Toughened uni-piece fibrous insulation

A porous body of fibrous, low density silica-based insulation material is at least in part impregnated with a reactive boron oxide containing borosilicate glass frit, a silicon tetraboride fluxing agent and a molybdenum silicide emittance agent. The glass frit, fluxing agent and emittance agent are separately milled to reduce their particle size, then mixed together to produce a slurry in ethanol. The slurry is then applied to the insulation material and sintered to produce the porous body

Ocean foam generation and modeling

A laboratory investigation was conducted to determine the physical and microwave properties of ocean foam. Special foam generators were designed and fabricated, using porous glass sheets, known as glass frits, as the principal element. The glass frit was sealed into a water-tight vertical box, a few centimeters from the bottom. Compressed air, applied to the lower chamber, created ocean foam from sea water lying on the frit. Foam heights of 30 cm were readily achieved, with relatively low air pressures. Special photographic techniques and analytical procedures were employed to determine foam bubble size distributions. In addition, the percentage water content of ocean foam was determined with the aid of a particulate sampling procedure. A glass frit foam generator, with pore diameters in the range 70 - 100 micrometers, produced foam with bubble distributions very similar to those found on the surface of natural ocean foam patches

Monolithic Silicon EUV Collector

A collector optic assembly for a EUV radiation source. The collector optic assembly includes an elliptical meniscus having a reflective Si/Mo coating for collecting and reflecting EUV radiation generated by the source. The meniscus is machined from a single piece of silicon. The collector optic assembly further includes a heat exchanger that includes cooling channels through which flows a liquid coolant. The heat exchanger is fabricated from a plurality of machined silicon sections fused together by a glass frit bonding process. The meniscus is fused to a front side of the heat echanger by a glass frit bonding process. A liquid coolant inlet manifold and a liquid coolant outlet manifold are also each machined from a single silicon block and are mounted to a back side of the heat exchange

Screen Printed PZT Thick Films Using Composite Film Technology

A spin coating composite sol gel technique for producing lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thick films has been modified for use with screen printing techniques. The resulting screen printing technique can be used to produce 10 ?m thick films in a single print. The resultant films are porous but the density can be increased through the use of repeated sol infiltration/pyrolysis treatments to yield a high density film. When fired at 710°C the composite screen printed films have dielectric and piezoelectric properties comparable to, or exceeding, those of films produced using a 'conventional' powder/glass frit/oil ink and fired at 890°C

Reaction cured glass and glass coatings

The invention relates to reaction cured glass and glass coatings prepared by reacting a compound selected from the group consisting of silicon tetraboride, silicon hexaboride, other boron silicides, boron and mixtures with a reactive glass frit composed of a porous high silica borosilicate glass and boron oxide. The glassy composites of the present invention are useful as coatings on low density fibrous porous silica insulations used as heat shields and for articles such as reaction vessels that are subjected to high temperatures with rapid heating and cooling and that require resistance to temperature and repeated thermal shock at temperatures up to about 1482C (2700PF)

Overlimiting Current and Shock Electrodialysis in Porous Media

Most electrochemical processes, such as electrodialysis, are limited by diffusion, but in porous media, surface conduction and electro-osmotic flow also contribute to ionic fluxes. In this paper, we report experimental evidence for surface-driven over-limiting current (faster than diffusion) and deionization shocks (propagating salt removal) in a porous medium. The apparatus consists of a silica glass frit (1 mm thick with 500 nm mean pore size) in an aqueous electrolyte (CuSO$_4$ or AgNO$_3$) passing ionic current from a reservoir to a cation-selective membrane (Nafion). The current-voltage relation of the whole system is consistent with a proposed theory based on the electro-osmotic flow mechanism over a broad range of reservoir salt concentrations (0.1 mM - 1.0 M), after accounting for (Cu) electrode polarization and pH-regulated silica charge. Above the limiting current, deionized water ($\approx 10 \mu$ $M$) can be continuously extracted from the frit, which implies the existence of a stable shock propagating against the flow, bordering a depleted region that extends more than 0.5mm across the outlet. The results suggest the feasibility of "shock electrodialysis" as a new approach to water desalination and other electrochemical separations.Comment: 39 pages, 9 fig

An Experimental and Numerical Study on Glass Frit Wafer-to-Wafer Bonding

A thermo-mechanical wafer-to-wafer bonding process is studied through experiments on the glass frit material and thermo-mechanical numerical simulations to evaluate the effect of the residual stresses on the wafer warpage. To experimentally characterize the material, confocal laser profilometry and scanning electron microscopy for surface observation, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy for microstructural investigation, and nanoindentation and die shear tests for the evaluation of mechanical properties are used. An average effective Young’s modulus of 86.5 ± 9.5 GPa, a Poisson’s ratio of 0.19 ± 0.02, and a hardness of 5.26 ± 0.8 GPa were measured through nanoindentation for the glass frit material. The lowest nominal shear strength ranged 1.13 ÷ 1.58 MPa in the strain rate interval to 0.33 ÷ 4.99 × 10 (Formula presented.) s (Formula presented.). To validate the thermo-mechanical model, numerical results are compared with experimental measurements of the out-of-plane displacements at the wafer surface (i.e., warpage), showing acceptable agreement

High temperature glass thermal control structure and coating

A high temperature stable and solar radiation stable thermal control coating is described which is useful either as such, applied directly to a member to be protected, or applied as a coating on a re-usable surface insulation (RSI). It has a base coat layer and an overlay glass layer. The base coat layer has a high emittance, and the overlay layer is formed from discrete, but sintered together glass particles to give the overlay layer a high scattering coefficient. The resulting two-layer space and thermal control coating has an absorptivity-to-emissivity ratio of less than or equal to 0.4 at room temperature, with an emittance of 0.8 at 1200 F. It is capable of exposure to either solar radiation or temperatures as high as 2000 F without significant degradation. When used as a coating on a silica substrate to give an RSI structure, the coatings of this invention show significantly less reduction in emittance after long term convective heating and less residual strain than prior art coatings for RSI structures

Water Purification by Shock Electrodialysis: Deionization, Filtration, Separation, and Disinfection

The development of energy and infrastructure efficient water purification systems are among the most critical engineering challenges facing our society. Water purification is often a multi-step process involving filtration, desalination, and disinfection of a feedstream. Shock electrodialysis (shock ED) is a newly developed technique for water desalination, leveraging the formation of ion concentration polarization (ICP) zones and deionization shock waves in microscale pores near to an ion selective element. While shock ED has been demonstrated as an effective water desalination tool, we here present evidence of other simultaneous functionalities. We show that, unlike electrodialysis, shock ED can thoroughly filter micron-scale particles and aggregates of nanoparticles present in the feedwater. We also demonstrate that shock ED can enable disinfection of feedwaters, as approximately $99\%$ of viable bacteria (here \textit{E. coli}) in the inflow were killed or removed by our prototype. Shock ED also separates positive from negative particles, contrary to claims that ICP acts as a virtual barrier for all charged particles. By combining these functionalities (filtration, separation and disinfection) with deionization, shock ED has the potential to enable more compact and efficient water purification systems

Electrodes for solid state devices

The invention relates to coated metal powders and to dispersions of such powders in liquid vehicles forming screenable, sinterable pastes for use in forming electrodes on photovoltaic devices. The primary nickel or copper metal particles are provided with a carrier of lower melting sintering metals such as 1-20% by weight, of a non-oxidizing metal such as lead or tin. The powdered metal systems operate on the basis of fusing together by way of eutectic alloying. As the paste is heated during firing the organic binder is first vaporized. An eutectic of the base metal (copper) and coating (tin) forms at the intersections of the base metal grains. This eutectic dissolves the grains and as the temperature is raised above the eutectic temperature, more of the base metal is dissolved. While the temperature is held at the higher value, the much smaller amount of sintering metal disappears as the eutectic dissolves and diffuses into the base metal until the composition of the eutectic is so enriched with base metal that it no longer has the eutectic properties and it solidifies. In this high temperature solidification, the base metal grains became thoroughly alloyed together and will not separate at the eutectic temperature (a lower temperature than their solidification by diffusion)