Surface modification of polystyrene with the bovine serum albumin-Tween 80 complex and a forecast of biocompatibility

The surface of polystyrene was modified with the bovine serum albumin-Tween 80 complex. The adsorption of the complex and the formation of films on the surface of polystyrene were studied using the piezoelectric weighing method. The state of the modified surface was evaluated by contact angle measurements. The stability of the modifying layer was determined based on the critical interfacial energy values of the surface equilibrated with water. A conclusion was drawn that the complex can be effectively used to enhance the biocompatibility of polymer materials.     

Microstructural assessment of InN-on-GaN films grown by plasma-assisted MBE

The structural properties of InN thin films, grown by rf plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy on Ga-face GaN/Al₂O₃(0001) substrates, were investigated by means of conventional and high resolution electron microscopy. Our observations showed that a uniform InN film of total thickness up to 1 μm could be readily grown on GaN without any indication of columnar growth. A clear epitaxial orientation relationship of , was determined. The quality of the InN film was rather good, having threading dislocations as the dominant structural defect with a density in the range of 10⁹–10¹⁰ cm⁻². The crystal lattice parameters of wurtzite InN were estimated by electron diffraction analysis to be a=0.354 nm and c=0.569 nm, using Al₂O₃ as the reference crystal. Heteroepitaxial growth of InN on GaN was accomplished by the introduction of a network of three regularly spaced misfit dislocation arrays at the atomically flat interface plane. The experimentally measured distance of misfit dislocations was 2.72 nm. This is in good agreement with the theoretical value derived from the in-plane lattice mismatch of InN and GaN, which indicated that nearly full relaxation of the interfacial strain between the two crystal lattices was achieved.     

Models of elastic media with stress relaxation

The stress relaxation process is linked to the change with time of the metric stress tensor of the medium. Possible types of thermodynamically justified relaxation equations are discussed.     

1/f Noise in dye-sensitized solar cells and NIR photon detectors

All electronic devices are plagued with 1/f noise originating from many causes. The most important factors contributing to 1/f noise in a semiconductor is believed to be recombination of carriers and their trapping at defects and impurity sites. Adsorption of moisture and electron acceptor molecules enhances the intensity of 1/f noise. Amazingly, some molecular species that strongly chelate to the semiconductor surface, suppress 1/f noise owing to passivation of the recombination sites. Thus in addition to sensitization, the dye adsorbed on the nanocrystallites plays a key role in mitigation of recombinations. For this reason dye-sensitized heterojunctions could also find application as low noise NIR photon detectors. Experiments conducted with oxide semiconductors (TiO₂, ZnO, SnO₂) indicate that the mode of binding of dyes at specific sites determines the extent to which the recombination and 1/f noise are suppressed. The transport of electrons in a nanocrystalline matrix is diffusive with a diffusion coefficient D depending on the trapping and detrapping processes. Thus passivation of trapping sites by the adsorbed dye is expected to increase the response time which can be expressed as τ  L²/D, where L = thickness of the nanocrystalline film. Measurement techniques and construction of a dye-sensitized NIR photon detector will be discussed.     

Prospects for triggering in experiment PAX at GSI

In experiment PAX, proposed for the new accelerator complex at GSI, investigations in the field of high-energy spin physics with the use of a polarized antiproton beam are planned. In this paper the possibilities for triggering are considered taking into account the PAX detector properties and a probable configuration of the trigger system is discussed for the first time. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Some topics on the continuation and smoothing of vector functions

We consider problems of continuation of vector functions from a subspace to the entire space and of smoothing problems for these functions. It is shown that there exists a reflexive separable spaceX and a subspaceY such that even a very smooth mapping ofY does not extend to a uniformly continuous mapping of a neighborhood ofY.Translated fromMatematicheskie Zametki, Vol. 58, No. 6, pp. 906–916, December, 1995.     

Determination of 3-Chloro-4-(Dichloromethyl)-5-Hydroxy-2(5H)-Furanone (Toxicant MX) in Drinking Water by Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry

It is shown that toxicant MX can be reliably identified and determined quantitatively by ion-trap tandem mass spectrometry with an accuracy as high as that for high-resolution mass spectrometry.     

Studies on Rare-Earth/Iron and Actinide/Iron Multilayers

Hyperfine Interactions - Multilayers of Ce/Fe and U/Fe were fabricated by sputtering and studied by X-ray diffraction and reflectivity, Mössbauer spectroscopy and polarised neutron...