Superconducting A15 compounds of the NbGe,NbSi and NbGeSi systems prepared by chemical vapor deposition

A15 compounds of the NbGeSi system have been deposited by the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique on sapphire substrates. In the present paper the relevant deposition conditions are reported. Results of sample characterisation and low-temperature properties of the deposits are discussed.     

Numerical Studies of Viscoelastic Flow Using the Software OpenFOAM

Viscoelastic fluids are a special class of non-Newtonian fluids. There are several types of viscoelastic fluid models, and all of them have a complex rheological response in comparison to Newtonian fluids. This response can be viewed as a combination of viscous and elastic effects and non-linear phenomena. This complex physics makes a numerical simulation a rather challenging task, even in simple test-cases. Studies presented in this paper are numerical studies of the viscoelastic fluid flow in several test cases. These studies have been done in OpenFOAM, an open-source CFD package. Implementation of viscoelastic models and a solver is only available in a community driven version of software (OpenFOAM-ext). One of the goals of research in this paper was to test the solver and models on some simple test cases. We considered start-up and pulsating flows of viscoelastic fluid in a channel and a circular pipe. The important thing is that an analytical solution can be found in these cases, making in possible to test all aspects of numerical simulation in OpenFOAM. Obtained results showed an excellent agreement with the analytical solution for both velocity and stress components. These results encouraged authors' motivation and a choice to use OpenFOAM for simulation of viscoelastic flows. We hope that our research will make a contribution to the OpenFOAM community. Our plan for the further research is a simulation of blood flow in arteries with the viscoelastic solver. (© 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Conformational chirality and chiral crystallization of N-sulfonylpyrimidine derivatives

New N-sulfonylpyrimidine derivatives 1-(p-toluenesulfonyl)uracil (1), 1-(p-toluenesulfonyl)thymine (2), 5-bromo-1-(p-toluenesulfonyl)uracil (3), 1-(methanesulfonyl)uracil (4), 1-(1-naphthylsulfonyl)uracil (5), and 1-(1-naphthylsulfonyl)thymine (6) were prepared by the condensation reaction of silylated pyrimidine derivatives with selected sulfonyl chlorides in acetonitrile. Some members of the series showed unexpected crystal properties as a consequence of their conformational chirality in the solid state. Compounds 1 and 5 exhibited chiral crystallization, which was, in the case of 1, accompanied by the formation of racemically twinned crystals regardless of the solvent used, while 5 gave a conglomerate of enantiomorphous crystals. For 2, 3, and 6, substituents at the C-5 position of the pyrimidine ring prevented chiral crystallization by influencing the crystal packing. Analysis of the crystal structures of 1, 4, and 5, reveals the influence of the arylsulfonyl group on the occurrence or absence of chiral crystallization.     

Theoretical study of structure, vibrational frequencies, and electronic spectra of dibenzofuran and its polychlorinated derivatives

Minimum structures and harmonic vibrational frequencies of dibenzofuran (DF), 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzofuran (TCDF), and octachlorodibenzofuran (OCDF) were calculated using the multiconfigurational complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) and density functional theory (DFT) methods. The electronic transitions in these compounds were studied via the single-state multireference second-order perturbation theory (CASPT2) based on the CASSCF(14,13) references, as well as the time-dependent DFT (TD-B3P86) employing the cc-pVDZ (CASSCF/CASPT2) and 6-31G(d,p) (TD-B3P86) basis sets. The B3P86 geometry and harmonic vibrational frequencies of ground state DF agree very well with the experimental data, and the CASSCF/CASPT2 excitation energies and oscillator strengths are accurate enough to provide a reliable assignment of the absorption bands in the 200-300 nm region. The close agreements with experiment for the parent DF give the present theoretical approaches a valuable credit in predicting the properties of the environmentally toxic polychlorinated congeners, which is all the more important considering the difficulties and hazards in obtaining the experimental data.     

Distance-regular graphs with complete multipartite <Emphasis Type="Italic">μ</Emphasis>-graphs and AT4 family

Let Γ be an antipodal distance-regular graph of diameter 4, with eigenvalues . Then its Krein parameter vanishes precisely when Γ is tight in the sense of Jurišić, Koolen and Terwilliger, and furthermore, precisely when Γ is locally strongly regular with nontrivial eigenvalues and . When this is the case, the intersection parameters of Γ can be parametrized by p, q and the size of the antipodal classes r of Γ. Let Γ be an antipodal tight graph of diameter 4, denoted by AT4 (p, q, r), and let the μ-graph be a graph that is induced by the common neighbours of two vertices at distance 2. Then we show that all the μ-graphs of Γ are complete multipartite if and only if Γ is AT4(sq,q,q) for some natural number s. As a consequence, we derive new existence conditions for graphs of the AT4 family whose μ-graphs are not complete multipartite. Another interesting application of our results is also that we were able to show that the μ-graphs of a distance-regular graph with the same intersection array as the Patterson graph are the complete bipartite graph K _4,4. Authors were supported in part by the Com²MaC-SRC/ERC program of MOST/KOSEF (grant # R11-1999-054) and in part by the Slovenian Ministry of Science, while the first author was visiting the Combinatorial and Computational Mathematics Center at POSTECH, and while the second author was visiting the IMFM at the University of Ljubljana.     

Force measurements between sub-100 nm colloidal particles

Interparticle forces have been measured between polystyrene latex particles as small as 85 nm in diameter in KCl solutions. A variant of the differential electrophoresis technique, called particle force light scattering (PFLS), was used to measure forces between Brownian, nearly touching particles for diameters from 4500 nm down to 85 nm. The forces, some less than 0.1 pN, matched to within a factor of 2 with predictions from depletion and DLVO theory.     

Physical properties of proton conducting membranes based on a protic ionic liquid

We have investigated the physical properties of proton conducting polymer membranes based on a protic ionic liquid (IL). Properties such as ionic conductivity, melting point of the polymer phase, and glass transition temperature of the liquid phase are studied as a function of IL/polymer ratio and temperature. We observe an increased thermomechanical stability of the membrane with increasing polymer content. However, there is a concomitant decrease in the conductivity with increasing polymer content. This decrease is larger than what can be expected from the dilution of the conducting IL by the insulating polymer matrix. The origin of this decrease can be caused both by the morphology of the membrane and by interactions between the polymer matrix and the ionic liquid. We find a change in the glass transition temperature and in the temperature dependence of the conductivity with increasing polymer content. Both effects can be related to the physical confinement of the IL in the polymer membrane.     

On Drazin inverse of operator matrices

In this short paper, we offer (another) formula for the Drazin inverse of an operator matrix for which certain products of the entries vanish. We also give formula for the Drazin inverse of the sum of two operators under special conditions.     

A generalized Birkhoff-Young-Chebyshev quadrature formula for analytic functions

A generalized N-point Birkhoff-Young quadrature of interpolatory type, with the Chebyshev weight, for numerical integration of analytic functions is considered. The nodes of such a quadrature are characterized by an orthogonality relation. Some special cases of this quadrature formula are derived.