The main goal of this study was to obtain, for the first time, highly efficient water barrier and oxygen-scavenging multilayered electrospun biopaper coatings of biodegradable polymers over conventional cellulose paper, using the electrospinning coating technique. In order to do so, poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) and polycaprolactone (PCL) polymer-containing palladium nanoparticles (PdNPs) were electrospun over paper, and the morphology, thermal properties, water vapor barrier, and oxygen absorption properties of nanocomposites and multilayers were investigated. In order to reduce the porosity, and to enhance the barrier properties and interlayer adhesion, the biopapers were annealed after electrospinning. A previous study showed that electrospun PHB-containing PdNP did show significant oxygen scavenging capacity, but this was strongly reduced after annealing, a process that is necessary to form a continuous film with the water barrier. The results in the current work indicate that the PdNP were better dispersed and distributed in the PCL matrix, as suggested by focus ion beam-scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) experiments, and that the Pd enhanced, to some extent, the onset of PCL degradation. More importantly, the PCL/PdNP nanobiopaper exhibited much higher oxygen scavenging capacity than the homologous PHB/PdNP, due to most likely, the higher oxygen permeability of the PCL polymer and the somewhat higher dispersion of the Pd. The passive and active multilayered biopapers developed here may be of significant relevance to put forward the next generation of fully biodegradable barrier papers of interest in, for instance, food packaging.

This article presents the results of an analysis regarding the microstructure, mechanical strength, and microhardness of two kinds of samples built through selective laser melting with Inconel 718, the most frequently used alloy in metal additive manufacturing due to its excellent mechanical properties. The sample geometry was made up of two types of lattice structures with spherical and hyperbolical stiffness elements. The goals of these studies are to determine how homogenization heat treatment influences the microhardness and the mechanical properties of the specimens and to identify the structure with the best mechanical properties. The analysis showed that heat treatment was beneficial because the regular dendritic structure disappears, the δ phase precipitates at the grain boundaries, and both the γ and γ″ phases dissolve. It has also been shown that the structures with hyperbolical stiffness elements have better compressive strength than the structures with the elliptical structures, with a 47.6% increase for the as-fabricated structures and an approximate 50% increase for the heat-treated structure.

Low fracture toughness is a common problem encountered by many researchers in the application of pure TiB₂ coatings. To improve their properties, a convenient and useful method is the use of doping, so this study proposes the deposition of TiB₂ enriched with Zr on a steel substrate. The objective of the research was to investigate the impact of Zr addition to TiB₂ coatings on both their mechanical and tribological properties. Four coatings with varying compositions (pure TiB₂; TiB₂ doped with 3, 6, and 10 at.% Zr) were deposited using magnetron sputtering from TiB₂ and Zr targets. The coating structures were analyzed by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Nanoindentation, scratch test, and ball-on-disk test were used to determine the mechanical and tribological properties. In most cases, only two factors have a significant impact on the mechanical and tribological properties of the Zr-doped coating. Firstly, a change in the preferred orientation of the coating from (102)(111) to (100) results in increased hardness and wear resistance. Secondly, a reduction in crystallite and column size enhances ductility and fracture toughness by impeding or altering the direction of crack propagation. Based on the study, one can conclude that the optimal Ti_1-xZr_xB₂ properties were obtained for 6 at.% Zr content.

We investigated the mechanism and kinetics of the formation of metastable BiGe solid phases during the amorphous-to-crystalline transformation of Ge films in contact with Bi. Ge/Bi/Ge sandwich films with a Bi film between amorphous Ge films, which were fabricated by sequential deposition of the components in a vacuum, were used in this study. The total thickness and composition of the sandwich films varied in the range from 30 to 400 nm and from 22 to 48 wt% Bi, respectively. Electron diffraction, high-resolution (S)TEM imaging, EDX, and EEL spectroscopy were used for in situ and ex situ characterization of the morphology, composition, and structure of Ge/Bi/Ge films in the temperature range of 20–271 °C. We proved the formation of polycrystalline Ge films containing up to 28 wt% Bi during low-temperature treatment. The interaction process was activated at ≈150 °C, resulting in the crystallization of Ge with the simultaneous formation of a quasi-homogeneous supersaturated solid solution throughout the entire volume of the film at ≈210 °C. We showed that the formation of crystalline Ge films with an extended solid solubility of Bi depended mostly on the overall composition of the tri-layer film. The role of metal-induced crystallization of the amorphous germanium in the formation of the supersaturated solid phases is discussed.