Verma, M.L., Minakshi, M. and Singh, N.K. (2014)SynthesisThis is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

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This report describes the structural and electrochemical properties of the nanocomposite polymer electrolyte (70PEO:30AgI) incorporating SiO2 filler of different weight percentage (wt %) ranging between 1 and 10 wt %. Studies on inorganic filler in polymer matrix may be quite familiar, but the chosen polymer, the effect of concentration exhibiting the highest conductivity, and its use for capacitor studies are novel and are studied with the aid of impedance spectroscopy. The optimum composite composition (OCC) of 5 wt % loading, 95­(70PEO:30AgI):5SiO2, exhibited the best performance of conductivity (σ ∼ 2.50 × 10–3 S/cm) and a low activation energy of 0.1 eV. The impedance, capacitive, and other structural behavior of the polymer electrolyte validated the proposed conceptual idea. The conductivity enhancement has been well-correlated with the change in structure and morphology of the polymer electrolyte, suggesting that the amorphous domain is found to be suitable for solid-state capacitor applications.

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An adaptation, inspired by the concept of jumping genes in biology, is developed for the binary-coded elitist nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II). This helps in obtaining global-optimal solutions faster, particularly for problems involving networks. This is because the optimal values of some decision variables in such problems may be 0 or 1, e.g., some streams may be nonexistent in the optimal configuration. It is difficult to generate such chromosomes in the binary-coded NSGA-II (or the unmodified version of the real coded NSGA-II) using the three conventional operations of reproduction, crossover, and mutation. The algorithm developed is used to solve a few sample simple problems involving froth flotation circuits, which represent an important problem in mineral beneficiation. A two-species, two-cell flotation circuit is studied. Both single-objective as well as multi-objective optimizations are performed. The two important objectives used are as follows:  (i) the maximization of the recovery of the concentrated ore and (ii) the maximization of the valuable-mineral content (grade) in the concentrated ore. A constraint of a fixed total flotation cell volume is also used. Because these objectives are conflicting, Pareto sets of nondominated solutions are obtained. The algorithm also can be used for the optimization of other networks.

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We have reported the electronic, magnetic and optical properties of carbon doped bilayer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) using thedensity functional theory. A single Cdoping at B/N sites gives the large band gap similar to dilute magnetic semiconducting behaviour with a finite net magnetic moment of 1.001 and 0.998μ B , respectively.For double doping at B/N sites the net magnetic moment increases to 1.998 and 1.824μ B , respectively. Upon C-doping at N-site, we obtained transition from nonmagnetic semiconductor (pristine) ! magnetic semiconductor (1C) ! half-metal ferromagnetic (2C) ! metal (3C). In case of the B site, we observed metallic behaviour for 2C-doping. As 1,2 C-doping at the B site reduces the energy band gap from 1.8 eV to 0.81 eV, falls in the visible range and offers an opportunity to utilized as a photocatalyst material. C-doped systems show a magnetic semiconducting behavior crucial for spintronic applications.