The assembly of Ag nanowires on quartz substrates from suspensions of water and ethylene glycol under stirring has been investigated. The introduction of stirring makes a remarkable difference to the assembly morphology. Firstly, the surface coverage of Ag nanowires is increased by a factor of 4 (in water) and 8 (in ethylene glycol) with stirring. Secondly, the Ag nanowires assembled in the stirred ethylene glycol dispersion were highly aligned. The influence of the surface of substrates, solvents and profile of the nanowires on the alignment has been explored, which indicates that stirring is an efficient way to generate nanowire arrays. This study has revealed the great potential of the stirring-assisted assembly technique in producing structurally controlled nanoarchitectures, opening up new opportunities for manufacturing ordered nanomaterials.

Phased array ultrasonic testing, an effective ultrasonic testing (UT) technology, has been widely used in steel inspection because of its high accuracy, sensitivity, and efficiency. However, as its application in as-cast magnesium alloys has just begun, more research is needed. Considering the important role of the gain compensation in quantifying defects in magnesium alloys by ultrasonic phased array technology, the effects of microstructure, the position, size, and overlap of defects, and boundary distance (distance from the defect position to the side surface of the test casting) on gain compensation of as-cast AZ80 and AZ31 magnesium alloys were studied. Results show the gain compensation increases with the increase of grain size. There is a strict linear positive correlation between gain compensation and defect depth, but such relationship no longer exists due to the defects overlap, orientation and boundary distance. In addition, there is a strict linear negative correlation between the gain compensation and defect size.