A Smplified Method for the Computation of Correlation Effects on the Band Structure of Semiconductors

We present a simplified computational scheme in order to calculate the effects of electron correlations on the energy bands of diamond and silicon. By adopting a quasiparticle picture we compute first the relaxation and polarization effects around an electron set into a conduction-band Wannier orbital. This is done by allowing the valence orbitals to relax within a self-consistent field (SCF) calculation. The diagonal matrix element of the Hamiltonian leads to a shift of the center of gravity of the conduction band while the off-diagonal matrix elements result in a small reduction of the conduction-electron bandwidth. This calculation is supplemented by the computation of the loss of ground-state correlations due to the blocked Wannier orbital into which the added electron has been placed. The same procedure applies to the removal of an electron, i.e., to the valence bands. But the latter have been calculated previously in some detail and previous results are used to estimate the energy gap in the two materials. The numerical data reported here show that the methods works, in principle, but that some extension of the scheme is also necessary to obtain fully satisfactory results.Dedicated to J.-P. Malrieu on the occasion of his 60th birthday     

Formation of functional groups on graphite during oxygen plasma treatment

Improved sample wettability was obtained by oxygen plasma functionalization of pyrolytic graphite. The samples were exposed to highly dissociated oxygen plasma with the density of 1 × 10¹⁶ m⁻³, the electron temperature of about 5.5 eV and the density of neutral oxygen atoms of 8 × 10²¹ m⁻³ for 20 s. The surface wettability was measured by a contact angle of water drop. The contact angle dropped from original 112° down to about 1°. The functional groups were detected by XPS analyses. The survey spectrum showed a substantial increase of oxygen concentration on the surface, while high-resolution analyses showed additional oxygen was bonded onto the graphite surface in the form of C-O polar functional group responsible for the increase of the surface energy.     

The fractal structure of nanocomposition polymer-silica sorbents for chromatography

The hydrolytic polycondensation of tetraethoxysilane in the presence of various polymers (polyacrylonitrile, polycaproamide, and chitosan) as templates was performed with the use of the sol-gel technology to obtain nanohybrid composite polymer-silica sorbents-nanofractals.     

Directed and elliptic flow in 197Au+197Au at intermediate energies

Directed and elliptic flow for the ¹⁹⁷Au+¹⁹⁷Au system at incident energies between 40 and 150 MeV per nucleon has been measured using the INDRA 4π multi-detector. For semi-central collisions, the excitation function of elliptic flow shows a transition from in-plane to out-of-plane emission at around 100 MeV per nucleon. The directed flow changes sign at a bombarding energy between 50 and 60 MeV per nucleon and remains negative at lower energies. Molecular dynamics calculations (CHIMERA) indicate sensitivity of the global squeeze-out transition on the σ _NN and demonstrate the importance of angular momentum conservation in transport codes at low energies.     

Students’ Reasoning About One-Object Stochastic Phenomena in an ICT-Environment

This paper focuses on the different ways in which students in lower secondary school (14–16 year olds) experience compound random events, presented to them in the form of combined junctions. A carefully designed ICT environment was developed enabling the students to interact with different representations of such structures. Data for the analysis was gathered from two interview sessions. The analysis of the interaction is based on constructivist principles on learning; i.e. we adopted a student-oriented perspective, taking into consideration the different ways students try to make sense of chance encounters. Our results show how some students give priority to geometrical and physical concerns, and we discuss how seeking causal explanations of random phenomena may have encouraged this. With respect to numerically oriented models a division strategy appears to stand out as the preferred one.     

Texture and electronic activity of grain boundaries in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin films

The influence of different film textures on the electronic properties of polycrystalline Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ absorbers is studied by measuring the laterally resolved optoelectronic properties of differently textured Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ films with Kelvin probe force microscopy and cathodoluminescence. The grain boundaries in (112)- and (220/204)-textured films behave differently. The work-function profile measured with the Kelvin probe across a grain boundary in (112)-textured films shows a dip indicating positive charges at the grain boundaries. In panchromatic cathodoluminescence mappings in a transmission electron microscope, such grain boundaries appear dark, i.e. the strongly reduced luminescence indicates that the grain boundaries represent strong non-radiative recombination centers. In contrast, grain boundaries in (220/204)-textured films give rise to a dip or a step in the work function indicating slightly negative charge or neutrality. Cathodoluminescence is reduced at such grain boundaries, but less dramatically than in the (112)-textured case. However, when Na is present in the (220/204)-textured films, the grain boundaries are almost invisible in cathodoluminescence mappings. This strong passivating action of Na occurs only in the (220/204)-textured films, due to a particular grain-boundary population. In (112)-textured films and films without pronounced texture, this passivation effect is much less noticeable. PACS 73.50.Gr; 73.61.Ga; 78.60.Hk; 87.64.Dt     

Three-body problem in the theory of the dielectric constant

We study the corrections to the Clausius-Mossotti formula for the dielectric constant of a disordered system of polarizable spherical particles. Previously we have derived an exact cluster expansion for the correction terms. Here we study the three-body correction in detail. We derive an explicit expression for the integrand of the three-body cluster integral for a system of polarizable point dipoles.     

On the genericity of chaos

Let M be a compact manifold with dimM?2. We prove that some iteration of the generic homeomorphism on M is semiconjugated to the shift map and has infinite topological entropy (Theorem 1.1).