Oxidation behaviour of nickel silicides investigated by AES and XPS

The oxygen interaction with Ni silicide surfaces in a wide range of composition, from NiSi₂ to Ni₃Si, has been investigated at room temperature by AES and XPS techniques. It has been found that the Si oxidation is enhanced over that of pure Si in all the Ni-Si compounds, and that the strongest oxidation occurs in Ni richer silicides. In general, oxygen bonds with Si leaving the metal unoxidized, but in Ni₃Si evidence for the occurrence of Ni oxidation has been found at high exposures.     

Stability of Jensen functional equation on semigroups

In this paper we introduce a Jensen type functional equation on semigroups and study the Hyers-Ulam stability of this equation. It is proved that every semigroup can be embedded into a semigroup in which the Jensen equation is stable.     

On impulsive functional differential inclusions with Hille-Yosida operators in Banach spaces

We consider a semilinear functional differential inclusion with infinite delay and impulse characteristics in a Banach space assuming that its linear part is a non-densely defined Hille-Yosida operator. We assume that the multivalued nonlinearity of upper Carathèodory or almost lower semicontinuous type satisfies a regularity condition expressed in terms of the measures of noncompactness. We apply the theory of integrated semigroups and the theory of condensing multivalued maps to obtain local and global existence results. The application to an optimization problem for an impulsive feedback control system is given.     

Unwanted combustion enhancement by C6F12O fire suppressant

Several agents are under consideration to replace CF₃Br for use in suppressing fires in aircraft cargo bays. In a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) performance test simulating the explosion of an aerosol can, however, the replacements, when added at sub-inerting concentrations, have all been found to create higher pressure rise than with no agent, hence failing the test. Thermodynamic equilibrium calculations as well as perfectly-stirred reactor (PSR) simulations with detailed reaction kinetics, are performed for one of these agents, C₆F₁₂O (Novec 1230), to understand the reasons for the unexpected enhanced combustion rather than suppression. The high pressure rise with added agent is shown to depend on the amount of agent, and can only occur if a large fraction of the available oxidizer in the chamber is consumed, corresponding to stoichiometric proportions of fuel, oxygen, and agent. A kinetic model for the reaction of C₆F₁₂O in hydrocarbon–air flames has been developed. Stirred-reactor simulations predict that at higher agent loadings, the inhibition effectiveness of C₆F₁₂O is relatively insensitive to the overall stoichiometry, and the marginal inhibitory effect of the agent is greatly reduced, so that the mixture remains flammable over a wide range of conditions corresponding to those of the FAA test. The present findings are consistent with and support the earlier analyses for C₂HF₅ and CF₃Br, which were also evaluated in the FAA test.     

Means for easy and accurate measurement of the stimulated Brillouin scattering gain coefficient in optical fiber

We propose and investigate an accurate method for the experimental measurement of the stimulated Brillouin scattering gain coefficient in optical fiber. The gain is extracted from measuring the transmitted pump power at the threshold of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) laser oscillation in a Fabry-Perot cavity formed by Fresnel reflection at the fiber ends. The method is free from a range of uncertainties and difficulties of commonly used approaches and is easy to implement. Experimental evidence of the variation of the SBS gain coefficient with numerical aperture of the fiber, first predicted in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 1879 (2000)], is proven.     

Screening of coulomb impurities in graphene

We calculate exactly the vacuum polarization charge density in the field of a subcritical Coulomb impurity, Z|e|/r, in graphene. Our analysis is based on the exact electron Green's function, obtained by using the operator method, and leads to results that are exact in the parameter Zalpha, where alpha is the "fine-structure constant" of graphene. Taking into account also electron-electron interactions in the Hartree approximation, we solve the problem self-consistently in the subcritical regime, where the impurity has an effective charge Z(eff), determined by the localized induced charge. We find that an impurity with bare charge Z=1 remains subcritical, Z(eff)alpha<1/2, for any alpha, while impurities with Z=2, 3 and higher can become supercritical at certain values of alpha.     

Influence of pH of solution on phase composition of samarium-strontium cobaltite powders synthesized by wet chemical technique

Powders of Sm_0.6Sr_0.4CoO_3-δ and La_0.6Sr_0.4CoO_3-δ were synthesized using wet chemical technique. Structural and surface properties of synthesized materials were studied by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD), IR spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The influence of pH on the phase state, chemical composition, morphology, and fractal dimension of the synthesized powders were investigated. It was found that the change of pH has the influence on phase composition of synthesized powders. The increase of solution pH allows one to obtain homogeneous samples at lower temperatures down to 900–950?°C.

Open image in new window

     

Structural and energetic properties of Ni-Cu bimetallic clusters

The lowest-energy structures for all compositions of Ni n Cu m bimetallic clusters with N = n + m up to 20 atoms, N = 23, and N = 38 atoms have been determined using a genetic algorithm for unbiased structure optimization in combination with an embedded-atom method for the calculation of the total energy for a given structure. Comparing bimetallic clusters with homoatomic clusters of the same size, it is shown that the most stable structures for each cluster size are composed entirely of Ni atoms. Among the bimetallic clusters in the size range N = 2-20, the Ni N-1 Cu 1 clusters possess the highest stability. Further, it has been established that most of the bimetallic cluster structures have geometries similar to those of pure Ni clusters. The size N = 38 presents a special case, as the bimetallic clusters undergo a dramatic structural change with increasing atom fraction of Cu. Moreover, we have identified an icosahedron, a double, and a triple icosahedron with one, two, and three Ni atoms at the centers, respectively, as particularly stable structures. We show that in all global-minimum structures Ni atoms tend to occupy mainly high-coordination inner sites, and we confirm the segregation of Cu on the surface of Ni-Cu bimetallic clusters predicted in previous studies. Finally, it is observed that, in contrast to the bulk, the ground-state structures of the 15-, 16-, and 17-atom bimetallic clusters do not experience a smooth transition between the structures of the pure copper and the pure nickel clusters as a function of the relative number of the two types of atoms. For these sizes, the concentration effect on energy is more important than the geometric one.