New Approach to the Study of Particle-Surface Adhesion Using Atomic Force Microscopy

The colloidal probe technique is commonly employed to determine the adhesion force between a particle and a solid surface. Characterization of the adhesion of a particle across a surface can be as important, if not more so, as the determination of an average value for the adhesion. Unfortunately, the measurement of the variation in adhesion can be difficult at best. A new approach for studying particle-surface adhesion based on the force-volume technique is presented. Upon combining the force-volume technique with a colloidal probe, not only is it possible to determine the average adhesion force, but an image of the spatial variation of the adhesion can also be obtained. This method is envisioned to have great potential for examining and analyzing the adhesion behavior in complex natural and technological systems. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.     

N-centered radicals in self-terminating radical cyclizations: experimental and computational studies

Intermolecular addition of photochemically generated N-centered aminium and amidyl radicals 13a-d and 16a,b, respectively, to the cyclic alkyne 1 initiates a radical translocation/cyclization cascade, followed by an oxidative termination step that eventually leads to formation of the bicyclic ketones 7a and 8a. Computational studies were performed to gain insight into the mechanism of these reactions, which are an interesting modification of the recently discovered concept of self-terminating radical cyclizations.     

Shock wave polarizations and optical metrics in the Born and the Born–Infeld electrodynamics

We analyze the behavior of shock waves in nonlinear theories of electrodynamics. For this, by use of generalized Hadamard step functions of increasing order, the electromagnetic potential is developed in a series expansion near the shock wave front. This brings about a corresponding expansion of the respective electromagnetic field equations which allows for deriving relations that determine the jump coefficients in the expansion series of the potential. We compute the components of a suitable gauge-normalized version of the jump coefficients given for a prescribed tetrad compatible with the shock front foliation. The solution of the first-order jump relations shows that, in contrast to linear Maxwell’s electrodynamics, in general the propagation of shock waves in nonlinear theories is governed by optical metrics and polarization conditions describing the propagation of two differently polarized waves (leading to a possible appearance of birefringence). In detail, shock waves are analyzed in the Born and Born–Infeld theories verifying that the Born–Infeld model exhibits no birefringence and the Born model does. The obtained results are compared to those ones found in literature. New results for the polarization of the two different waves are derived for Born-type electrodynamics.     

On causality in nonlinear vacuum electrodynamics of the Plebański class

We investigate the Plebański class of electrodynamical theories, i.e., theories of nonlinear vacuum electrodynamics that derive from a Lorentz‐invariant Lagrangian (or Hamiltonian). In any such theory the light rays are the lightlike geodesics of two optical metrics that depend on the electromagnetic background field. A set of necessary and sufficient conditions is found whose fulfillment secures that the optical metrics are causal in the sense that the light rays are lightlike or timelike with respect to the underlying space‐time metric. Thereupon we derive conditions on the Lagrangian, or the Hamiltonian, of the theory such that the causality conditions are satisfied for all allowed background fields. (The allowed values of the field strength tensor are those for which the excitation tensor is finite and real.) The general results are illustrated with several examples.