In November I’ve made the first attempt of in situ production of AlN reinforcement in aluminium matrix using liquid Al and Mg3N2. For that purpose I placed a few green compacts of Mg3N2 powder on the bottom of an alumina crucible (in an induction furnace, under inert atmosphere) and covered it with a piece of aluminium ingot. Then I heated the crucible up to about 900^C allowing the reaction between Al and Mg3N2 to occur. Although a final product contained, as I wished, an aluminium nitride phase, a microstructure of the composite was highly inhomogeneous.

I prepared the samples to demonstrate them in the PhD students meeting in Drezno. I was going to show the differences in the surface morphology after etching in the solutions with different compositions.
I participated in the training on the photovoltaic modules simulator Quick Sun 820A. This simulator allows the measurement of current-voltage characteristics of the modules with simultaneous temperature compensation. The simulator is equipped with a xenon flash lamp with a pulse duration of 15 ms.

Silver nanoparticles are key building blocks of my plasmonic structure. This choice was made because of simulation results and literature survey. Required concentration of silver nanoparticles is about ten to the power of nine per centimeter squared. The Basic difficulty is fabrication of such densely packed nanoparticles array.

Previous method used for that purpose was the multiple spin coating with injecting colloidal solution onto spinning wafer. Unfortunatelly maximal obtained concentration was of order of 10^7 particles per squared centimeter. Most commonly used method is thermal evaporation of thin silver layer(over a dozen nm) followed by annealing, which result in formation of hemispherical silver nano islands.

Due to the lack of proper facilities for thin layer deposition this stage was replaced by electroless silver deposition method commonly used for mirrors manufacturing. Silver deposition occurs on either silicon and titanium dioxide substrate. Obtained layer was annealed at the temperature of 200 Celsius for one hour in the innert atmosphere. Creation of silver nano islands was confirmed by SEM. Unluckily due to the inhomogenity and lack of thickness control this method cannot be used for further investigations.

Better precision is expected with photochemical deposition.

Xmas is approaching. Some preliminary VSM results show that the studied Ni-Mn-Sn-Al ribbons feature magnetostructural transition, which render them promissing for magnetocaloric applications.

In November I performed some microhardness measurements on melt-spun ribbons with different loading rates. I tried to gather data I have obtained so far and analyze them to set research plan for nearest months. In this month three new melt spun ribbons with W, Hf and Nb addition were prepared. Additionally two new ingots were cast into steel mould. During November I was also preparing for the joint seminar in Dresden planned for the first part of December.