Nitro musks in cosmetic products—determination by headspace solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography with atomic-emission detection

Summary The combination of headspace solid-phase microextraction with atomic-emission detection enables highly selective and sensitive determination of itro musk compounds in cosmetic products. Sample preparation is considerably simplified; there is no solvent extraction step. Enrichment is influenced by the type and amount of cosmetic product investigated. The lowest amount giving well detectable peaks is 1 mg musk compound per kg sample. Calibration curves obtained from spiked solutions of selected reference cosmetics in water show very good linearity. Relative standard deviations of peak areas from repeated measurements are usually <10%. Presented at the 21^st ISC held in Stuttgart, Germany, 15^th–20^th September, 1996     

Quantum confinement in layer-by-layer deposited colloidal HgTe nanocrystals determined by spectroscopic ellipsometry

We report spectroscopic ellipsometry studies in the energy range of 0.5-5 eV on samples of 1-10 bilayers of polymer and HgTe nanocrystals, which exhibit strong transitions at higher critical points in the dispersion relation. We show that the dispersion relation for nanocrystals can be modelled with the same concepts for critical points as used in semiconductor bulk optics. We find an energy shift of up to 0.4 eV of the critical points to higher energies compared to the HgTe bulk properties, caused by quantum confinement in the nanocrystals, which increases with decreasing nanocrystal size.     

Quasiparticle and Cooper pair tenneling in small capacitance Josephson junctions

The tunneling of single electrons in small capacitance tunnel junctions is influenced by charging effects and by the fluctuations of the elecromagnetic environment. We study the effect of an external circuit with arbitrary impedance on the tunneling of quasiparticles and Cooper pairs in voltage driven Josephson junctions. We present results at finite temperatures and also consider an acdriven system.