A new route to synthesize high degree polythiophene in a room temperature melt medium

Conducting polymers suffer from folds and kinks because of random nucleation and solvation of a free radical cation to yield a cross linked/disordered polymer and therefore a solvent free electrochemical polymerization in a room temperature melt medium is adopted to yield a high degree polymer with high electronic conductivity. Electropolymerization of thiophene was performed on platinum/ITO substrates using cyclic voltametry or galvenostatic mode in chloroaluminate room temperature melt medium to obtain a reddish brown free standing film which can be peeled off from the electrode surface after a minimum of 10 cycles. The conductivity was found to be around 102 S/cm. The degree of polymerization was calculated to be around 44 from IR studies. A layered structure supportive for high degree of polymerization was witnessed from potential step technique. From UV spectra the charge carriers were found to be bipolarons. The morphology of the film was found to be crystalline from SEM and XRD studies. Capacitative impedance properties for doped samples were interpreted from impedance spectroscopy.

Analyzing the degree of conflict among belief functions.

The study of alternative combination rules in DS theory when evidence is in conflict has emerged again recently as an interesting topic, especially in data/information fusion applications. These studies have mainly focused on investigating which alternative would be appropriate for which conflicting situation, under the assumption that a conflict is identified. The issue of detection (or identification) of conflict among evidence has been ignored. In this paper, we formally define when two basic belief assignments are in conflict. This definition deploys quantitative measures of both the mass of the combined belief assigned to the emptyset before normalization and the distance between betting commitments of beliefs.We argue that only when both measures are high, it is safe to say the evidence is in conflict. This definition can be served as a prerequisite for selecting appropriate combination rules.

Equilibrium structure of erbium-oxygen complexes in crystalline silicon

The equilibrium structure of ErOn (nless than or equal to6) complexes in crystalline silicon has been investigated by density-functional computations. Two different geometries have been considered, corresponding to the substitutional and tetrahedral interstitial site for erbium. All atomic coordinates have been optimized by Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics. The resulting structures have low symmetry, with E-O distances of similar to2.35 Angstrom. The substitutional site is the most stable one for nless than or equal to2, while the tetrahedral interstitial is favored for n>2.