The concept of science diplomacy is gaining ground as a global strategy in addressing global concerns such as global peace, insecurity, climate change and environmental impact. This study reduces science diplomacy to an effective means for the strategic development of nanotechnology in Africa. African nations are currently not encouragingly close to the leading nations in nanotechnology, yet there seem to be extant diplomatic relationship with many of these forefront nations. African diplomats are state actors in science diplomacy to propose foreign policies that will meet the domestic demand for science and technology development in Africa, especially for emerging technologies like nanotechnology. The necessity of inclusion of competent scientists with diplomatic skills as members of the diplomatic corps is recommended here as one of the ways to develop nanotechnology in Africa. The scientist diplomats will function to foster international scientific collaborations, drive platforms for national research facility development and for non-state actors to thrive in their domestic nano-research. Scientifically informed foreign policies are presented here to have potentials to significantly assist Africa in developing nanotechnology and provide pathways for overcoming the numerous constraints to nanotechnology development in Africa. Critical areas of intervention include human capacity development, national nano-research laboratory facilities, platforms for institutional collaborations, post-graduate student training and robust exchange programs. These machineries also benefit independent individual researchers by leveraging on the international networks created by science attachés through science diplomacy.
Mesoporous 2D NiO-Nb2O5-Al2O3 nanorods (and, for the first time, template free ordered mesoporous alumina (OMA)) were prepared via glycol-thermal synthesis for the direct transformation of octane to octenes via CO2...
We investigated the structural and magnetic properties of Ni42.5(Fe, Co, Ni, Cu)0.5Mn46Sn11 alloys fabricated by arc melting. Substitution of Ni by Fe, Co and Cu causes lattice expansions consistent with increasing atomic sizes. The zero-field cooled and field cooled results show second-order magnetic transition at the high-temperature austenite phase to a first-order magnetic transition in the low-temperature martensite phase. The substitution of Ni by Fe and Co increases the austenite Curie temperature TCA from 282 K to 289 K and 294 K respectively while Cu reduces it to 278 K. The martensitic transition temperature TM increased from 221 K to 241 K for Fe substitution and decreased to 210 K and 209 K for Co and Cu respectively. The coercive field HC increased significantly from 457 Oe for Ni at 100 K to 729 Oe for Co at 80 K. The increase to 763 Oe for Fe and 769 Oe for Cu occurred at the same temperature of 40 K. We attribute such increases to domain wall pinning effects due to the inclusions of Fe, Co and Cu. The HC exhibited an anomalous temperature dependence in all the samples. The exchange bias field HEX also showed a significant enhancement below 40 K from 196 Oe for Ni to 476 Oe, 430 Oe and 434 Oe for Fe, Co, and Cu substitutions respectively. The fits to the temperature dependence of the HC reveal significant changes in the competition between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions. The peak magnetic entropy change ΔSMpk has a linear dependence on the magnetic field H2/3. The highest value of 28.8 J kg-1 K−1 for ΔSM is obtained in the first order magnetic transition compared to 3.0 J kg-1 K−1 in the second order transition. We report an effective cooling power of 155 J kg-1 in the second order magnetic transition.
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