Because the active aluminum reacts with the base to form NaAlO2 and produce hydrogen gas, the quantity of hydrogen was measured and then used to calculate the aluminum

content from the following reaction: (3) This measurement revealed the active aluminum content of about 41% to 43%. In this study, the value of 42% was used for determining the equivalence ratio, as shown in Table 1. The onset temperatures and energy release values were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and using TGA data. These tests were performed in a SDT-Q600 from TA Instruments (New Castle, DE, USA) and compared with the data from Cell Cycle inhibitor a 409 PG/PC NETZSCH (NETZSCH-Gerätebau GmbH, Selb, Germany) simultaneous thermal analysis machine which provides measurements of weight change (TGA) and differential heat flow (DSC) on the same sample. For the https://www.selleckchem.com/products/Belinostat.html SDT-Q600 measurements, the DSC heat flow data were normalized using the instantaneous selleck products sample weight at any given temperature. The SDT system was calibrated by following these four steps: (1) TGA weight

calibration, (2) differential thermal analysis baseline calibration for the ΔT signal, (3) temperature calibration, and (4) DSC heat flow calibration. In order to remove humidity, these samples were purged in argon for 15 min before thermal scanning. All DSC/TGA experiments were conducted in argon (alpha 2) with a heating rate of 10 K/min, purge flow of 50 ml/min, and temperature range between 35°C and 1,300°C. The obtained mass and heat flow signals were analyzed by the TA analysis software through which the onset temperatures and reaction enthalpies were derived. To determine the compositions of reaction products and their microstructures, the Al/NiO pellets with Φ = 3.5 were heated in argon to 150°C, 450°C, and 800°C on a hot plate. These experiments were performed in a glove box, and the processed pellets were then examined by scanning

electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDAX), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). MYO10 For SEM imaging, the samples were 10 nm gold coated. The XRD patterns were captured using a Rigaku SA-HF3 (1.54 Å CuKα) X-ray source (Rigaku Corporation, Tokyo, Japan) equipped with an 800-μm collimator, operating at an excitation of 50-kV voltage, 40-mA current, and 2-kW power. In addition, a theoretical study was conducted utilizing the ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) simulation to investigate the equilibrium structures of the Al/NiO MIC at different temperatures. This ab initio MD approach was chosen due to the lack of potentials for the Al/NiO system in the classical force field methods, such as the embedded atom model (EAM) and modified EAM (MEAN), available in the literature. To reduce the computational cost of the ab initio MD simulation, periodic density functional theory calculations were performed based on local density approximation and using the Ceperley-Alder exchange-correlation functionals [44].