Mechanical instability and ideal shear strength of transition metal carbides and nitrides

The ideal shear strength of transition metal carbides and nitrides is calculated with the use of the ab initio pseudopotential density functional method. The microscopic mechanism that limits the ideal strength is studied using full atomic and structural relaxation and the results of electronic structure calculations. It is shown that plasticity in perfect crystals can be triggered by electronic instabilities at finite strains. Our study explicitly demonstrates that the ideal strength in these materials is limited by the elastic instability which is in turn initiated by electronic instabilities. The potential application of alloy hardening due to the onset of instabilities at different strains is also discussed.     

Instabilities in a two-dimensional polar-filament-motor system

The dynamical interaction between filaments and motor proteins is known for their propensity to self-organize into spatio-temporal patterns. Since the filaments are polar in the sense that motors define a direction of motion on them, the system can display a spatially homogeneous polar-filament orientation. We show that the latter anisotropic state itself may become unstable with respect to inhomogeneous fluctuations. This scenario shares similarities with instabilities in planarly aligned nematic liquid crystals: in both cases the wave vector of the instability may be oriented either parallel or oblique to the polarity axis. However, the encountered instabilities here are long-wave instead of short-wave and the destabilizing modes are drifting ones due to the polar symmetry. Additionally a nonpropagating transverse instability is possible. The stability diagrams related to the various wave vector orientations relative to the polarity axis are determined and discussed for a specific model of motor-filament interactions.     

Direct Numerical Simulation of the Rayleigh-Taylor Instability with the Spectral Element Method

A novel method is proposed to simulate Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities using a specially-developed unsteady three-dimensional high-order spectral element method code. The numerical model used consists of Navier-Stokes equations and a transport-diffusive equation. The code is first validated with the results of linear stability perturbation theory. Then several characteristics of the Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities are studied using this three-dimensional unsteady code, including instantaneous turbulent structures and statistical turbulent mixing heights under different initial wave numbers. These results indicate that turbulent structures of Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities are strongly dependent on the initial conditions. The results also suggest that a high-order numerical method should provide the capability of simulating small scale fluctuations of Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities of turbulent flows.     

Gravitational and thermocapillary mechanisms of hydrodynamic motions in liquid crystals induced by laser with a spatially periodic intensity structure

A possibility of excitation of hydrodynamic convective motions of the Rayleigh-Benard and Marangoni type in isotropic liquids and nematic liquid crystals upon absorption of light with a spatially periodic intensity distribution is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally. The opportunity of control and the stability of convective motions are studied. Benard cells become unstable when the light intensity is high. These instabilities are of the thermal origin because the Prandtl number for the medium under study is considerably larger than unity. The competition between the gravitational and thermocapillary mechanisms of photohydrodynamic reorientation of nematic liquid crystal director is also studied. The reorientation of the molecules due to the thermocapillary mechanism causes an optical nonlinearity which is three orders of magnitude stronger than the well-known direct orientational optical nonlinearity.     

Instabilities of soap film structures in square cuboid frame

ABSTRACT

Through the simulations performed with the Surface Evolver, we explored the T1s and the eight-fold vertex related topological changes in the square cuboid frame by changing the axial ratio λ and the liquid fraction ?. A stability diagram is provided to illustrate the instabilities encountered in any quasi-static process. Metastable film configurations are always accompanied by pre-emptive instabilities, while the instabilities of stable film configurations are not triggered until the central quadrilateral film steadily vanishes.     

Nonequilibrium Stability of Resistive Magnetohydrodynamic Pinches

The classical method of determining the stability of MHD equilibria is generalized to the case of an electrically resistive and thermally conductive imploding dynamic pinch so that the onset and linear behavior of three-dimensional nonequilibrium instabilities can be studied. Dynamically induced Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities are shown to appear in a cylindrically symmetric theta pinch at just those times as are given by theory and experiment, and with the correct growth rate.     

X-ray diffraction study of low-and high-angle misorientations in LiF crystals during creep

Low-and high-angle lattice misorientations in LiF single crystals subjected to tensile deformation in the temperature range 573–973 K were studied using the following x-ray diffraction techniques: the ω-scanning method, the Laue method, and the Kossel and Fujiwara widely divergent beam (WDB) methods. The fraction of the high-angle misorientation is shown to be low at low temperature, where a block structure is absent, and at high temperature, where blocks are large (～100 μm). The high-angle misorientation increases with strain faster than the low-angle misorientation. The misorientations measured by different techniques can differ because of the different areas which are illuminated by an x-ray beam and over which the misorientations are averaged. The results obtained are compared with available data on the structure of deformed alkali-halide crystals.     

Synthesis,crystal growth and characterization of novel semiorganic nonlinear optical crystal: Dichloro(beta-alanine)cadmium(II)

Semiorganic nonlinear optical material of dichloro(beta-alanine)cadmium(II) (DCBAC) have been synthesized and single crystals were grown by solvent evaporation method at room temperature. The lattice parameters of the grown crystals are determined by single crystal XRD. The modes of vibration of different molecular groups present in the sample were identified by the FTIR spectral analysis. Thermal stability of the crystal was investigated using thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential thermal analysis (DTA). The dielectric constants of the crystal were studied as a function of frequency and the results are discussed. The grown crystals are subjected to microhardness studies and the variation of the microhardness with the applied load is studied. The optical transmission spectra and second harmonic generation (SHG) were investigated to study its linear and nonlinear optical properties. The nonlinear optical (NLO) property of the crystal was confirmed by powder second harmonic generation (SHG) test. SHG efficiency is comparable to that of KDP.     

EHD instabilities in nematics driven by dichotomous noise: Stability criteria and influence of free boundary conditions

Different criteria for the onset of EHD instabilities in nematic liquid crystals driven by dichotomous stochastic electric fields are compared within a 1d linear model. Sample stability gives always higher, energetic stability always lower thresholds than the first moment's stability investigated in a previous paper, showing the same qualitative behaviour. Especially the direct transition towards chaos above a critical strength of the noise and the change from stabilizing to destabilizing effect of the noise with increasing correlation time can be explained. The influence of free boundary conditions is investigated analyzing first moment's stability of a 2d linear model. The thresholds are slightly higher but behave qualitatively like in the 1d model. The Williams strip pattern becomes more narrow both with increasing strength and mean frequency of the noise.     

Relaxation on the energy method for the transient Rayleigh-Bénard convection

The onset of buoyancy-driven instability in initially quiescent fluid layers having the various boundary conditions is analyzed by using the energy method. New energy stability equation is derived under the Boussinesq approximation and the relative stability concept. The predicted critical conditions are compared with the previous results based on the conventional energy method. The stability limits which are related to the onset time of instabilities are presented as a function of the Rayleigh number Ra and the Prandtl number Pr. The present stability results predict that the onset time of convective instability decreases with increasing Ra and Pr. For the case of high Ra, the onset time of the instability is relatively insensitive to the boundary conditions of the upper boundaries.     

The origin of lattice instability in bcc tungsten under triaxial loading

Abstract

Stability of ideal bcc tungsten crystal under triaxial tensile loading was explored from first principles using an analysis of both elastic and dynamic stability. The triaxial stress state was considered as a superposition of axial and biaxial transverse stresses. The region of attainable stresses which was delimited using the computed tensile stress maxima was marginally reduced by occurrence of soft phonons in the crystal lattice. While, under purely hydrostatic tension, the crystal was predicted stable up to 48 GPa, greater magnitude of a differential stress reduced the value of a mean (hydrostatic) stress associated with first phonon instabilities to about 35 GPa. This value is rather close to that recently determined in experiment. Computed phonon spectra were successfully verified with the help of atomistic models of microscopic lattice deformation.     

Crystal growth and phase transitions of solid solutions in [N(CH3)4]2MX4 isomorph class

Abstract

Homogeneous single crystals of tetramethylammonium tetrahalogenometallate solid solutions have been grown: a temperature difference growth method with thermally enforced convection was used during the material transport from an equilibrated feed material to the growing crystals. The smallest crystals were mostly studied by differential scanning calorimetry and X-ray crystallography. Some bigger crystals were available for dielectric measurements and Raman scattering. The temperature-concentration phase diagrams of solid solutions look like the temperature-pressure phase diagrams of pure tetramethylammonium salts. The progressive substitution seems equivalent to a change of the pressure, and is understood as a distortion of the metal-halide tetrahedron and a change of interactions with the first, second and third neighbours. The structure instabilities seem to have their origin within the b?c layers, and the increase of pressure (or equivalent concentration) should correspond to a hardening of the Layer-Shift Mode.     

Organic conductors and superconductors

This review attempts to present the most salient developments of research on organic conductors and superconductors during the past 10 years. A theoretical introduction treats instabilities of quasi-one-dimensional electron systems and associated precursor effects which are relevant to the experimental results on organic conductors. We then describe the characterization of quasi-one-dimensional organic conductors by their transport, optical and magnetic properties. Finally, two sections are devoted to the experimental investigation of the low temperature instabilities: lattice instability in TTF-TCNQ and related compounds, superconducting or antiferromagnetic instabilities in the (TMTSF) 2 X series. The importance of one-dimensional fluctuations is emphasized in both lattice and superconducting instabilities.     

Growth and characterization of potassium halides mixed l-arginine phosphate monohydrate semi organic nonlinear optical single crystals

Single crystals of pure and potassium halides additive mixed l-arginine phosphate monohydrate have been grown with good optical quality by slow temperature reduction method. Microbial growth aspects and coloration have been studied on the growth solutions. In addition to that the structural properties have been studied by powder X-ray diffraction method and Fourier transform infrared spectral analyses for the grown crystals. Thermal stability of the grown crystals were studied by thermo gravimetric (TG) and differential thermal analyses (DTA) and found that the grown crystals are suitable for device fabrication for frequency conversion applications.     

Recombination waves in CdS induced by optical quenching

Low-frequency current oscillations induced by optical quenching were observed in highly photosensitive CdS crystals. No evidence of a negative differential resistivity was found. The current oscillations were observed at room temperature at electric field strengths of 100–800 V/cm. As shown by probe measurements, the instabilities resulted from a bulk phenomenon. The oscillations are related to the excitation of recombination waves, predicted by Konstantinov and Perel.     

Photoconductivity, dielectric and thermal investigations of pure, benzophenone- and iodine-doped benzoyl glycine NLO single crystals

Physical properties such as photoconductivity, dielectric and thermal stability have been investigated for pure benzoyl glycine (BG) crystals. In addition to this, the influence of dopants (benzophenone and iodine) of these properties on BG crystals has been studied. Photoconductivity studies on pure BG, benzophenone-and iodine-doped BG revealed the positive photoconducting nature. The dielectric responses of the samples have been studied in the frequency range 100 Hz-500 KHz at room temperature and the results are discussed in detail. The thermogravimetric studies of pure and doped BG crystals indicate that the presence of dopants has slightly increased the decomposition temperature of pure BG samples, thereby enhancing thermal stability to the doped ones.     

Organic conductors and superconductors

This review attempts to present the most salient developments of research on organic conductors and superconductors during the past 10 years. A theoretical introduction treats instabilities of quasi-one-dimensional electron systems and associated precursor effects which are relevant to the experimental results on organic conductors. We then describe the characterization of quasi-one-dimensional organic conductors by their transport, optical and magnetic properties. Finally, two sections are devoted to the experimental investigation of the low temperature instabilities: lattice instability in TTF-TCNQ and related compounds, superconducting or antiferromagnetic instabilities in the (TMTSF)₂X series. The importance of one-dimensional fluctuations is emphasized in both lattice and superconducting instabilities.     

高温高压固态复分解反应法生长氮化镓的应变性质研究

本文采用高温高压下固态复分解反应法生长氮化镓.用X射线衍射仪、扫描电子显微镜、激光拉曼光谱仪对其进行分析,结果表明生成了六角纤锌矿结构的氮化镓晶体.该样品在宏观上受到了张应力的作用,退火后,宏观的应变状态由张应变向压应变转变;晶体微观应力减小,晶粒尺寸变大,晶体质量变好.     

Parametric instabilities of a viscous liquid layer covered by a thin elastic plate under vertical periodic motion

Parametric instabilities of a horizontal liquid layer with a finite depth covered by a thin elastic plate under a vertical periodic motion are investigated with account taken of the viscosity of the liquid layer. The primary regions and the secondary ones of dynamic instabilities are determined by using the equation of a thin elastic plate including the normal component of the viscous stress, but not the tangential component of it. The critical amplitude of the imposed oscillation, beyond which a parametric instability occurs (that is, the neutral stability curves) is found in the space of the frequency and amplitude of the imposed vertical oscillation. These results are confirmed by experimental ones for a liquid layer of glycerine covered with a thin rubber plate.