A Proposed Islamic Microfinance Impact Assessment Methodology

Impact assessment of microfinance programs have been remained the foremost concern of microfinance stakeholders for optimal policy measures. The existing literature regarding the impact assessment varies from parametric to experimental methods to evaluate the performance of microfinance programs across the world however; the literature is lacking a single measure to reveal maximum possible changes in socioeconomic variables resulting from microfinance institutions’ intervention. This study aims to develop a composite index for evaluating the performance of microfinance programs in multi-dimensional contexts. The study exposes a set of eight “diverse indicators” to evaluate the performance of a microfinance program on a wider socioeconomic scale. The dimensions of the index are consist of economic (Income, saving) and socioeconomic (poverty, access to basic facilities, family empowerment) indicators. The changes in deprivations of household, based on the selected indicators, reveal the intensity of success of a microfinance program towards their goals. Finally, we have developed an index by the interaction of incidence and intensity of socioeconomic deprivations. The index is named as “Multidimensional Microfinance Deprivation Index”. This is an index developed in the same line as multidimensional poverty index. The implications of this study are three folds; firstly, it will open up a new dimension of literature in the field of microfinance including Islamic microfinance by instigating an important area. Secondly, it may provide a better alternative to microfinance’s stakeholders to investigate the impact assessment of microfinance programs on a wider socioeconomic scale rather than a few economic. Last but not the least, the study integrates diverse socioeconomic indicators, after assigning weights and adjustment to portray an overall picture of the performance of microfinance in terms of uplifting the socioeconomic conditions of the poor and financially marginalized people.

Experimental & Theoretical Investigations of Fe and A1 Based Spinels

Spinel oxides are an important class of versatile materials, which exhibit complex and tunable structures and offer exceptional properties for their potential applications in wide range of modern fields. In this dissertation, two important classes of spinel materials based on iron and aluminum are reported to have been synthesized and characterized experimentally. These are also checked theoretically for their possible applications in electronic and spintronic devices.Firstly, iron based spinel i.e., MgFe2O4, NiFe2O4, and CrFe2O4 were synthesized by sol-gel method whilst thin films were deposited on copper substrates by spin coating technique. In case of MgFe2O4, Mg/Fe ratio was varied as 0.4, 0.45, 0.5, 0.55 and 0.6 during sol synthesis. Variation of Mg/Fe ratio strongly affected magnetic and electronic properties along with phase purity of magnesium iron oxide thin films. Peaks corresponding to (220), (222), (400), (331), and (620) planes confirmed formation of MgFe2O4 at a very low annealing temperature of 300 oC with Mg/Fe ratio of 0.55. A single magnetic phase has been achieved with high dielectric constant and low tangent loss at Mg/Fe ratio of 0.55. Semiconducting behavior, revealed by Arrhenius plot, is due to electron hoping between Fe2+ and Fe3+ cations. High saturation magnetization of 163emu/cm3 is achieved which decreased at Mg/Fe values of 0.4, 0.45, 0.5 and 0.6. For NiFe2O4, nickel oxide (NiO) was added to hematite (Fe2O3) and NiFe2O4 phase formation was achieved at 6% Ni dopant concentration. Variation of Ni dopant was observed to strongly affect structural, magnetic and dielectric properties. Particle size of around 10 nm was observed through SEM. High saturation magnetization of 25 emu/g, and dielectric constant of 94 was observed with 6% of Ni dopant concentration. High dielectric constant and low dielectric loss of NiFe2O4 was observed at high frequency that is very interesting for high speed electronic and spintronic devices. Furthermore, antiferromagnetic Cr3+ was added in NiFe2O4 by co-precipitation method. This enhances the utility in magnetic storage, computer memory chips and microwave devices. Single-phase cubic spinel structure was achieved with particle size in the range of 38-49 nm. Structural study revealed phase purity of CrFe2O4 spinel at dopant concentration of 6wt% and again at 9-10wt% with crystal size of 15.45 nm and 14.98 nm respectively. Mixed phases of Fe2O3, Cr5O12, CrFe2O4 or amorphous nature was observed for rest of the dopant concentration ranges. vii Secondly, aluminum based spinel, i.e., FeAl2O4 and ZnAl2O4 were synthesized by sol-gel technique and then the sol was spun on copper substrates with variation in Fe/Al ratio as 0.4, 0.45, 0.5, 0.55 and 0.6. XRD patterns revealed that phase pure FelAl2O4 was observed only for the sample with Fe/Al ratio of 0.4. Whereas, Fe2O3 peaks appeared along with iron aluminum oxide peaks for rest of the ratios. M-H curves showed enhanced magnetic properties of films having 42.325 emu/cm3 saturation magnetization, 10 emu/cm3 remnant magnetization, and 430.19 Oe coercivity. Conductivity measurements showed transition in electrical properties at a temperature of 127 K. Room temperature magnetoresistance ̴ 10% was observed for iron aluminum oxide thin films with Fe/Al of 0.4. For ZnAl2O4, glass substrate was used for preparation of thin films by spin coating. Dopant concentration (1-10%) was carried out beyond the solid solubility limit to allow further reaction of ZnO and dopant oxide for the formation of phase-pure ZnAl2O4. XRD results confirmed formation of phase pure ZnO in undoped films with preferred orientation along (101) plane. ZnO phase persisted with aluminum doping till 3% along with change in preferred orientation from (101) to (001) plane. Mixed ZnO, Al2O3, ZnAl2O4 phases were observed at dopant concentrations of 4-6% and 9-10%. Phase pure ZnAl2O4 was obtained at dopant concentrations of 7-8%. Films showed high transmission in the visible and infrared regions. Highest transmission ~ 91% with band gap of 3.756 eV was observed for ZnAl2O4 films with dopant concentration of 8%. Refractive index of 2.16 at 500nm was observed at this dopant concentration whereas dielectric constant of 64.86 (log f=5.0) was observed due to high grain boundary resistance of 3.218 MΩ as determined by ZView software. Temperature dependent dielectric analysis indicated negative temperature coefficient for ZnAl2O4 thin films with activation energy of 1.86 eV.Thirdly, ab-initio calculations were performed to calculate structural, electrical and magnetic properties for MgFe2O4, CrFe2O4, NiFe2O4, FeAl2O4 and ZnAl2O4 by using Density Functional Theory. Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA) without and with U (PBE, PAW and modified Becke Johnson (mBJ) potentials) was implemented to accomplish theoretical investigations. Experimental results obtained so far are in good agreement with the theoretical observations.