An AFM, XPS and electrochemical study of molecular electroactive monolayers formed by wet chemistry functionalization of H-terminated Si(1 0 0) with vinylferrocene

Molecular electroactive monolayers have been produced from vinylferrocene (VFC) via light-assisted surface anchoring to H-terminated n- and p-Si(1 0 0) wafers prepared via wet chemistry, in a controlled atmosphere. The resulting Si-C bound hybrids have been characterized by means of XPS and AFM. Their performance as semiconductor functionalized electrodes and their surface composition have been followed by combining electrochemical and XPS measurements on the same samples, before and after use in an electrochemical cell. White-light photoactivated anchoring at short (1 h) exposure times has resulted in a mild route, with a very limited impact on the initial quality of the silicon substrate. In fact, the functionalized Si surface results negligibly oxidized, and the C/Fe atomic ratio is close to the value expected for the pure molecular species. The VFC/Si hybrids can be described as (η⁵-C₅H₅)Fe²⁺(η⁵-C₅H₄)-CH₂-CH₂-Si species, on the basis of XPS results. Electrochemical methods have been applied in order to investigate the role played by a robust, covalent Si-C anchoring mode towards substrate-molecule electronic communication, a crucial issue for a perspective development of molecular electronics devices. The response found from cyclic voltammograms for p-Si(1 0 0) functionalized electrodes, run in the dark and under illumination, has shown that the electron transfer is not limited by the number of charge carriers, confirming the occurrence of electron transfer via the Si valence band. The hybrids have shown a noticeable electrochemical stability and reversibility under cyclic voltammetry (cv), and the trend in peak current intensity vs. the scan rate was linear. The molecule-Si bond is preserved even after thousands of voltammetric cycles, although the surface coverage, evaluated from cv and XPS, decreases in the same sequence. An increasingly larger surface concentration of Fe³⁺ at the expenses of Fe²⁺ redox centers has been found at increasing number of cv’s, experimentally associated with the growth of silicon oxide. Surface SiO⁻ groups from deprotonated silanol termination, induced by the electrochemical treatments, are proposed as the associated counterions for the Fe³⁺ species. They could be responsible for the observed decrease in the electron transfer rate constant with electrode ageing.     

Study of a Microwave Radar Signal Backscattered at Small Incidence Angles: In-Situ Measurements

We present the results of data processing of the field experiment devoted to a study of a microwave signal backscattered by a rough water surface and compare them with the theoretical estimates. The measurements were conducted sequentially using a radar with parabolic and knife-beam antennas. The radar was mounted on the Molitovsky bridge at a height of 40 m across the Oka river in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. For the radar with knife-shaped antenna pattern, we examined the reflected-signal power and the shift and width of the Doppler spectrum as functions of the azimuthal angle for the nadir sounding. For the parabolic antenna, we studied the reflected-signal power as a function of the incidence angle. Comparison with the experimental data shows that the developed theoretical model of a Doppler spectrum is in good agreement with the observations. __________ Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Radiofizika, Vol. 48, No. 8, pp. 661–673, August 2005.     

Leptonic constant of the pseudoscalar <Emphasis Type="Italic">B</Emphasis><Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">c</Emphasis></Subscript> meson

We calculate the leptonic constant for the pseudoscalar ground state of the B _c meson in the framework of a QCD-motivated potential model taking into account the two-loop anomalous dimension for the heavy quark current in nonrelativistic QCD as matched with full QCD.     

Fonctions analytiques Cliffordiennes

We define analytic functions within Clifford Algebras CL, and study their trigonometric properties. We write the addition formulas when their arguments, A and B in CL, commute, this generalizes ordinary trigonometry. We examine in particular the case A² = 1.      

Isometric Isomorphisms Between Banach Algebras Related to a Certain Class of Clifford Topological Semigroups

In the present paper it is shown that if S₁ and S₂ are two Clifford topological semigroups satisfying certain conditions and T is an isometric isomorphism of LUC(S₁*) onto LUC(S₂*), then T maps S₁ topologically isomorphically onto S₂. Furthermore, T maps M ^l _n(S₁) (M(S₁), respectively) isometrically isomorphically onto M ^l _n(S₂) (M(S₂), respectively). Indeed, we have obtained a generalization of a well-known result of Ghahramani, Lau and Losert for locally compact groups to a more general setting of Clifford topological semigroups.     

Nonlinear wave processes in media containing cracks partially filled with a viscous liquid

A nonlinear (in the cubic approximation) relaxation equation of state is derived for a rod containing cracks partially filled with an incompressible viscous liquid. The nonlinear effects of the self-action and interaction of low-and high-frequency longitudinal elastic waves propagating in such a rod are studied for the cases of identical and size-varied cracks. Linear and nonlinear acoustic parameters characterizing the self-action and interaction of elastic waves in a cracked rod are determined.     

Dynamics and spectra of excited states of water-micellar suspensions of single-walled carbon nanotubes

The dynamics of the photoinduced differential absorption and excited-state bleaching spectra of single-walled carbon nanotubes suspended in a micellar solution were studied in the spectral range from 40 to 1000 nm within a time interval from 70 fs to 150 ps under excitation by 50-fs pulses with photon energies 2 and 4 eV. The bleaching and absorption bands were observed in the spectra; the positions of the bleaching peaks were independent of the photon energy of the exciting femtosecond pulse in the range 2–4 eV. It was established that, for delay times shorter than 1 ps, the shape of the differential spectrum of excited nanotubes coincided with the shape of the second derivative of the absorption spectrum of unexcited nanotubes in the frequency range of exciting pulse above 18000 cm^?1 (the range of absorption bands of metallic nanotubes). In the frequency range below 16000 cm^?1 (the range of absorption peaks of semiconducting nanotubes), the bleaching peaks in the differential spectrum of excited nanotubes undergo a high-frequency shift of 200–300 cm^?1 with respect to the second-derivative spectrum of unexcited nanotubes. The excited-state relaxation rate constants were measured. They are well approximated by the exponential dependences and depend on the probe-pulse wavelength. An assumption was made about the nature of the observed spectra of excited nanotubes and about the excitation relaxation.     

On one-port characterization of noise sources in ducts by using external loads

Equivalent acoustic source characterization of duct-borne fluid machinery noise is often undertaken by interpolating the results of two-microphone pressure measurements with different external acoustic loads over a linear one-port source model. If the source is time-invariant, the one-port source characteristics can be determined by using only two external loads. This is well known as the two-load method. An extension of the two-load method for time-variant sources is also available and known as the multiple-load method. In these methods the source is treated as a ‘black-box’. This paper addresses the problem of one-port source characterization when the linear operations inherent in the ‘black-box’ are known explicitly. The equations governing the explicit one-port source models are derived and the source characteristics are shown to be measurable using only few acoustic loads. It is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the application of these models to any specific fluid machinery; however, of particular interest are the explicit source models that require only two loads. Numerical results are presented to show some features of such time-invariant and time-variant explicit one-port source models.