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Quality assurance and condition assessment of concrete structures is an important topic world-wide due to the ageing infrastructure and increasing traffic demands. Common topics include, but are not limited to, localisation of rebar or tendon ducts, geometrical irregularities, cracks, voids, honeycombing or other flaws. Non-destructive techniques such as ultrasound or radar have found regular, successful practical application but sometimes suffer from limited resolution and accuracy, imaging artefacts or restrictions in detecting certain features. Until the 1980s X-ray transmission was used in case of special demands and showed a resolution much higher than other NDT techniques. However, due to safety concerns and cost issues, this method is almost never used anymore. Muon tomography has received much attention recently. Novel detectors for cosmic muons and tomographic imaging algorithms have opened up new fields of application, such as the investigation of freight containers for contraband or the assessment of the contents of radioactive waste containers. But Muon imaging also has the potential to fill some of the gaps currently existing in concrete NDT. As a first step towards practical use and as a proof of concept we used an existing system to image the interior of a reference reinforced 600 kg concrete block. Even with a yet not optimized setup for this kind of investigation, the muon imaging results show more resolution and less distortion compared to ultrasonic and radar imaging. The data acquisition takes more time and signals contain more noise, but the images allowed to detect the same important features that are visible in conventional high energy x-ray tomography. In our experiment, we have shown the tremendous potential of muon imaging for concrete inspection. The next steps include the development of mobile detectors and optimising acquisition and imaging parameters., Comment: 15 pages, 4 tables 8 figures

Industrial processes release substantial quantities of waste heat, which can be harvested to generate electricity. At present, the conversion of low grade waste heat to electricity relies solely on thermoelectric materials, but such materials are expensive and have low thermodynamic efficiencies. Although thermomagnetic materials may offer a promising alternative, their performance remains to be evaluated, thereby hindering their real-world application. Here we evaluate the efficiency and cost effectiveness of thermomagnetic materials that can be used in motors, oscillators and generators for converting waste heat to electricity. Our analysis reveals that up to temperature differences of several 10 K the best thermomagnetic materials outperform thermoelectric materials. Importantly, we find that the price per watt for some thermomagnetic materials are much lower compared to present-day thermoelectrics and can become competitive with conventional power plants. The materials library that we present here enables the selection of the best available thermomagnetic materials for harvesting waste heat and gives guidelines for their future development., Comment: 24 pages, 5 figures (incl. 2 Ashby plots)

In this work the global and local mechanical properties of the magnetocaloric intermetallic LaFe11.2Si1.8 alloy are investigated by a combination of different testing and characterization techniques in order to shed light on the partly contradictory data in recent literature. Macroscale compression tests were performed to illuminate the global fracture behavior and evaluate it statistically. LaFe11.2Si1.8 demonstrates a brittle behavior with fracture strains below 0.6 % and widely distributed fracture stresses of 180-620 MPa leading to a Weibull modulus of m = 2 to 6. The local mechanical properties, such as hardness and Youngs modulus, of the main and secondary phases are examined by nanoindentation and Vickers microhardness tests. An intrinsic strength of the main magnetocaloric phase of at least 2 GPa is estimated. The significantly lower values obtained by compression tests are attributed to the detrimental effect of pores, microcracks, and secondary phases. Microscopic examination of indentation-induced cracks reveals that ductile alpha-Fe precipitates act as crack arrestors whereas pre-existing cracks at La-rich precipitates provide numerous "weak links" for the initiation of catastrophic fracture. The presented systematic study extends the understanding of the mechanical reliability of La(Fe, Si)13 alloys by revealing the correlations between the mechanical behavior of macroscopic multi-phase samples and the local mechanical properties of the single phases.

In this study we report a method for the preparation of freestanding magnetocaloric thin films. Non-stoichiometric Heusler alloys Ni-Mn-Sn, Ni-Co-Mn-Sn and Ni-Co-Mn-Al are prepared via sputter deposition. A sacrificial vanadium layer is added between the substrate and the Heusler film. By means of selective wet-chemical etching the vanadium layer can be removed. Conditions for the crystallization of Vanadium layers and epitaxial growth of the Heusler films are indicated. Magnetic and structural properties of freestanding and as-prepared films are compared in detail. The main focus of this study is on the influence of substrate constraints on the Martensitic transistion.

The exchange bias effect is commonly used to shift the coercive field of a ferromagnet. This technique is crucial for the use of magnetic tunnel junctions as logic or memory devices. Therefore, an independent switching of the two ferromagnetic electrodes is necessary to guarantee a reliable readout. Here, we demonstrate that the intrinsic exchange bias effect of Ni-Mn-Sn can be used to apply a unidirectional anisotropy to magnetic tunnel junctions. For this, we use epitaxial Ni-Mn-Sn films as pinning layers for microfabricated CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB magnetic tunnel junctions. We compare the exchange bias field ($H_{\text{EB}}$) measured after field cooling in $-10$\,kOe external field by magnetization measurements with $H_{\text{EB}}$ obtained from tunnel magnetoresistance measurements. Consistent for both methods we find an exchange bias of about $H_{\text{EB}}=130$\,Oe at 10\,K, which decreases with increasing temperature and vanishes above 70\,K., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

The structural, magnetic, and magnetocaloric properties of epitaxial Ni-Co-Mn-Al thin films with different compositions have been studied. The films were deposited on MgO(001) substrates by co-sputtering on heated substrates. All films show a martensitic transformation, where the transformation temperatures are strongly dependent on the composition. The structure of the martensite phase is shown to be 14M. The metamagnetic martensitic transformation occurs from strongly ferromagnetic austenite to weakly magnetic martensite. The structural properties of the films were investigated by atomic force microscopy and temperature dependent X-ray diffraction. Magnetic and magnetocaloric properties were analyzed using temperature dependent and isothermal magnetization measurements. We find that Ni$_{41}$Co$_{10.4}$Mn$_{34.8}$Al$_{13.8}$ films show giant inverse magnetocaloric effects with magnetic entropy change of 17.5\,J\,kg$^{-1}$K$^{-1}$ for $\mu_0 \Delta H=5\,\text{T}$., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures