Strong interrelationship between anomalous electric-field induced lattice strain along non-polar direction and domain reorientation in pseudorhombohedral piezoelectric ceramic BiScO3-PbTiO3

The lattice strain and domain switching behaviour was investigated as a function of cyclic field and grain orientation for a pseudorhombohedral composition of the high Curie point piezoelectric system xBiScO3 - (1-x)PbTiO3 (x = 0.40) by in-situ electric field diffraction technique with high energy synchrotron x-rays. Along the field direction, the system exhibts five time large strain along 100 as compared to the 111 direction. A one-to-one correspondence between the 200 lattice strain and the 111 domain switching suggests a strong correlation between the two phenomena.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

Developmenrt of EST-SSR and genomic-SSR markers to assess genetic diversity in Jatropha Curcas L.

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p><it>Jatropha curcas L. </it>has attracted a great deal of attention worldwide, regarding its potential as a new biodiesel crop. However, the understanding of this crop remains very limited and little genomic research has been done. We used simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers that could be transferred from <it>Manihot esculenta </it>(cassava) to analyze the genetic relationships among 45 accessions of <it>J. curcas </it>from our germplasm collection.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In total, 187 out of 419 expressed sequence tag (EST)-SSR and 54 out of 182 genomic (G)-SSR markers from cassava were polymorphic among the <it>J. curcas </it>accessions. The EST-SSR markers comprised 26.20% dinucleotide repeats, 57.75% trinucleotide repeats, 7.49% tetranucleotide repeats, and 8.56% pentanucleotide repeats, whereas the majority of the G-SSR markers were dinucleotide repeats (62.96%). The 187 EST-SSRs resided in genes that are involved mainly in biological and metabolic processes. Thirty-six EST-SSRs and 20 G-SSRs were chosen to analyze the genetic diversity among 45 <it>J. curcas </it>accessions. A total of 183 polymorphic alleles were detected. On the basis of the distribution of these polymorphic alleles, the 45 accessions were classified into six groups, in which the genotype showed a correlation with geographic origin. The estimated mean genetic diversity index was 0.5572, which suggests that our <it>J. curcas </it>germplasm collection has a high level of genetic diversity. This should facilitate subsequent studies on genetic mapping and molecular breeding.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We identified 241 novel EST-SSR and G-SSR markers in <it>J. curcas</it>, which should be useful for genetic mapping and quantitative trait loci analysis of important agronomic traits. By using these markers, we found that the intergroup gene diversity of <it>J. curcas </it>was greater than the intragroup diversity, and that the domestication of the species probably occurred partly in America and partly in Hainan, China.</p

CAETS 2015 Convocation on Pathways to Sustainability

This book contains the proceedings of CAETS 2015 Convocation on ‘Pathways to Sustainability: Energy, Mobility and Healthcare Engineering’ that was held on October 13-14, 2015 in New Delhi. This 3 volume proceedings provide an international forum for discussion and communication of engineering and technological issues of common concern. This volume talks about ‘Energy’ and includes 22 chapters on diverse topics like renewable energy, advances and applications of bio-energy and bio-refinery, energy options and scenarios, wind energy for buildings and transportation, etc. The contents of this volume will be useful to researchers, professionals, and policy makers alike.The book contains the proceedings of CAETS 2015 Convocation on ‘Pathways to Sustainability: Energy, Mobility and Healthcare Engineering’ that was held on October 13-14, 2015 in New Delhi. This 3 volume proceedings provide an international forum for discussion and communication of engineering and technological issues of common concern. This volume talks about ‘Healthcare’ and includes 11 chapters on diverse topics like regenerative engineering, big data analytics in healthcare, molecular science, rising expenditure on health issues, adoption of personalized medicine, etc. The contents of this volume will be useful to researchers and healthcare professionals. .The book contains the proceedings of CAETS 2015 Convocation on ‘Pathways to Sustainability: Energy, Mobility and Healthcare Engineering’ that was held on October 13-14, 2015 in New Delhi. This 3 volume proceedings provide an international forum for discussion and communication of engineering and technological issues of common concern. This volume talks about ‘Mobility’ and includes 14 chapters on diverse topics like creating sustainable transportation systems, mobility of the future, unique engineering features like Delhi metro, digitally re-imagining mobility, trends and future strategies of transportation electrification, etc. The contents of this book will be useful to researchers, professionals, and policy makers alike

Correlation between enhanced lattice polarizability and high piezoelectric response in BiScO3-PbTiO3

Piezoelectric and ex situ electric-field induced structural studies were carried out on closely spaced compositions in the morphotropic phase boundary region of (1 - x) PbTiO3-(x)BiScO3. While the common approach of zero field structural analysis failed to provide a unique relationship between the anomalous piezoresponse of x = 0.3725 and structural factor(s), ex situ study of electric-field induced structural changes revealed that the composition exhibiting the highest piezoelectric response is the one which also exhibits significantly enhanced polarizability of the lattices of both coexisting (monoclinic and tetragonal) phases. The enhanced lattice polarizability manifests as a significant fraction of the monoclinic phase transforming irreversibly to the tetragonal phase after electric poling. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.06410

Disorder-induced room temperature ferromagnetism in glassy chromites.

We report an unusual robust ferromagnetic order above room temperature upon amorphization of perovskite [YCrO3] in pulsed laser deposited thin films. This is contrary to the usual expected formation of a spin glass magnetic state in the resulting disordered structure. To understand the underlying physics of this phenomenon, we combine advanced spectroscopic techniques and first-principles calculations. We find that the observed order-disorder transformation is accompanied by an insulator-metal transition arising from a wide distribution of Cr-O-Cr bond angles and the consequent metallization through free carriers. Similar results also found in YbCrO3-films suggest that the observed phenomenon is more general and should, in principle, apply to a wider range of oxide systems. The ability to tailor ferromagnetic order above room temperature in oxide materials opens up many possibilities for novel technological applications of this counter intuitive effect