Nanocrystalline transient aluminas (-alumina) were coated on core particles (-alumina) by a carbonate precipitation and thermal-assisted combustion, which is environmentally friend. The ammonium aluminum carbonate hydroxide (AACH) as a precursor for coating of transient aluminas was produced from precipitation reaction of ammonium aluminum sulfate and ammonium hydrogen carbonate. The crystalline size and morphology of the synthetic, AACH, were greatly dependent on pH and temperature. AACH with a size of 5 nm was coated on the core alumina particle at pH 9. whereas rod shape and large agglomerates were coated at pH 8 and 11, respectively. The AACH was tightly bonded coated on the core particle due to formation of surface complexes by the adsorption of carbonates, hydroxyl and ammonia groups on the surface of the core alumina powder. The synthetic precursor successfully converted to amorphous- and -alumina phase at low temperature through decomposition of surface complexes and thermal-assisted phase transformation.

Energy spectra of electron microbursts from 170 keV to 340 keV have been measured by the solid-state detectors aboard the low-altitude (680 km) polar-orbiting Korean STSAT-1 (Science and Technology SATellite). These measurements have revealed two important characteristics unique to the microbursts: (1) They are produced by a fast-loss cone-filling process in which the interaction time for pitch-angle scattering is less than 50 ms and (2) The e-folding energy of the perpendicular component is larger than that of the parallel component, and the loss cone is not completely filled by electrons. To understand how wave-particle interactions could generate microbursts, we performed a test particle simulation and investigated how the waves scattered electron pitch angles within the timescale required for microburst precipitation. The application of rising-frequency whistler-mode waves to electrons of different energies moving in a dipole magnetic field showed that chorus magnetic wave fields, rather than electric fields, were the main cause of microburst events, which implied that microbursts could be produced by a quasi-adiabatic process. In addition, the simulation results showed that high-energy electrons could resonate with chorus waves at high magnetic latitudes where the loss cone was larger, which might explain the decreased e-folding energy of precipitated microbursts compared to that of trapped electrons.