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Germanium is one of the most promising materials for high performance infra-red photovoltaic devices. High quality singlecrystal germanium on insulator structures can be produced by a Rapid Melt Growth process. Experiments show that thin-film germanium deposited by physical vapor deposition provides better quality in comparison with chemical vapor deposition. The longitudinal optical Ge-Ge peak in Raman spectrum is shifted from the expected 300.2 cm -1 position due to tensile stress resulting from the thermal expansion differences of the materials. The importance of silicon in the rapid melt process is confirmed by the fact that germanium films on sapphire substrates yielded polycrystalline structure. Films produced at high temperature (980 o C) show GeGe Raman peak with linewidth of 3.3 cm -1 indicating good crystalline quality, comparable to bulk germanium (3.2 cm -1 ), and thus demonstrating the potential to produce low cost high quality germanium films.

Publisher rights This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Powder Technology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Powder Technology, vol 272, issue March 2015 doi: 10.1016/j.powtec.2014.11.042. General rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact openaccess@qub.ac.uk. The overall aim of the project was to study the influence of process variables on the 36 distribution of a model active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) during fluidised melt 37 granulation of pharmaceutical granules with a view of optimising product characteristics. 38Granules were produced using common pharmaceutical excipients; lactose monohydrate 39 using poly ethylene glycol (PEG1500) as a meltable binder. Methylene blue was used as a

This paper presents the electrical characterisation of germanium stripe resistors produced by Physical Vapour Deposition using a Rapid Melt Growth process with either single or multiple micro-crucible materials. Electrical measurement of single germanium stripe resistors were obtained using a Greek cross test structure whereas four-terminal aluminium rail test structures were used for germanium stripe arrays. The electrical characterisation was conducted under dark conditions. Results showed only a slight reduction in germanium sheet resistance compared to that of as-deposited material even after a high temperature (980 o C) crystal growth process. It is believed that the measurements were compromised by contact and leakage current issues. As a result, the electrical characteristics of crystallised germanium could not be investigated properly and the relationship to Raman measurement was not established.

Natural rubber is widely used in daily human life because of its excellent properties. At present, manual tapping is the main method to obtain natural rubber. Since the growth of the industrial sector is in line with the national economy, the demand for rubber resources has also increased. However, natural rubber production countries are now lacking their workforce because tapping rubber trees can be considered a high skill-oriented task. The lack of trained tappers will affect rubber production. Hence, this paper proposes a new mechanism for an automated rubber tapping mechanism. The experimental results showed the effectiveness of the developed device, with accurate 30 degrees diagonal cuts.

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A frequency selective surface (FSS) structure based on a circular slot with 28 to 31 μm was fabricated using Electron Beam Lithography combined with wet etching technique on a 400 μm thick quartz substrate. The circular slot pattern, designed using the CST software, was transferred during the Electron Beam (EBL) exposure with 100 kV voltage acceleration, 2 nA of e-beam current, and line dosage of 1000 μC2. A 0.5 μm thick aluminium layer was deposited on a quartz substrate using the thermal evaporator technique. The aluminium thickness was confirmed by laser microscope and surface profiler measurement. The investigation shows that 20 seconds is the optimal etching time for producing the desired FSS circular slot structure compared to 40 and 60 seconds. The fabricated samples surface metrology was examined using an optical microscope, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM) and Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). The material compositions of the samples were confirmed by using the Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) measurement. Results show that, on average, there are ±1.5 μm of tolerance produced for fabricated sample size on the circular slot pattern compared to the CST simulation results. FSS performance slightly shifted in the frequency from actual 1.80 THz to 1.79 THz, whereas the transmission magnitude has increased by 0.03 from 0.91 to 0.94.