Exsolution of Nickel Nanoparticles from Mixed-Valence Metal Oxides: A Quantitative Evaluation by Magnetic Measurements

A fast and accurate experimental method is demonstrated to assess the fraction of exsolved metallic nanoparticles using magnetic measurements. As a benchmark, nanometric metallic nickel exsolved from (La_1−xSr_x)(Cr_1−yNi_y)O_3−δ is used for its high relevance as a solid oxide fuel cell component. The method is based on the difference in the magnetic response of the exsolved metallic nickel (ferromagnetic) and Sr-doped lanthanum chromite ceramic matrix (paramagnetic). The exsolved nickel results in coherent nanoparticles pinned on the surface of the Sr-doped lanthanum chromite ceramic matrix, as evidenced by electron microscopy analyses. The results obtained indicate the procedure as a fast and sensitive method to study the exsolution of ferromagnetic nanoparticles.     

Common supports as fixed points

A family S of sets in R ^d is sundered if for each way of choosing a point from rd+1 members of S, the chosen points form the vertex-set of an (r–1)-simplex. Bisztriczky proved that for each sundered family S of d convex bodies in R ^d , and for each partition (S , S ), of S, there are exactly two hyperplanes each of which supports all the members of S and separates the members of S from the members of S . This note provides an alternate proof by obtaining each of the desired supports as (in effect) a fixed point of a continuous self-mapping of the cartesian product of the bodies.     

Invariant subspaces of operator Lie algebras and Lie algebras with compact adjoint action

It is proved that a Lie algebra of compact operators with a non-zero Volterra ideal is reducible (has a nontrivial invariant subspace). A number of other criteria of reducibility for collections of operators is obtained. The results are applied to the structure theory of Lie algebras of compact operators and normed Lie algebras with compact adjoint action.     

Deposition of Hydrogen-Free Silicon Nitride Thin Films by Microwave ECR plasma Enhanced Magnetron Sputtering at Room Temperature

Hydrogen-free silicon nitride （SiNx） films were deposited at room temperature by microwave electron cyclotron resonance （MW-ECR） plasma enhanced unbalance magnetron sputtering system. Both Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy are used to study the bonding type and the change of bonding structures of the silicon nitride films. The results indicate that the chemical structure and composition of SiNx films deposited by this technique depend strongly on the N2 flow rates, the stoichiometric SiNx film, which has the highest hardness of 22.9 GPa, could be obtained at lower N2 flow rate of 4 sccm.     

Dispersion relation of charge gap excitations in quasi-1D Mott insulators studied by resonant X-ray scattering

Momentum dependence of charge excitations across the effective Mott gap in several quasi-low-dimensional model cuprates with different effective dimensionalities is studied using high resolution inelastic X-ray scattering by working near Copper k-edge resonance which allows us to extract the dispersion relations of the particle-hole pair excitations at the gap edge. Besides electron-electron correlation, momentum dependence of the gap-excitations is found to be strongly dependent on the effective dimensionality (or topology) of the 3dx²−y² network.     

Weak and strong convergence theorems for asymptotically pseudo-contraction mappings in the intermediate sense in Hilbert spaces

In this paper, we prove both weak and strong convergence theorems for finding a common element of the solution set for a generalized equilibrium problem, the fixed point set of an asymptotically k-strict pseudo-contraction mapping in the intermediate sense, and the solution set of the variational inequality for a monotone and Lipschitz-continuous mapping by using a new hybrid extragradient method. Our results generalize and improve related results in the literatures.     

Experimental implementation of an adiabatic quantum optimization algorithm

We report the realization of a nuclear magnetic resonance computer with three quantum bits that simulates an adiabatic quantum optimization algorithm. Adiabatic quantum algorithms offer new insight into how quantum resources can be used to solve hard problems. This experiment uses a particularly well-suited three quantum bit molecule and was made possible by introducing a technique that encodes general instances of the given optimization problem into an easily applicable Hamiltonian. Our results indicate an optimal run time of the adiabatic algorithm that agrees well with the prediction of a simple decoherence model.     

纳米β-FeSi2/a-Si多层膜室温光致发光分析

采用射频磁控溅射的方法,在Si(100)基片上制备了纳米β-FeSi2/Si多层结构,利用X射线衍射、透射电子显微镜、光致发光光谱等表征技术,研究了β-FeSi2/Si多层结构的结构、成分和光致发光特性.研究结果表明:利用磁控溅射法得到的Fe/Si多层膜,室温下能够检测到β-FeSi2的1.53 μm处光致发光信号;未退火时多层膜是(非晶的FeSi2+β-FeSi2颗粒)/非晶Si结构,退火后则是β-FeSi2颗粒/(晶体Si+非晶Si)结构;退火前后样品有相同的PL信号强度,说明非晶的FeSi2+β-FeSi2颗粒和β-FeSi2颗粒可以产生同样的发光性能.实验测出1.53 μm处PL信号也进一步证明了非晶FeSi2的半导体性能.     

Noncommutative convexity arises from linear matrix inequalities

This paper concerns polynomials in g noncommutative variables x=(x₁,…,xg), inverses of such polynomials, and more generally noncommutative “rational expressions” with real coefficients which are formally symmetric and “analytic near 0.” The focus is on rational expressions r=r(x) which are “matrix convex” near 0; i.e., those rational expressions r for which there is an ?>0 such that if X=(X₁,…,Xg) is a g-tuple of n×n symmetric matrices satisfying