Mouvement des dislocations et plasticité à haute température des oxydes binaires et ternaires

Nous présentons une revue sur la déformation plastique à haute température mettant en jeu le déplacement des dislocations dans les oxydes. Les liaisons chimiques et les structures cristallines sont plus complexes que dans les métaux; aussi, les dislocations ne sont pas encore bien décrites ni dans les oxydes binaires (NiO, Cu₂O …) ni dans les oxydes ternaires (MgAl₂O₄…).

Ces composés, me?me purs, contiennent de grandes quantités de défauts ponctuels pouvant provoquer des écarts à la stoechiométrie; une bonne connaissance des concentrations et de la mobilité de défauts est indispensable pour expliquer les propriétés plastiques.

Les essais mécaniques habituels sont la flexion et surtout la compression; ils présentent de nombreux inconvénients, en particulier ils conduisent à une déformation hétérogène des éprouvettes.

Le but de ces tests est d'établir la loi qui relie la vitesse de déformation aux autres paramètres (contrainte, température …). Une grande quantité de résultats existe et est rassemblée aussi bien pour la déformation à vitesse constante que pour le fluage.

Les modèles habituels décrivant la déformation plastique devraient être modifiés pour tenir compte des complications introduites dans les processus élémentaires comme la structure de coeur des dislocations et leur montée, la diffusion dans un composé ….

La connaissance de la microstructure issue de la déformation plastique est nécessaire pour identifier le mécanisme déterminant la vitesse de déformation. Outre les techniques traditionnelles (optique, attaque chimique …), la microscopie électronique en transmission est utilisée; elle a permis de découvrir que les dislocations sont dissociées par montée dans les structures spinelles, phénomène qui pourrait se rencontrer dans d'autres oxydes.     

Ultrathin oxide films and interfaces for electronics and spintronics

Oxides have become a key ingredient for new concepts of electronic devices. To a large extent, this is due to the profusion of new physics and novel functionalities arising from ultrathin oxide films and at oxide interfaces. We present here a perspective on selected topics within this vast field and focus on two main issues. The first part of this review is dedicated to the use of ultrathin films of insulating oxides as barriers for tunnel junctions. In addition to dielectric non-magnetic epitaxial barriers, which can produce tunneling magnetoresistances in excess of a few hundred percent, we pay special attention to the possibility of exploiting the multifunctional character of some oxides in order to realize ‘active’ tunnel barriers. In these, the conductance across the barrier is not only controlled by the bias voltage and/or the electrodes magnetic state, but also depends on the barrier ferroic state. Some examples include spin-filtering effects using ferro- and ferrimagnetic oxides, and the possibility of realizing hysteretic, multi-state junctions using ferroelectric barriers. The second part of this review is devoted to novel states appearing at oxide interfaces. Often completely different from those of the corresponding bulk materials, they bring about novel functionalities to be exploited in spintronics and electronics architectures. We review the main mechanisms responsible for these new properties (such as magnetic coupling, charge transfer and proximity effects) and summarize some of the most paradigmatic phenomena. These include the formation of high-mobility two-dimensional electron gases at the interface between insulators, the emergence of superconductivity (or ferromagnetism) at the interface between non-superconducting (or non-ferromagnetic) materials, the observation of magnetoelectric effects at magnetic/ferroelectric interfaces or the effects of the interplay and competing interactions at all-oxide ferromagnetic/superconducting interfaces. Finally, we link up the two reviewed research fields and emphasize that the tunneling geometry is particularly suited to probe novel interface effects at oxide barrier/electrode interfaces. We close by giving some directions toward tunneling devices exploiting novel oxide interfacial phenomena.     

High oxygen pressures and the stabilization of six-coordinated Ir(VI) in an oxygen lattice

Abstract

During these last twenty five years a great efforts have been made in the Laboratoire de Chimie du Solide du CNRS in order to develop high oxygen pressure for the stabilization of unusual oxidation state of transition elements.

The aims of such research works was to correlate the increase of the Mⁿ⁺-O bond covalency versus the increase of the oxidation state n+ to the physicochemical properties of resulting oxides [1].

Iridium was an interesting element due to its position (5d) in the Periodic Table. In 1980 Ir(V) (d⁴) was stabilized in La₂LiIrO₆ in the perovskite structure [2]. Such a study had underlined the strong value of the spin-orbit coupling associated to Ir(V) [3].

The stabilization of Ir(VI) is interesting from two points of view : (i) its isotropic electronic configuration (d³), (ii) such a high oxidation state could lead to the strongest M-O bond in an oxygen lattice.

Selecting, through a specific methodology, the most appropriate local structural and chemical factors and with the help of high oxygen pressure, Ir(V1) was stabilized in the perovskite Ba₂CaIrO₆. Structural, magnetic and Mössbauer studies have been carried out in order to characterize the physicochemical properties induced by this unusual oxidation state.     

Electrochromic Variation of the Infrared Emissivity in Tungsten Oxide Compounds

The so-called plastic technology first developed for the Li-based batteries leads to a new flexible infrared modulator. Orthorhombic monohydrated tungsten oxide (o-WO³ · H₂O) is used as the active insertion element in the LiCoO₂/o-WO³ · H₂O system. To prevent its degradation under air moisture, the device is protected with hermetic plastic and a window. Measurements of the reflectivity values indicate a very good contrast between the bleached and colored states for the first insertion (about 50% contrast in the 2.5–15 μm range), but the contrast between the inserted and de-inserted states is only about 30%. Optical properties follow quite well Drude mechanism.     

Multidimensional weighted Opial inequalities

In this article we produce Opial-type weighted multidimensional inequalities over balls and arbitrary smooth bounded domains. The inequalities are sharp. The functions under consideration vanish on the boundary.     

Monotone corrections for generic cell-centered finite volume approximations of anisotropic diffusion equations

We present a nonlinear technique to correct a general finite volume scheme for anisotropic diffusion problems, which provides a discrete maximum principle. We point out general properties satisfied by many finite volume schemes and prove the proposed corrections also preserve these properties. We then study two specific corrections proving, under numerical assumptions, that the corresponding approximate solutions converge to the continuous one as the size of the mesh tends to zero. Finally we present numerical results showing that these corrections suppress local minima produced by the original finite volume scheme.     

Moderate deviations for martingale differences and applications to φ -mixing sequences

For a R d -valued sequence of martingale differences { m k } k S 1 , we obtain a moderate deviation principle for the sequence of partial sums { Z n ( t ) 1 ~ k =1 [ nt ] m k / b n , t ] [0,1]}, in the space of càdlàg functions equipped with the Skorohod topology, under the following conditions: a Chen-Ledoux type condition, an exponential convergence in probability of the associated quadratic variation process of the martingale, and a condition of "Lindeberg" type. For the small jumps of Z n (·), we apply the general result of Puhalskii [Puhalskii, A. (1994). "Large deviations of semimartingales via convergence of the predictable characteristics". Stoch. Stoch. Rep. , 49 , pp. 27-85]. Following the method of Ledoux [Ledoux, M. (1992). "Sur les déviations modérées des sommes de variables aléatoires vectorielles indépendantes de même loi". Ann. Inst. H. Poincaré , 28 , pp. 267-280] and Arcones [Arcones, A. (1999). "The large deviation principle for stochastic processes", Submitted for publication], we prove that the large jumps part of Z n (·) is negligible in the sense of the moderate deviations. One can regard our result as an extension to martingale differences, of the beautiful characterization of moderate deviations for i.i.d.r.v. case due to Chen [Chen, X. (1991). "The moderate deviations of independent vectors in Banach space". Chin. J. Appl. Probab. Stat. , 7 , pp. 124-32] and Ledoux [Ledoux, M. (1992). "Sur les déviations modérées des sommes de variables aléatoires vectorielles indépendantes de même loi". Ann. Inst. H. Poincaré , 28 , pp. 267-280]. Using the Gordin [Gordin, M.I. (1969). "The central limit theorem for stationary processes". Soviet Math. Dokl. , 10 , pp. 1174-1176] decomposition, the martingale result is applied to prove the moderate deviation principle for a wide class of stationary { -mixing sequences of random variables.     

Optimal posting price of limit orders: learning by trading

We model a trader interacting with a continuous market as an iterative algorithm that adjusts limit prices at a given rhythm and propose a procedure to minimize trading costs. We prove the $a.s.$ convergence of the algorithm under assumptions on the cost function and give some practical criteria on model parameters to ensure that the conditions to use the algorithm are met (notably, using the co-monotony principle). We illustrate our results with numerical experiments on both simulated and market data.     

Efficient portfolios in financial markets with proportional transaction costs

In this article, we characterize efficient portfolios, i.e. portfolios which are optimal for at least one rational agent, in a very general multi-currency financial market model with proportional transaction costs. In our setting, transaction costs may be random, time-dependent, have jumps and the preferences of the agents are modeled by multivariate expected utility functions. We provide a complete characterization of efficient portfolios, generalizing earlier results of Dybvig (Rev Financ Stud 1:67–88, 1988) and Jouini and Kallal (J Econ Theory 66: 178–197, 1995). We basically show that a portfolio is efficient if and only if it is cyclically anticomonotonic with respect to at least one consistent price system that prices it. Finally, we introduce the notion of utility price of a given contingent claim as the minimal amount of a given initial portfolio allowing any agent to reach the claim by trading, and give a dual representation of it as the largest proportion of the market price necessary for all agents to reach the same expected utility level.