University of Bolton

About: University of Bolton is a education organization based out in Bolton, Manchester, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Fire retardant & Higher education. The organization has 886 authors who have published 1980 publications receiving 41597 citations. The organization is also known as: Bolton Institute of Higher Education & Bolton Institute.

Structural, electronic and optical properties of Mn4Si7

Abstract: Semiconducting high manganese silicides (HMS) have attracted great research interest in the past decades for potential applications as novel optoelectronic and photovoltaic devices integrated on Si chips. The fundamental electronic properties in HMS are still unclear, and the band-gap energy was reported to scatter from 0.42 eV to 0.98 eV in the past decades. In this work, single phase semiconducting Mn4Si7 precipitates and thin films have been synthesized by ion implantation. Optical absorption spectra obtained by transmission measurements demonstrated the existence of a direct band gap in all samples. The band gap values varied in the range of 0.77 eV to 0.93 eV, corresponding to varied strain states due to different microstructures. The electronic band structures of Mn4Si7 under different strain states have been theoretically investigated by means of a full-potential linear augmented plane wave method and compared with the experimental results. From ab initio calculations, the Mn4Si7 compound is found to be a pseudo-direct band-gap semiconductor with a fundamental gap increasing linearly with the compression along c- or a-axis. This trend is in good agreement with the experimental results.

The Origins of Football Debate: The Continuing Demise of the Dominant Paradigm, 1852–1856

Abstract: This article presents original and compelling new material in ‘the origins of football debate’, this time from the period 1852–1856, using the British Library's digitisation project of nineteenth-century newspapers. In so doing, it addresses the alleged disappearance of football in the wider community in mid-century, a problem that has troubled a number of scholars, not least because of the rapid expansion in the game amongst the working and lower middle classes from the 1870s onwards. In addressing this allegation it outlines a much broader and more stable footballing culture across the country than hitherto thought, based on games played at church, work and school outings, rural fetes and galas, alongside those played at celebrations and as street football or casual games in meadows, fields or greens, arguing that those historians who have simply looked for formal games were looking for the wrong forms of football in the wrong places, based on twentieth-century notions of what constitutes a ‘game’ of fo...

Fire protection in military fabrics

Abstract: Textiles and their composites are extensively used in protecting military personnel from fire hazards. This chapter first discusses different fire hazards and types of burn injuries in the military environment followed by existing fire resistant solutions for military clothing. Performance requirements and standard test methods for flame retardant textiles used for clothing and non-clothing applications are also discussed.

A New Study to Suppress Mutual-Coupling Between Waveguide Slot Array Antennas Based on Metasurface Bulkhead for MIMO Systems

Abstract: In this paper, a new method is proposed to reduce mutual coupling between waveguide slot array (WSA) antennas based on metasurface technology. This is achieved by placing a metasurface bulkhead between the two WSA antennas. Performance of the dual-waveguide antenna structure is shown to substantially enhance when compared against an identical reference WSA antenna with no metasurface. WSA antennas used in the study has dimensions $\pmb{40\times 20\times 5\text{mm}^{3}}$ and operates over 1.7-3.66 GHz, which corresponds to a fractional bandwidth of 73.13%. The average isolation of the reference WSA antennas is −20 dB; however, with a metasurface bulkhead the isolation is shown to increase to −36.5 dB. In addition, the bandwidth extends by ~10%, and the gain improves by 14.66%. The proposed method is should find application in MIMO systems where high isolation between neighbouring radiation elements is required to improve the antenna characteristics, and mimimise array phase errors, which is necessary to enhance the system performance.