Yoshimi Okamura

Ceramic waste glass fiber-reinforced plastic-containing filtering materials for turbid water treatment

To utilize waste glass fiber-reinforced plastic (GFRP) and to reduce environmental pollution in rivers and lakes, we developed a filtering material that can clean contaminated water. The high strength and porous nature of glass fiber-reinforced ceramic made by mixing clay and crushed waste GFRP before firing was exploited to do so. Various specimens with different pore size distributions were made by changing the mixing ratio of clay and crushed GFRP, the GFRP particle size, and the mixture firing temperature. Bending strength and permeability tests indicated that several types of ceramics with good permeabilities and adequate bending strengths could be produced, which enables their use as filtration materials for turbid water. Filtration tests on simulated turbid water clarified the relationship between the pore size distribution and the filtering ability of the ceramic for turbid water. Filtration tests on river water verified their practical suitability as ceramic filtration materials. It is proposed that ceramics made from clay and GFRP could be used as filtering materials for turbid water.

The Development of Polyethylene Naphthalate Films by Low-pressure High-frequency Plasma Chemical Vapor Deposition System with Advance Oxidations Process

Abstract The low-pressure high-frequency plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) system was developed with non-thermal plasma process to study the Polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) surface characteristics. Plasma surface treatment by oxygen can improve the adhesive properties. A mixture of Ar and O2 gas was used in the plasma treatment. The oxygen gas flow rate was between 0.1 L/min and 0.5 L/min, whereas the Ar gas flow rate was set at 10 L/min. The surface was investigated by contact angle meter and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to determine the differences between untreated and treated surfaces. The results indicated that the low-pressure high-frequency plasma chemical vapor deposition system could be used for surface modification.

Low-Temperature Naturatron Sputtering System for Deposition of Indium Tin Oxide Film

In this paper, we have newly developed a metal thin film-forming sputtering system using the Naturatron Sputtering method that can prevent the plastic film from suffering damage caused by the high-energy particles in plasma and carry out the low-temperature high-density metal deposition with a sputtering chamber and a film deposition chamber separated from each other. This system has made it possible to deposit the indium tin oxide (ITO) thin film on the poly(ethylene naphthalate) film as a substrate. As a result of energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis or scanning electron microscope analysis performed for the ITO thin film, it has been proven that the uniform-surface ITO thin film can be deposited on a plastic film.