In September the third meeting of Joint PhD Seminar within 24-28 at the Fraunhofer-Institut für Keramische Technologien und Systeme Fraunhofer IKTS and f. Werkstoff- und STRAHLTECHNIK IWS Dresden, Germany. The organizers were Enano Group, Dresden University of Technology. At the seminar heard a series of presentations presented by graduate students and young scientists from technical universities of Dresden, Cracow and Warsaw. Presented topics very broadly alluded to issues related to the engineering of modern materials and technology. The time between scientific sessions and a poster session allowed for the creation of a suitable environment for the exchange of experiences and scientific discussion and establishment of knowledge and cooperation. During the poster session presented a poster "The role of twinning in deformation of Mg-alloy AZ31."

We adopted Rodriguez-Frank orientation space for description of {10-12} twin variants, sorted by increasing Schmid factor values. In the examined examples we distinguished three pairs of those variants (1+2, 3+4 and 5+6) as the SF values were very similar for those pairs. The representation of those pairs of variants in the above mentioned orientation space, suggest that they form three disjunctive sets of orientations. But this hypothesis is not true, because the matrices orientations closer to origin of coordinate system cause twin variants overlapping. Though this kind of analysis can be helpful in qualitative validation of obeying Schmid law in twin variant selection.

Lately I've been preparing the PV silicon cells for final experiment: implementation of silver nanoparticles on the cell front. Parallel to that the suspesions were optimized and the deposition condition were tested. On the field of computer simulation I finished investigation of possible mechanisms that can decrease the yield from plasmonic structres implementation on the Si cell front. There were particles interaction, periodic and random arrangement, two-particle aggregates case, and size distribution. The final experiment is planned in September.

Differential Thermal Analysis was performed for three different aluminum based alloys. Investigation of melting behaviour in binaries and determination of relative crystallinity as a function of temperature for two cooling rates. Comparative study: DTA vs. lever rule.

Most of the passed month I spent on preparing
myself for the ICOTOM conference I attended in the end of the month.
This includes both slides for my presentation
and paper that is to be published in conference proceedings.
At the conference I presented a couple of
practical applications of methods for quantitative grain boundary analysis
I've developed during last years.