The present study, aims to investigate the effect of minor Zr and Nb alloying on soft magnetic and electrical properties of Fe86(ZrxNb1-x)7B6Cu1 (x = 1, 0.75, 0.5, 0.25) alloys. The investigated alloys were prepared through the melt spinning process. Within the examined compositional range (Nb up to 5.25at%, respectively), the soft magnetic properties and electrical resistivity of the alloys continuously increase with increasing Nb content. However increasing the Nb content further decreases such properties. We could confirm the influence of ratio of Zr and Nb on grain growth and crystallization fraction during crystallization by using the soft magnetic properties and electrical properties.
Al and Nb-doped Li7La3Zr2O12 (LLZO) and W-doped LLZO lithium ion conducting electrolyte samples were prepared and their H2O stability was investigated. The LLZO samples were exposed to 50% humidified air for 48 h. After H2O exposure, a cubic to tetragonal transformation occurred and acquired SEM images exhibited the presence of reaction phases at the grain boundaries of Al and Nb-LLZO. As a result, the lithium ion conductivity significantly decreased after H2O exposure. On the contrary, W-LLZO showed good stability against H2O. Although the cubic to tetragonal transformation was also observed in H2O-exposed W-LLZO, the decrease in lithium ion conductivity was found to be modest. No morphological changes of the W-LLZO samples were confirmed in the H2O-exposed W-LLZO samples.
In this study, agar-based nanocomposite films containing ultra-porous silica aerogel particles were fabricated by gel casting using an aqueous agar/silica aerogel slurry. The silica aerogel particles did not show significant agglomeration and were homogeneously distributed in the agar matrix. Transmission electron microscopy observations demonstrated that the silica aerogel particles had a mesoporous microstructure and their pores were not incorporated into the agar polymer molecules. The thermal conductivities of the agar and agar/5 wt.% silica aerogel nanocomposite films were 0.36 and 0.20 W·m–1·K–1, respectively. The transmittance of the agar films did not decrease upon the addition of silica aerogel particles into them. This can be attributed to the anti-reflection effect of silica aerogel particles.