Investigations of the optical and electrical properties of carbon quantum dots doped conducting polymers for organic solar cell applications

771-775Polyaniline (PANI), polypyrrole (PPy), and polythiophene (PTh) have much more attention in energy applications owing to their optical and electrical properties. To overcome the problems associated with these polymers, the Up-Conversion Carbon Quantum Dot (UC-CQD) based materials are employed. That has more desirable features, like hydrophilicity, low toxicity, and high water solubility. The UC-CQD in the electrochemical field is creating great attention to photoluminescent behaviors and low specific capacitance. When UC-CQD is combined with the conducting polymers, the optical properties are enhanced with the help of energy transfer processes. By the advantage of electropolymerization technique, the solubility problems are tackled, because the monomer has coated on the substrate. Herein, the preparation and characterization of the UC-CQD doped, PPy, and PTh films have been reported and their optical and electrical properties are investigated. The band gap of PPy and PPy-CQD is analysed from Tauc plot and calculated to be 2.54 and 1.69 eV respectively. The 50% and 60% mass loss were observed in thermogravimetric analysis for PPy and PPy-CQD respectively. These materials can be used for organic solar cell applications in near future

A study on food-medicine continuum among the non-institutionally trained siddha practitioners of Tiruvallur district, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract Background Medicinal properties of the food species are one of the poorly documented and important areas of ethnopharmacology. The present survey quantitatively documented the medicinal foods prescribed by the non-institutionally trained siddha practitioners of Tiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu. Methods Field work was carried out between December 2014 and April 2017 using a questionnaire. The illnesses mentioned by the informants were grouped as illness categories on the basis of emic perceptions. Sufficiency of sampling of this survey was assessed by plotting the cumulative number of UR and Shannon-Wiener’s index. The indices such as informant consensus factor (FIC), Index of Agreement on Remedies (IAR), and Cultural Food Significance Index (CFSI) were calculated. Results This study documented 165 medicinal foods used by 82 non-institutionally trained siddha practitioners of Tiruvallur district, and 73.93% of these preparations were plant based. Among the animal taxa, 82.05% were represented by fish taxa. The illness category gastrointestinal ailments is the majorly cited illness category treated with plant-based formulations. The illness categories viz., gastrointestinal ailments, hemorrhoids, and neural ailments had high consensus under the group of plant-based medicinal foods. In animal-based medicinal foods, kapha ailments had gained 23.07% of UR. The illness categories such as bone fractures, male reproductive ailments, blood ailments, and anabolic had high FIC values. Conclusions Deeper studies on different dietary cultures of India may help to derive better interpretations on food-medicine continuum. This study identified some important claims such as the use of citron, pomegranate and Solanum americanum (gastrointestinal ailments), Abutilon indicum, onions and elephant foot yam (hemorrhoids), Boerhavia diffusa (urinary ailments), Moringa oleifera (anemia), Aloe vera (gynecological ailments), Eclipta prostrata (liver ailments), ivy gourd (diabetes), citron (hypertension), Centella asiatica (psychological ailments), spade nose shark (lactogogue), reticulate whipray (wheezing and bronchitis), Katelysia opima (impotence), Indian squid (anemia), and Indian oil sardine (anabolic). More studies on these claims will help identify novel functional foods to add to the field of medical nutrition therapy, with traditional brand identity. Robust studies on the documentation of the traditional knowledge on marine resources will yield a good database for various stakeholders and policy makers

Superconductivity on a crossover phenomenon of spin–ladder system SrCa13Cu24O41 single crystals

Electrical resistivity and alternating current susceptibility measurements were performed for the spin–ladder compound SrCa13Cu24O41 under hydrostatic pressure up to 8 GPa. The superconducting transition was observed below TC = 14.7 K at pressures above 2 GPa. By using high-quality single crystals, the bulk superconductivity with a volume fraction of 50% and temperature quadratic behavior of the normal state resistivity were observed above 3.7 GPa. They suggest that a strong interladder interaction induces the bulk superconductivity and transforms the system into a Fermi-liquid-like state. The optimal pressure was in a crossover region and the highest TC was observed without going through the bulk superconducting state. Our results suggest that the superconducting state on the crossover phenomenon presents the feature of the doped two-leg spin–ladder system because the spin gap was observed in this compound. © 2014, The Physical Society of Japan