Ferroelectrics in Plasma Chemistry

The qualitative considerations are presented concerning the use of plasma, generated at the surface of ferroelectric samples, for the investigation of chemical processes. The physical principles of the phenomena, its possibilities and limitations are described. Also, preliminary conclusions resulting from the investigations carried out up to the present, are drawn up.     

Grafting of maleic anhydride on polyethylene. II. Mechanism of grafting in a homogeneous medium in the presence of radical initiators

Grafting of maleic anhydride on polyethylene is found to take place also in a homogeneous medium. The course of reaction in nitrogen and in air and the influence of temperature of initiator and polymer concentrations suggest that grafting is due to the chain transfer reaction to polyethylene.     

Deuteron NMR spectra of ammonium ion isotopomers at low temperatures

Partially deuterated ammonium compounds contain ammonium ion isotopomers with relative abundances given by the binomial distribution of protons and deuterons. All isotopomers with deuterons contribute characteristic deuteron NMR spectra at 5K. Experimental NMR spectra were separated and respective contributions of isotopomers were determined. The derived contributions agree with expected values for a given deuteration in the case of ammonium hexafluorophosphate. In ammonium hexachlorotellurate both NH2D2+ and about 50% of NH3D+ ions are rigid, while the remaining NH3D+ perform limited jumps. NHD3+ and ND4+ ions undergo tunnelling rotation, NH3D+ ions perform either jumps about C2 axis or limited jumps, but some stay rigid in ammonium hexachlorostannate. NH2D2+, NHD 3+ and ND4+ undergo rotational tunnelling. In the case of ammonium perchlorate, the NH3D+ ions perform either jumps about C3 axis or limited jumps whilst some remain rigid. Very low values of activation energies were derived for all spectral components from the temperature dependence of their spectra, up to about 20K, which indicates an incoherent tunnelling nature of the observed dynamic processes. The diverse mobility of NH3D+ ions appears to be the most interesting and new feature.     

Solvent Relaxation in Phospholipid Bilayers: Principles and Recent Applications

Although there exist a number of methods, such as NMR, X-ray, e.g., which explore the hydration of phospholipid bilayers, the solvent relaxation (SR) method has the advantage of simple instrumentation, easy data treatment and possibility of measuring fully hydrated samples. The main information gained from SR by the analysis of recorded “time-resolved emission spectra” (TRES) is micro-viscosity and micro-polarity of the dye microenvironment. Based on these parameters, one can draw conclusions about water structure in the bilayer. In this review, we focus on physical background of this method, on all the procedures that are needed in order to obtain relevant parameters, and on the requirements on the fluorescence dyes. Furthermore, a few recent applications (the effect of curvature, binding of antibacterial peptides and phase transition) illustrating the versatility of this method are mentioned. Moreover, limitations and potential problems are discussed.     

Shell energy in the heaviest nuclei using the Green’s function oscillator expansion method

The Greens function oscillator expansion method and the generalized Strutinsky smoothing procedure are applied to shell corrections in the heaviest elements. A macroscopic-microscopic method with a finite deformed Woods-Saxon potential is used. The stability condition for the shell correction is discussed in detail and the parameters defining the smoothing procedure are carefully determined. It is demonstrated that the spurious contribution to the total binding energy due to the unphysical particle gas that appears in the standard method can be as large as 1.5 MeV for weakly bound neutron-rich superheavy nuclei, but the effect on energy differences (e.g., alpha-decay values) is fairly small.     

Temperature dependence of ferromagnetic resonance in permalloy/NiO exchange-biased films

The temperature dependencies of the ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) linewidth and the resonance field-shift have been investigated for NiO/NiFe exchange-biased bilayers from 78 K to 450 K. A broad maximum in the linewidth of 500 Oe, solely due to the exchange-bias, is observed at ≈150 K when the magnetic field is applied along the film plane. When the magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the film plane, the maximum in the linewidth is less pronounced and amounts to 100 Oe at the same temperature. Such a behavior of the FMR linewidth is accompanied with a monotonic increase in the negative resonance field-shift with decreasing temperature. Our results are compared with the previous experimental FMR and Brillouin light scattering data for various ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic (FM/AF) structures, and suggest that spin dynamics (spin-wave damping and anomalous resonance field-shift) in the FM/AF structures can be described in a consistent way by a single mechanism of the so-called slow-relaxation.     

Non-Abelian color dielectric - towards the effective model of the low energy QCD

Lattice motivated triplet color scalar field theory is analyzed. We consider non-minimal as well as covariant derivative coupling with SU(2) gauge fields. Field configurations generated by external electric sources are presented. Moreover non-Abelian magnetic monopoles are found. Dependence on the spatial coordinates in the obtained solutions is identical as in the usual Abelian case. We show also that after a decomposition of the fields a modified Faddeev-Niemi action can be obtained. It contains explicit O(3) symmetry breaking term parameterized by the condensate of an isoscalar field. Due to that Goldstone bosons observed in the original Faddeev-Niemi model are removed.Received: 23 January 2004, Revised: 29 July 2004, Published online: 11 January 2005