Step instability of the In_0.2Ga_0.8As （001） surface during annealing

Anisotropic evolution of the step edges on the compressive-strained In0.2Ga0.8 As/GaAs(001) surface has been investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The experiments suggest that step edges are indeed sinuous and protrude somewhere a little way along the [110] direction, which is different from the classical waviness predicted by the theoretical model. We consider that the monatomic step edges undergo a morphological instability induced by the anisotropic diffusion of adatoms on the terrace during annealing, and we improve a kinetic model of step edge based on the classical Burton–Cabrera–Frank (BCF) model in order to determine the normal velocity of step enlargement. The results show that the normal velocity is proportional to the arc length of the peninsula, which is consistent with the first result of our kinetic model. Additionally, a significant phenomenon is an excess elongation along the [110] direction at the top of the peninsula with a higher aspect ratio, which is attributed to the restriction of diffusion lengths.     

Step instability of the surface during Ino.2Gao.sAs （001） annealing

Anisotropic evolution of the step edges on the compressive-strained In0.2Ga0.8As/GaAs（001） surface has been investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy （STM）. The experiments suggest that step edges are indeed sinuous and protrude somewhere a little way along the [110] direction, which is different from the classical waviness predicted by the theoretical model. We consider that the monatomic step edges undergo a morphological instability induced by the anisotropic diffusion of adatoms on the terrace during annealing, and we improve a kinetic model of step edge based on the classical Burton Cabrer-Frank （BCF） model in order to determine the normal velocity of step enlargement. The results show that the normal velocity is proportional to the arc length of the peninsula, which is consistent with the first result of our kinetic model. Additionally, a significant phenomenon is an excess elongation along the [110] direction at the top of the peninsula with a higher aspect ratio, which is attributed to the restriction of diffusion lengths.     

Asymmetrical Diffusion-Induced Directional Motion

Competition between anomalous diffusion and normal diffusion along two different directions of the track for a Brownian motor, combined with a periodic potential flashing, can lead to a macroscopic motion. The current is calculated analytically by using the Astumian-Bier‘s approach of the step number per cycle. It is shown that the direction of current occurs reversal for different waiting times of the potential off and the magnitude of current is prominently enhanced. Moreover, a thermal “green“ noise is proposed to produce the ballistic diffusion, numerical simulations for the average velocity of the particle in the presence of ballistic and normal diffusions support the present theoretical findings.     

Mobility of large clusters on a semiconductor surface:Kinetic Monte Carlo simulation results

The mobility of clusters on a semiconductor surface for various values of cluster size is studied as a function of temperature by kinetic Monte Carlo method. The cluster resides on the surface of a square grid. Kinetic processes such as the diffusion of single particles on the surface, their attachment and detachment to/from clusters, diffusion of particles along cluster edges are considered. The clusters considered in this study consist of 150–6000 atoms per cluster on average.A statistical probability of motion to each direction is assigned to each particle where a particle with four nearest neighbors is assumed to be immobile. The mobility of a cluster is found from the root mean square displacement of the center of mass of the cluster as a function of time. It is found that the diffusion coefficient of clusters goes as D = A(T)Nαwhere N is the average number of particles in the cluster, A(T) is a temperature-dependent constant and α is a parameter with a value of about-0.64 α -0.75. The value of α is found to be independent of cluster sizes and temperature values(170–220 K)considered in this study. As the diffusion along the perimeter of the cluster becomes prohibitive, the exponent approaches a value of-0.5. The diffusion coefficient is found to change by one order of magnitude as a function of cluster size.     

Asymmetrical Diffusion-Induced Directional Motion

Competition between anomalous diffusion and normal diffusion along two different directions of the track for a Brownian motor, combined with a periodic potential flashing, can lead to a macroscopic motion. The current is calculated analytically by using the Astumian-Bier‘s approach of the step number per cycle. It is shown that the direction of current occurs reversal for different waiting times of the potential off and the magnitude of current is prominently enhanced. Moreover, a thermal “green“ noise is proposed to produce the ballistic diffusion, numerical simulations for the average velocity of the particle in the presence of ballistic and normal diffusions support the present theoretical findings.     

Feature-oriented fuzzy bidirectional flow for image enhancement

A fuzzy bidirectional flow is presented, which performs a fuzzy backward (inverse) diffusion along the gradient direction to the isophote lines (edges), while does a certain forward diffusion along the tangent direction on the contrary. Controlled by the image gradient magnitude, the fuzzy membership function guarantees image textures with a natural transition between two different areas. To preserve image features, the nonlinear diffusion coefficients are locally adjusted according to the directional derivatives of the image.     

Variational and diffusion Monte Carlo simulations of a hydrogen molecular ion in a spherical box

The variational and diffusion Monte Carlo approaches are used to study the ground-state properties of a hydrogen molecular ion in a spheroidal box. In this work, we successfully treat the zero-point motion of protons in the same formalism with as of electrons and avoid the Born–Oppenheimer approximation in density function theory. The study shows that the total energy increases with the decrease in volume, and that the distance between protons decreases as the pressure increases.Considering the motion of protons, the kinetic energy of the electron is higher than that of the fixed model under the same conditions and increases by 5%. The kinetic energy of the proton is found to be small under high pressure, which is only a fraction of the kinetic energy of the electron.     

Interaction between the atmospheric boundary layer and a standalone wind turbine in Gansu—Part II: Numerical analysis

To analyze the interaction between wind turbines and the atmospheric boundary layer, we integrated a large-eddy simulation with an actuator line model and examined the characteristics of wind-turbine loads and wakes with reference to a corresponding experiment in Gansu. In the simulation, we set the wind turbine to have a rotor diameter of 14.8 m and a tower height of 15.4 m in the center of an atmospheric boundary layer with a 10.6° yaw angle. The results reveal an obviously skewed wake structure behind the rotor due to the thrust component normal to the flow direction. The power spectra of the inflow fluctuation velocity exhibit a region of-5/3 slope, which confirms the ability of large-eddy simulations to reproduce the energy cascade from larger to smaller scales. We found there to be more energy in the power spectrum of the axial velocity, which shows that coherent turbulence structures have more energy in the horizontal direction. By the conjoint analysis of atmospheric turbulence and windturbine loads, we found that when the inflow wind direction changes rapidly, the turbulence kinetic energy and coherent turbulence kinetic energy in the atmospheric turbulence increase, which in turn causes fluctuations in the wind turbine load.Furthermore, anisotropic atmospheric turbulence causes an asymmetric load cycle, which imposes a strike by the turbine blade on the shaft, thereby increasing the fatigue load on the shaft. Our main conclusion is that the atmospheric boundary layer has a strong effect on the evolution of the wake and the structural response of the turbine.     

Convection and correlation of coherent structure in turbulent boundary layer using tomographic particle image velocimetry

The present experimental work focuses on a new model for space–time correlation and the scale-dependencies of convection velocity and sweep velocity in turbulent boundary layer over a flat wall. A turbulent boundary layer flow at Reθ= 2460 is measured by tomographic particle image velocimetry(tomographic PIV). It is demonstrated that arch, cane,and hairpin vortices are dominant in the logarithmic layer. Hairpins and hairpin packets are responsible for the elongated low-momentum zones observed in the instantaneous flow field. The conditionally-averaged coherent structures systemically illustrate the key roles of hairpin vortice in the turbulence dynamic events, such as ejection and sweep events and energy transport. The space–time correlations of instantaneous streamwise fluctuation velocity are calculated and confirm the new elliptic model for the space–time correlation instead of Taylor hypothesis. The convection velocities derived from the space–time correlation and conditionally-averaged method both suggest the scaling with the local mean velocity in the logarithmic layer. Convection velocity result based on Fourier decomposition(FD) shows stronger scale- dependency in the spanwise direction than in streamwise direction. Compared with FD, the proper orthogonal decomposition(POD) has a distinct distribution of convection velocity for the large- and small-scales which are separated in light of their contributions of turbulent kinetic energy.     

A b initio calculation of the growth of Te nanorods and Bi2Te3 nanoplatelets

In this paper the growth mechanism of a Te/Bi2Te3 novel structure is studied by ab-initio calculations. The results show that the growth of Te nanorods is determined by the adsorption energy of Te atoms on different crystalline Te surfaces. The adsorption energy of Te on the Te （001） surface is 3.29 eV, which is about 0.25 eV higher than that of Te on the Te （110）. This energy difference makes the preferential growth direction along the 〈 001 〉 direction. In addition, the higher surface energy of Bi2Te3 （110） and the lattice misfit between crystalline Bi2We3 and Te along 〈 001 〉 direction are considered to explain the growth of the Bi2Te3 nanoplatelets, in which Volmer-Weber model is used. The theoretical results are in agreement with experimental observation.     

Feature-oriented fuzzy bidirectional flow for image enhancement

A fuzzy bidirectional flow is presented, which performs a fuzzy backward (inverse) diffusion along the gradient direction to the isophote lines (edges), while does a certain forward diffusion along the tangent direction on the contrary. Controlled by the image gradient magnitude, the fuzzy membership function guarantees image textures with a natural transition between two different areas. To preserve image features, the nonlinear diffusion coefficients are locally adjusted according to the directional derivatives of the image.     

Upstream ion wave excitation in an ion-beam–plasma system

Plasma normal modes in ion-beam–plasma systems were experimentally investigated previously only for the waves propagating in the downstream(along the beam) direction. In this paper, the ion wave excitation and propagation in the upstream(against the beam) direction in an ion-beam–plasma system were experimentally studied in a double plasma device. The waves were launched by applying a ramp voltage to a negatively biased excitation grid. Two kinds of wave signals were detected, one is a particle signal composed of burst ions and the other is an ion-acoustic signal arising from the background plasma. These signals were identified by the dependence of the signal velocities on the characteristics of the ramp voltage. The velocity of the burst ion signal increases with the decrease of the rise time and the increase of the peak-to-peak amplitude of the applied ramp voltage while that of the ion-acoustic signal is independent of these parameters.By adjusting these parameters such that the burst ion velocity approaches to the ion-acoustic velocity, the wave–particle interaction can be observed.     

A novel dynamic coherent eddy model and its application to LES of a turbulent jet with free surface

We has developed a novel dynamic coherent eddy model,in which the coherent structure-Q criterion introduced by Hunt et al(1988)-is taken into account in the subgrid-scale turbulent viscosity based on the eddy viscosity model.One proposed method is to combine the resolved-scale velocity-gradient tensor in the classical Smagorinsky model with Q criterion weighted.A kind of dynamic procedure which was averaged in a general process at temporal direction based on the autocorrelations of the characteristic resolved scales of turbulence was taken for the coefficient of subgrid model.The model is implemented in the σ-coordinate and the filtered Navier-Stokes equations are solved by the operator splitting method.The validation was explored to 2-D turbulent slot jet both in ambient environment and in regular waves.The prediction of the present model was compared with the experiment data,including the averaged velocity profiles,the velocity fluctuations and the Reynolds stress.The model performance is shown to be satisfactory.     

Positive gate bias stress-induced hump-effect in elevated-metal metal-oxide thin film transistors

Under the action of a positive gate bias stress, a hump in the subthreshold region of the transfer characteristic is observed for the amorphous indium–gallium–zinc oxide thin film transistor, which adopts an elevated-metal metal–oxide structure. As stress time goes by, both the on-state current and the hump shift towards the negative gate-voltage direction.The humps occur at almost the same current levels for devices with different channel widths, which is attributed to the parasitic transistors located at the channel width edges. Therefore, we propose that the positive charges trapped at the backchannel interface cause the negative shift, and the origin of the hump is considered as being due to more positive charges trapped at the edges along the channel width direction. On the other hand, the hump-effect becomes more significant in a short channel device(L = 2 μm). It is proposed that the diffusion of oxygen vacancies takes place from the high concentration source/drain region to the intrinsic channel region.     

A lattice hydrodynamical model considering turning capability

A new two-dimensional lattice hydrodynamic model considering the turning capability of cars is proposed. Based on this model, the stability condition for this new model is obtained by using linear stability analysis. Near the critical point, the modified KdV equation is deduced by using the nonlinear theory. The results of numerical simulation indicate that the critical point a c increases with the increase of the fraction p of northbound cars which continue to move along the positive y direction for c = 0.3, but decreases with the increase of p for c = 0.7. The results also indicate that the cars moving along only one direction (eastbound or northbound) are most stable.     

MULTIPLE CLUSTER GROWTH OF ULTRA-THIN FILMS WITH ANISOTROPIC EDGE DIFFUSION

The multiple cluster growth of ultra-thin films on a hexagonal substrate with fractal, dendritic and compact morphology has been studied by computer simulation. The influence of the different diffusion processes along island edges on the island shape has been investigated. The results show that the anisotropic corner diffusion induces the dendritic growth, and the anisotropic step diffusion can promote the anisotropic growth and cause the ramified islands growing in three directions. In the case of compact growth, the island shape is mainly determined by the anisotropic corner crossing process. The nonuniform distribution of the multiple cluster formation can be described quantitatively by multifractal. With patterns changing from fractal to compact islands, the width and height of the bell-like or hook-like multifractal spectra increase, while the top f(α) decreases.     

Direct numerical simulation on relevance of fluctuating velocities and drag reduction in turbulent channel flow with spanwise space-dependent electromagnetic force

Based on the Fourier–Chebyshev spectral method, the control of turbulent channel flow by space-dependent electromagnetic force and the mechanism of drag reduction are investigated with direct numerical simulation(DNS) methods for different Reynolds numbers. A formula is derived to express the relation between fluctuating velocities and the friction drag coefficient. With the application of electromagnetic force, the in-depth relations among the fluctuating velocities near the wall, Reynolds stress, and the effect of drag reduction for different Reynolds numbers are discussed. The results indicate that the maximum drag reductions can be obtained with an optimal combination of parameters for each case of different Reynolds numbers. The fluctuating velocities along the streamwise and normal directions are suppressed significantly,while the fluctuating velocity along the spanwise direction is enhanced dramatically due to the spanwise electromagnetic force. However, the values of Reynolds stress depend on the fluctuating velocities along the streamwise and normal directions rather than that along the spanwise direction. Therefore, the significant effect of drag reduction is obtained. Moreover,the maximum drag reduction is weakened due to the decay of control effect for fluctuating velocities as the Reynolds number increases.     

Modelling the unsteady melt flow under a pulsed magnetic field

A numerical model for the unsteady flow under a pulsed magnetic field of a solenoid is developed, in which magnetohydrodynamic flow equations decouple into a transient magnetic diffusion equation and unsteady Navier–Stokes equations in conjunction with two equations of the k–ε turbulent model. A Fourier series method is used to implement the boundary condition of magnetic flux density under multiple periods of a pulsed magnetic field （PMF）. The numerical results are compared with the theoretical or experimental results to validate the model under a time-harmonic magnetic field; it is found that the toroidal vortex pair is the dominating structure within the melt flow under a PMF. The velocity field of a molten melt is in a quasi-steady state after several periods; changing the direction of the electromagnetic force causes the vibration of the melt surface under a PMF.     

Electron-Electron Collision Term Describing the Reflections Induced Scattering in a Magnetized Plasma

For an electron-electron collision with characteristic scale length larger than the relative gyro-radius of the two colliding electrons, when the initial relative parallel kinetic energy cannot surmount the Coulomb repulsive potential, reflection will occur with interchange of the parallel velocities of the two electrons after the collision. The Fokker–Planck approach is employed to derive the electron collision term C_R describing parallel velocity scattering due to the reflections for a magnetized plasma where the average electron gyro-radius is much smaller than the Debye length but much larger than the Landau length. The electron parallel velocity friction and diffusion coefficients due to the reflections are evaluated, which are found not to depend on the electron perpendicular velocity. By studying the temporal evolution of the H quantity due to C_R, it is found that C_R eventually makes the system relax to a state in which the electron parallel velocity distribution is decoupled from the perpendicular velocity distribution.     

Electron states scattering off line edges on the surface of topological insulator

We study the local density of states （LDOS） for electrons scattering off the line edge of an atomic step defect on the surface of a three-dimensional （3D） topological insulator （TI） and the line edge of a finite 3D TI, where the front surface and side surface meet with different Fermi velocities, respectively. By using a S-function potential to model the edges, we find that the bound states existed along the step line edge significantly contribute to the LDOS near the edge, but do not modify the exponential behavior away from it. In addition, the power-law decaying behavior for LDOS oscillation away from the step is understood from the spin rotation for surface states scattering off the step defect with magnitude depending on the strength of the potential. Furthermore, the electron refraction and total reflection analogous to optics occurred at the line edge where two surfaces meet with different Fermi velocities, which leads to the LDOS decaying behavior in the greater Fermi velocity side similar to that for a step line edge. However, in the smaller velocity side the LDOS shows a different decaying behavior as x-1/2, and the wavevector of LDOS oscillation is no longer equal to the diameter of the constant energy contour of surface band, but is sensitively dependent on the ratio of the two Fermi velocities. These effects may be verified by STM measurement with high precision.