No abstract

The effects of thermal treatment on the properties and photoactivities of TiO2 catalysts supported on 316 stainless steel plates were examined. Degussa P-25 was immobilized on 316 stainless steel plates by electrophoretic deposition. These TiO2-coated plates were heated at 473, 673, and 873 K for 1 h. The photoactivities of these TiO2 coatings were determined based on the removal of benzoic acid as the model pollutant. In particular, the photoactivity decreased by 52% in the sample heated at 873 K compared with the unheated sample. The results of x-ray diffraction showed that the crystallinity and the crystallite sizes of the catalysts supported on the plates did not significantly vary with increasing temperature over the range examined. Negligible change in the catalyst phase (the anatase-to-rutile ratio) was indicated from x-ray diffraction and micro-Raman spectroscopy. However, it was found that the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller surface area of the scraped catalysts heated at 873 K decreased by nearly 13% compared with the unheated sample. In addition, scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive x-ray and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses also detected the presence of Fe3+ ions at the surface of the supported catalysts heated at 873 K. The drop in surface area and the presence of Fe3+ ions at the catalyst surface, which were considered to function as electron–hole recombination centers, were possible factors leading to the drop in the photoactivity exhibited by the sample. A lower temperature for thermal treatment such as 473 K was proposed to ensure the coating stability and the catalyst photoactivity.

In this paper, we present a new workflow that is based on the conversion of Extended Burst-Mode (XBM) specifications to Signal Transition Graphs (STGs). While XBMs offer a simple design entry to specify asynchronous circuits, they cannot be synthesised into speed-independent (SI) circuits, due to the 'burst mode' timing assumption inherent in the model. Furthermore, XBM synthesis tools are no longer supported, and there are no dedicated tools for formal verification of XBMs. Our approach addresses these issues, by granting the XBMs access to sophisticated synthesis and verification tools available for STGs, as well as the possibility to synthesise SI circuits. Experimental results show that our translation only linearly increases the model size and that our workflow achieves a much improved synthesis success rate, with a 33% average reduction in the literal count.