Energy bandgap engineering of ZnO using impurity elements for solar cell applications: a DFT study

As a transparent conducting oxide, Cd:ZnO system is considered potential candidate for optoelectronic applications alternate to Al:ZnO. However instability issue of the Cd:ZnO system is under debate. Here we investigate effect of Cd impurities on physical properties of ZnO in wurtzite (WZ) as well as zincblende (ZB) geometries. Density functional theory (DFT) based full potential linearized augmented plane wave plus local orbital FP-L(APW+lo) method has been adapted for these investigations. To calculate the total energy of the system, exchange correlation energy term is evaluated at the level of GGA. For the more realistic band gap calculation, GGA in addition to mBJ exchange potential has been employed. From our calculations, it is observed, Cd:ZnO is more stable in ZB structure than that of WZ. The Cd substitution ZnO has a tendency to convert the hexagonal geometry into cubic. It is also observed, doping of the Cd impurities strongly influence the electronic structures resulting into the narrowing energy band gap

Nanoclay effect on the ablative behaviour of glass fiber reinforced polymer and glass fiber reinforced geopolymer nanocomposite using radiography

The addition of nanoscale additives to polymers can increase their thermal resistance, making them suitable for a variety of engineering applications. In this investigation, nondestructive testing (NDT) was performed to observe the composite's post-fire test behaviour. This study investigated the ablative behaviour of glass fibre-reinforced epoxy and geopolymer with varying nanoclay concentrations. Additionally, after firing all of the samples, the thermal defects were evaluated with Infrared thermography method, Digital Detector Array (DDA) Radiography method. According to the ablation analysis, increasing the nanoclay concentration in nanocomposites was found to increase the samples' thermal ablation. In addition, geopolymer nanocomposite exhibited superior ablative behaviour compared to epoxy nanocomposite, with a back surface temperature of 51.34 °C compared to 176.86 °C for 7 wt nanoclay in epoxy nanocomposite. DDA analysis revealed that the nanocomposite surface structure contains fewer voids when a higher proportion of nanoclay is employed

Public Awareness and Practices Towards Self-Medication with Antibiotics Among Malaysian Population: Questionnaire Development and Pilot Testing

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