Radio Astronomical Antennas in the Central African Region to Improve the Sampling Function of the VLBI Network in the SKA Era?

On the African continent, South Africa has world-class astronomical facilities for advanced radio astronomy research. With the advent of the Square Kilometre Array project in South Africa (SA SKA), six countries in Africa (SA SKA partner countries) have joined South Africa to contribute towards the African Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) Network (AVN). Each of the AVN countries aims to construct a single-dish radio telescope that will be part of the AVN, the European VLBI Network, and the global VLBI network. The SKA and the AVN will enable very high sensitivity VLBI in the southern hemisphere. In the current AVN, there is a gap in the coverage in the central African region. This work analyses the increased scientific impact of having additional antennas in each of the six countries in central Africa, i.e., Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, and the Central African Republic. A number of economic human capital impacts of having a radio interferometer in central Africa are also discussed. This work also discusses the recent progress on the AVN project and shares a few lessons from some past successes in ground stations retrofitting.

A quantitative structural characterisation of active semiconducting materials (mSi; SiO2; Al2O3; TiO2) for use in printed electronics using a combination of Small Angle Light Scattering (SALS) and Ultra Small Angle X-ray Scattering (USAXS)

Four nanostructured active semiconducting materials currently used in electronic inks have been structurally characterised using a combination of small angle scattering techniques and scanning electron microscopy. The percolation theory and scaling laws have been used to obtain quantitative correlations of the network topologies and the local micro-structures with the electronic and electrical properties of the printed, electronic devices. The small angle light scattering has been used to expand the lower q-range of the Ultra Small Angle x-ray Scattering curves of the 2503 metallurgical grade silicon (mSi), silicon dioxide (SiO₂), aluminium dioxide (Al₂O₃) and titanium dioxide (TiO₂) materials by close to an order of magnitude, thereby providing valuable clustering properties for each material. Each scattering curve presented a series of multiple structural levels, which are then quantified using the Unified power-law approach to provide valuable clustering characteristics such as the degree of aggregation, polydispersity and geometry standard deviation. Subsequently, a fully screen-printed field effect transistor that uses mSi as the active material is demonstrated. The transistor had an ON/OFF current-ratio of 10⁴; an electron mobility of 0.7 cm²/V s; a leakage current in the order of 5 × 10^-9 A, and no current saturation.