the rigid wall effect facilitating the elastic-plastic stress wave bounce. The exponential increase of PEEQ and εp is explained as that with the decrease of the thickness of ultrasonic object, on the one hand, the acoustic softening and size effect which can reduce the elastic limit of copper foil are enhanced; on the other hand, the plastic deformation mode changes from stress superposition to dynamic impact. Through the establishment of a new theoretical model, the criterion of ultrasonic dynamic impact effect is deduced and verified by experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A colourimetric assay for the detection of DNA fragments associated with the oil palm pathogen Ganoderma boninense and other fungi DNA is reported. The assay is based on the aggregation of DNA-nanoparticle conjugates in the presence of complementary DNA from the target organism. Here, various designs of DNA-nanoparticle conjugates were evaluated, and it was found that the best design gave a visually observable colour change with as little as 2 pmol of double-stranded DNA analyte even in the presence of a large excess of a mixture of non-complementary DNA. Overall, this label-free system is rapid, sensitive, selective, simple in design, and easy to carry out. It does not require specialist equipment or specialist training for the interpretation of the results, and therefore has the potential to be deployed for agricultural diagnostics in the field. Development of a colourimetric assay based on DNA-nanoparticle conjugates for the oil palm pathogen Ganoderma boninense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanocomposites of CdS nanocrystals (NCs) embedded in a polyvinyl pyrrolidone are grown using one-step chemical bath deposition technique. While this method eliminates an additional step for the growth of NCs, it also leads to the formation of nearly monodispersive CdS NCs as indicated by absorption, reflection, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. Further, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopic investigations reveal the formation of nearly monodispersive CdS NCs (~6 to 10 nm) embedded in PVP spheres of sizes ~100 to 600 nm. Systematic study of variation in Cadmium acetate (Cd ion source), Thiourea (S ion source), PVP concentration, deposition time, and heating/cooling cycles elucidates the co-operative growth mechanism for CdS-PVP nanocomposite. The experimental observations of this study are corroborated with existing theoretical simulations for nanocomposite growth, which explicates that collapse of PVP into a sphere is crucial to inclusion of only nearly monodispersive CdS NCs. Important insights obtained from this work give control on the growth of nearly monodispersive CdS NCs embedded in PVP, using a simple and inexpensive growth technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]