• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.167-172
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• 2008

We fabricated $YBa_2Cu_3O_{7-x}$(YBCO) films on (00l) $LaAlO_3$ substrates prepared by metal organic deposition(MOD) method using trifluoroacetate(TFA) solution. The films with various thicknesses were prepared by repeating the dip-coating and calcining processes. The effects of film thickness on phase formation, microstructures, and critical properties were evaluated by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The microstructure and resultant critical current($I_C$) and critical current density($J_C$) varied remarkably with film thickness: The ($I_C$) value increased from 39 to 160 A/cm-width as the number of coatings increased from one to four, while the corresponding $J_C$ was measured to be in the range of $0.84-1.21\;MA/cm^2$. Both the $I_C$ and $J_C$ decreased when an additional coating was applied due to microstructural degradation, indicating that the optimum thickness is in the range of $1.1-1.8\;{\mu}m$. The possible cause for the decrease in the $I_C$ and $J_C$ value for film thicker than $1.8\;{\mu}m$ include non-uniform thickness, increased surface roughness, and the poor formability of the YBCO phase and texture arising from the insufficient heat treatment time with respect to the increased thickness.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.193-198
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• 2008

We fabricated BSCCO-2212(2212) bulk superconductors by using a casting process and evaluated the superconducting properties. The effects of annealing conditions on microstructure and critical properties were studied. It was found that the homogeneous and uniform microstructure improved the critical properties and the microstructures of ingot and annealed rods were different with the size of 2212 rod and tube. The critical current($I_c$) of rods increased with increasing annealing time, probably due to increased grain size of 2212. Annealing time of the highest $I_c$ for the smaller rod(diameter of 10 mm) was shorter(150 hr) than that of the larger rod(diameter of 16 mm, 400 hr). This size effect seems to be related to different grain sizes of the intermediate phases such as 2201 and secondary phases in the ingot. In addition, we fabricated 2212 tubes from the rod by removing the center region which contained inhomogeneous microstructures. The $I_c$ of 2212 tube with the outer diameter of 16 mm and the thickness of 2 mm was measured to 844 A, which corresponds to the critical current density of $1017\;A/cm^2$ at 77 K.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.432-436
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• 2019

This study demonstrates the effect of addition of Fe particles of different sizes on the critical properties of the superconductor $MgB_2$. Bulk $MgB_2$ is synthesized by ball milling Mg and B powders with Fe particles at $900^{\circ}C$. When Fe particles with size less than $10{\mu}m$ are added in $MgB_2$, they easily react with B and form the FeB phase, resulting in a reduction in the amount of the $MgB_2$ phase and deterioration of the crystallinity. Accordingly, both the critical temperature and the critical current density are significantly reduced. On the other hand, when larger Fe particles are added, the $Fe_2B$ phase forms instead of FeB due to the lower reactivity of Fe toward B. Accordingly, negligible loss of B occurs, and the critical properties are found to be similar to those of the intact $MgB_2$.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.8
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• pp.2767-2773
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• 2021

We used the GEANT4 Monte Carlo MC Toolkit to simulate carbon ion beams incident on water, tissue, and bone, taking into account nuclear fragmentation reactions. Upon increasing the energy of the primary beam, the position of the Bragg-Peak transfers to a location deeper inside the phantom. For different materials, the peak is located at a shallower depth along the beam direction and becomes sharper with increasing electron density NZ. Subsequently, the generated depth dose of the Bragg curve is then benchmarked with experimental data from GSI in Germany. The results exhibit a reasonable correlation with GSI experimental data with an accuracy of between 0.02 and 0.08 cm, thus establishing the basis to adopt MC in heavy-ion treatment planning. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov K-S test further ascertained from a statistical point of view that the simulation data matched the experimentally measured data very well. The two-dimensional isodose contours at the entrance were compared to those around the peak position and in the tail region beyond the peak, showing that bone produces more dose, in comparison to both water and tissue, due to secondary doses. In the water, the results show that the maximum energy deposited per fragment is mainly attributed to secondary carbon ions, followed by secondary boron and beryllium. Furthermore, the number of protons produced is the highest, thus making the maximum contribution to the total dose deposition in the tail region. Finally, the associated spectra of neutrons and photons were analyzed. The mean neutron energy value was found to be 16.29 MeV, and 1.03 MeV for the secondary gamma. However, the neutron dose was found to be negligible as compared to the total dose due to their longer range.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.481-487
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• 2020

Radiation measurement technology has steadily improved and its usage is expanding in various industries such as nuclear medicine, security search, satellite, nondestructive testing, environmental industries and the domain of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Especially, the simultaneous measurements of gamma rays and neutrons can be even more critical for nuclear safety management of spent nuclear fuel and monitoring of the nuclear material. A semiconductor detector comprising cadmium, zinc, and tellurium (CZT) enables to detect gamma-rays due to the significant atomic weight of the elements via immediate neutron and gamma-ray detection. Semiconductor sensors might be used for nuclear safety management by monitoring nuclear materials and spent nuclear fuel with high spatial resolution as well as providing real-time measurements. We aim to introduce a portable nuclide-analysis device that enables the simultaneous measurements of neutrons and gamma rays using a CZT sensor. The detector has a high density and wide energy band gap, and thus exhibits highly sensitive physical characteristics and characteristics are required for performing neutron and gamma-ray detection. Portable nuclide-analysis device is used on NPP-decommissioning sites or the purpose of nuclear nonproliferation, it will rapidly detect the nuclear material and provide radioactive-material information. Eventually, portable nuclide-analysis device can reduce measurement time and economic costs by providing a basis for rational decision making.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.204-212
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• 2021

Background: Identification of radioisotopes for plastic scintillation detectors is challenging because their spectra have poor energy resolutions and lack photo peaks. To overcome this weakness, many researchers have conducted radioisotope identification studies using machine learning algorithms; however, the effect of data normalization on radioisotope identification has not been addressed yet. Furthermore, studies on machine learning-based radioisotope identifiers for plastic scintillation detectors are limited. Materials and Methods: In this study, machine learning-based radioisotope identifiers were implemented, and their performances according to data normalization methods were compared. Eight classes of radioisotopes consisting of combinations of ²²Na, ⁶⁰Co, and ¹³⁷Cs, and the background, were defined. The training set was generated by the random sampling technique based on probabilistic density functions acquired by experiments and simulations, and test set was acquired by experiments. Support vector machine (SVM), artificial neural network (ANN), and convolutional neural network (CNN) were implemented as radioisotope identifiers with six data normalization methods, and trained using the generated training set. Results and Discussion: The implemented identifiers were evaluated by test sets acquired by experiments with and without gain shifts to confirm the robustness of the identifiers against the gain shift effect. Among the three machine learning-based radioisotope identifiers, prediction accuracy followed the order SVM > ANN > CNN, while the training time followed the order SVM > ANN > CNN. Conclusion: The prediction accuracy for the combined test sets was highest with the SVM. The CNN exhibited a minimum variation in prediction accuracy for each class, even though it had the lowest prediction accuracy for the combined test sets among three identifiers. The SVM exhibited the highest prediction accuracy for the combined test sets, and its training time was the shortest among three identifiers.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.59-65
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• 2016

Commercial synthetic resins with great amount of hydrogen atoms were investigated for neutron shielding aggregates. Total three types of resins were considered in this study: high density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP), and ultra molecular weight polyethylene (UPE). When these resins replaced 20, 40, 60 vol% of fine aggregates, mechanical properties were first evaluated including compressive and tensile strengths, and then image/microstructure analyses such as cross-section analysis, SEM, and X-ray CT were performed. The results showed that the compressive and tensile strengths decreased with the increase of replacement ratio of HDPE and PP, which was found through image analysis that it was closely related to the distribution of resins at the failure surface of test specimens. The strength reduction of UPE was quite small compared to HDPE and PP but it abruptly increased when the replacement level exceeded 60 vol%. The results of microstructure analyses indicated that the replacement level significantly affected the amount of air void so that it is critical to determine the reasonable amount of UPE to make cementitous materials for neutron shielding.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.597-604
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• 1996

Resin-type neutron shielding materials, KNS-115A, 115B and 115C have been fabricated to be used for spent fuel shipping cask. The base material is epoxy resin, and polypropylene, aluminium hydroxide and boron carbide are added. These shielding materials offer good fluidity at processing, which makes it possible to apply this resin shield to complicated geometric shapes such as shipping cask. Several measurements were made for the shielding materials to evaluate the shielding property, combustion characteristics, fire resistance, thermal and mechanical properties. The neutron shielding ability of the shielding materials is estimated to be better than that of foreign's shielding material, NS-4-FR, due to higher hydrogen atomic density. Other properties of the shielding materials are as follows: Onset temperatures; $267{\sim}270^{\circ}C$, thermal conductivities; $0.62{\sim}0.72W/m{\cdot}K$, combustion characteristics; <$800^{\circ}C$, ATB(average time of burning); <5sec, AEB(average extent of burning) ; <5mm, tensile strengths; $2.3{\sim}3.0kg/mm^2$, compressive strengths; $5.3{\sim}13.3kg/mm^2$, flexural strengths; $4.4{\sim}5.4kg/mm^2$.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.87-91
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• 2010

We fabricated the polyacrylic acid (PAA)-doped $MgB_2$ bulks and characterized their lattice parameters, actual C substitutions, microstructures, and critical properties. The boron (B) powder was mixed with PAA using N,N-dimethylformamide as solvent and then the solution was dried out at $200^{\circ}C$ and crushed. The C treated B powder and magnesium powder were mixed and compacted by uniaxial pressing at 500 MPa, followed by sintering at $900^{\circ}C$ for 1 h in high purity Ar atmosphere. We observed that the PAA doping increased the MgO amount but decreased the grain size, a-axis lattice constant, and critical temperature ($T_c$), which is indicative of the C substitution for B sites in $MgB_2$. In addition, the critical current density ($J_c$) at high magnetic field was significantly improved with increasing PAA addition: at 5 K and 6.6 T, the $J_c$ of 7 wt% PAA-doped sample was $6.39\;{\times}\;10^3\;A/cm^2$ which was approximately 6-fold higher than that of the pure sample ($1.04\;{\times}\;10^3\;A/cm^2$). This improvement was probably due to the C substitution and the refinement of grain size by PAA doping, suggesting that PAA is an effective dopant in improving $J_c$(B) performance of $MgB_2$.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.683-690
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• 2003

The high strength low alloy(HSLA) steels microalloyed with Nb, Ti and V have been widely used as the automobile parts to decrease weight of vehicles. The effects of process conditions are investigated in the aspects of the precipitation behavior and the mechanical properties of HSLA steel microalloyed with Nb and Ti using TEM, SANS and mechanical testing. When Ti was added to a 0.07C-1.7Mn steel which was coiled at $500^{\circ}C$, the specimen revealed the property of higher tensile strength of 853.1 MPa and the stretch-flangeability of 60%. The stretch-flangeability was increased up to 97.8% for coiling temperature above $700^{\circ}C$. The precipitation hardening cannot be achieved in the 0.045C-1.65Mn steel which was the lower density of fine precipitates. However, the 0.07C-1.7Mn steels containing Nb and/or Ti which was coiled at X$/^{\circ}C$ have a high precipitates density of $2${\times}$10^{ 5}$/$\mu$㎥. The high strength of these steels was attributed to the precipitation hardening caused by a large volume froction of (Ti, Nb)C precipitates with a size below 5 nm in ferrite matrix.