Soo King Lim

Analytical band Monte Carlo analysis of electron transport in silicene

An analytical band Monte Carlo (AMC) with linear energy band dispersion has been developed to study the electron transport in suspended silicene and silicene on aluminium oxide (Al2O3) substrate. We have calibrated our model against the full band Monte Carlo (FMC) results by matching the velocity-field curve. Using this model, we discover that the collective effects of charge impurity scattering and surface optical phonon scattering can degrade the electron mobility down to about 400 cm2 V−1 s−1 and thereafter it is less sensitive to the changes of charge impurity in the substrate and surface optical phonon. We also found that further reduction of mobility to ~100 cm2 V−1 s−1 as experimentally demonstrated by Tao et al (2015 Nat. Nanotechnol. 10 227) can only be explained by the renormalization of Fermi velocity due to interaction with Al2O3 substrate.

Food waste management using an electrostatic separator with corona discharge

In Malaysia, municipal solid waste contains a high portion of organic matters, typically contributed by food waste. It is estimated that about 45% of the municipal waste are food waste, followed by the non-food waste such as plastics, metals, glass and others. Food waste, while being properly sorted and contamination free from non-food waste, can be reused (e.g. fertiliser) instead of being landfilled. Therefore, recycling of food waste is crucial not only from the view point of waste management, but also with respect to the reduction of resource losses and greenhouse gases emission. A new waste separation process involved food particles, non-food particles and electrostatic discharge was investigated in this study. The empirical results reveal that the corona electrostatic separation is an environmental-friendly way in recovering foods from municipal waste. The efficiency of the separator, under same operating conditions, varies with the particle size of the food and non-food particles. The highest efficiency of 82% is recorded for the particle sizes between 1.5 and 3.0 mm.