Chirality effect of mechanical and electronic properties of monolayer MoS2 with vacancies

We present first principles theory calculations about the chirality and vacancy effects of the mechanical and electronic properties of monolayer MoS₂. In the uni-axial tensile tests, chirality effect of the mechanical properties is negligible at zero strain and becomes significant with the increasing strain, regardless of vacancies. The existence of vacancies decreases the Young's modulus and ultimate strength of the MoS₂ structure. During the uni-axial tensile tests, the band gap decreases with the increasing strain, regardless of chirality and vacancies. The band gap is reduced with the intermediate state brought by the existence of vacancies. No chirality effect can be observed on the band gap variations of perfect MoS₂. Chirality effect appears to the band gap variation of defected MoS₂ due to the local lattice relaxation near the vacancies.     

Effect of lattice strain on the oxygen vacancy formation and hydrogen adsorption at CeO2(111) surface

Using first-principles calculation, the effect of lattice strain on the oxygen vacancy formation at CeO₂(111) surface has been investigated. The tensile strain facilitates the oxygen vacancy formation at the surface and the compressive strain hinders the process. This is in part due to the strengthening or weakening of the surface Ce–O bond under the lattice strain. On the other hand, a more open surface with a larger lattice constant can better accommodate the larger Ce³⁺ and thus facilitate the structural relaxation of the reduced surface. The studies on the strain effect on the atomic hydrogen adsorption at the defect-free CeO₂(111) surface show that the adsorption strength monotonously increases with the increase of the lattice strain, further confirming the tunable surface chemical activity by lattice strain.     

Precise measurement of soil deformation and fluctuation in drawbar pull for steel and rubber-coated rigid wheels

The travelling performance of rigid wheels on sand stratum is measured using two kinds of surface material, i.e. steel and steel coated with rubber. A new method for measuring the displacement of soil beneath the wheel has been developed using small polyester film markers. The trajectories of soil particles beneath the wheels are approximated by an exponential function and the fluctuations in the drawbar pull are represented by a sinusoidal function. The amplitude and basic wavelength of the fluctuation in the drawbar pull are discussed for both types of wheels.     

Error estimation,adaptivity and data transfer in enriched plasticity continua to analysis of shear band localization

In this paper, an adaptive FE analysis is presented based on error estimation, adaptive mesh refinement and data transfer for enriched plasticity continua in the modelling of strain localization. As the classical continuum models suffer from pathological mesh-dependence in the strain softening models, the governing equations are regularized by adding rotational degrees-of-freedom to the conventional degrees-of-freedom. Adaptive strategy using element elongation is applied to compute the distribution of required element size using the estimated error distribution. Once a new mesh is generated, state variables and history-dependent variables are mapped from the old finite element mesh to the new one. In order to transfer the history-dependent variables from the old to new mesh, the values of internal variables available at Gauss point are first projected at nodes of old mesh, then the values of the old nodes are transferred to the nodes of new mesh and finally, the values at Gauss points of new elements are determined with respect to nodal values of the new mesh. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed model and computational algorithms is demonstrated by several numerical examples.     

Oxidation process of SiGe on SOI substrates

The oxidation of SiGe film epitaxial grown on top of SOI wafers has been studied. These SiGe/SOI samples were oxidized at 700, 900, 1100 °C. Germanium atoms were rejected from SiGe film to SOI layer. A new Si_1−xGe_x (x is minimal) layer formed at SiGe/Si interface. As the germanium atoms diffused, the new Si_1−xGe_x (x is minimal) layer moved to Si/SiO₂ interface. Propagation of threading dislocation in SiGe film to SOI substrate was hindered by the new SiGe/Si interface. Strain in SOI substrate transferred from SiGe film was released through dislocation nucleation and propagation inner. The relaxation of SiGe film could be described as: strain relaxed through strain equalization and transfer process between SiGe film and SOI substrates. Raman spectroscopy was used to characterize the strain of SiGe film. Microstructure of SiGe/SOI was observed by transmission electron microscope (TEM).     

5 μm thick 3C-SiC layers grown on Ge-modified Si(100) substrates

The effect of the germanium coverage prior to the epitaxial growth of 5 μm thick 3C-SiC on Si(100) substrates were evaluated with Atomic Force Microscopy and μ-Raman spectroscopy. The 3C-SiC layers were grown by atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition via a special procedure leading to layers with compressive instead of tensile stress. The Ge amount was varied from 0 up to 2 ML. The obtained results showed that the residual stress inside the layers is shifted in the compressive direction; the crystalline quality is improved with the Ge introduction but on the account of the surface roughness. These results open the route for the use of Ge-modified Si(100) as a potential substrate in order to improve the heteroepitaxial growth of 3C-SiC on silicon substrates.     

Accurate and analytical strain mapping at the surface of Ge/Si(0 0 1) islands by an improved flat-island approximation

We propose an extension of the well-known flat-island approximation in (1 + 1) dimensions which, while keeping simple analytical relations, allows one to better describe the strain field on the facets of steeper islands, and on the wetting layer between them. The results of atomistic molecular dynamics simulations using the Tersoff potential are used as a benchmark. The simple continuum approach is also shown to predict the correct trend of the strain gradients characterizing closely-spaced interacting islands, which has been recently observed to produce lateral motion of large Ge dots on Si(0 0 1).     

Effects of temperature and thermo-mechanical couplings on material instabilities and strain localization of inelastic materials

A general framework for rate-independent, small-strain, thermoinelastic material behaviour is presented, which includes thermo-plasticity and -damage as particular cases. In this context, strain localization and the development of material instabilities are investigated to highlight the roles of thermal effects and thermomechanical couplings. During a loading process, it is shown that two conditions play the essential roles and correspond to the singularity of the isothermal and the adiabatic acoustic tensors. Under quasi-static conditions, strain localization (in a classical sense) may occur when either of these two conditions is met. It involves a jump in temperature rate in the latter case, whereas temperature rate remains continuous in the former, but a discontinuity in the spatial derivatives of the heat flux must occur. This is consistent with the condition of stationarity of acceleration waves, which are shown to be homothermal and propagate with a velocity related to the eigenvalues of the isothermal acoustic tensor. A linear perturbation analysis further clarifies the above findings. In particular, for a quasi-static path of an infinite medium, failure of positive definiteness of either of the acoustic tensors corresponds to bifurcations in wave-like modes of arbitrary wave-length and infinite rate of growth. Under dynamic conditions, unbounded growth of perturbations is associated only to the short wavelength regime and corresponds to divergence growth or flutter phenomena relative to the isothermal acoustic tensor.     

Performance evaluation of fiber Bragg grating sensors by digital holographic technique, strain gauge measurement

In view of the growing interest for non-destructive tests of materials, geodynamical monitoring and in general remote sensing, there is a great effort to bring practical optical sensors from research labs to industrial and environmental applications. In this paper, we employ digital holographic technique as an efficient tool for evaluating the strain measurement capability of fiber Bragg gratings (FBG). A cantilever beam has been employed as a test structure under loading test. The strain measurements results obtained by fiber-based sensors have been compared to those obtained by using full-field digital holographic technique and point-wise strain gauge sensors glued on the same cantilever beam. A simple theoretical model is also presented to interpret and compare the experimental results coming from different techniques.     

Strongly confined quantum wire states in strained T-shaped GaAs/InAlAs structures

The confinement energy of T-shaped quantum wires (QWRs), which were fabricated by the cleaved edge overgrowth technique in a way that the QWRs form at the intersection of In_0.2Al_0.8As stressor layers and the overgrown (1 1 0) GaAs quantum well (QW), is examined using micro-photoluminescence spectroscopy. Photoluminescence (PL) signals from individual QWRs can be spatially resolved, since the strained films are separated by 1 μm wide Al_0.3Ga_0.7As layers. We find that due to the tensile strain being transmitted to the QW, the confinement energy of the QWRs rises systematically up to 40 meV with increasing thickness of the stressor layers. By reducing the excitation power to 0.1 μW the QWR PL emission occurs 48 meV redshifted with respect to the QW. All QWR peaks exhibit smooth lineshapes, indicating the absence of pronounced exciton localization.