Spin-polarized electronic band structures of the Fe4N-Co4N system

We have calculated spin-polarized electronic band structures of cubic antiperovskite metal nitrides (Fe₄N, Fe₃CoN, FeCo₃N and Co₄N) by the full-potential method with mixed basis augmented plane wave plus local orbitals. It was shown that FeCo₃N has an energy gap of 0.2 eV at the Fermi level in the up-spin band and hence its half-metallic behavior is expected.     

Wavelet‐based data compression for flow simulation on block‐structured Cartesian mesh

A data compression method based on image encoding techniques is presented for a flow simulation data set. An input flow field data set is converted into the octree structure by discrete wavelet transform, and then quantized finely or coarsely depending on its importance in the flow field. Embedded zerotree wavelet encoding as the image encoding technique and entropy encoding reduce the data size by making use of the octree structure created previously. The present compression method is incorporated in a block‐structured Cartesian mesh method called Building‐Cube method. The Building‐Cube method gives not only good performance in the flow simulation but also consistency with the embedded zerotree wavelet encoding in the data compression. Three compression cases for incompressible and compressible flow simulations, including a large‐scale simulation with O(10 ⁸) mesh points, demonstrate that the present compression method gives both high compression ratios and good qualities of compressed data. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Highly polarized very cold neutrons through a permanent magnet quadrupole

We obtained highly polarized very cold neutrons through a quadrupole magnet with a large aperture. When neutrons go through a quadrupole magnet, parallel-spin neutrons are attracted to the magnet axis and anti-parallel-spin neutrons are repelled off the axis. Therefore, the neutrons through a sufficiently long quadrupole magnet have completely parallel-spin. At the downstream of the quadrupole magnet, we placed another quadrupole magnet to divide neutrons into two regions depending on their spin directions. We obtained the neutron polarization from the integrated count of the two regions and found it was 99.88±0.09 (stat.)±0.05 (syst.)%.     

Monte Carlo Simulation Study on Domain Formation in the Photoinduced Low-Spin High-Spin Transition

The domain formation process of the photo-induced cooperative low-spin (LS) to high-spin (HS) conversion phenomena are studied based on the Monte Carlo simulation method. The existence of the threshold light intensity and the incubation period are demonstrated. It is pointed out that the nucleation barrier of HS domain is surmounted by the fluctuation caused by the repetition of excitation and de-excitation. By defining an effective temperature for this fluctuation, the time scale of incubation period is estimated following the usual domain formation theory. It grossly accounts the Monte Carlo (MC) results in three-dimensional cases. The phase separation of HS and LS domain is reproduced by considering the volume striction effect. The step wise abrupt conversion is ascribed to the de-pinning of the volume striction.     

Synthesis of novel hyperbranched polymer through cationic ring‐opening multibranching polymerization of 2‐hydroxymethyloxetane

The cationic ring‐opening multibranching polymerization of 2‐hydroxymethyloxetane ( 1 ) as a novel latent AB₂‐type monomer was carried out using trifluoromethane sulfonic acid or trifluoroboron diethyl etherate by a slow‐monomer‐addition (SMA) method. The polymer yield of poly‐1 ranged from ca. 58–88%, which increase with the increasing monomer addition time on the SMA method. The absolute molecular weights (M_w,MALLS) and the polydispersities of poly‐1 were in the range of 8,000–43,500 and 1.45–4.53, respectively, which also increased with the increasing monomer addition time. The Mark‐Houwink‐Sakurada exponents α in 0.2 M NaNO₃ aq. were determined to be 0.02–0.25 for poly‐1 , indicating that poly‐1 has compact forms in the solution because of the highly branched structure. The degree of the branching value of poly‐1 , which was calculated by Frey's equation, ranged from ca. 0.50 to 0.58, which increased with the increasing monomer addition time. The steady shear flow of poly‐1 in aqueous solution exhibited a Newtonian behavior with steady shear viscosities independent of the shear rate. The results of the MALLS, NMR, and viscosity measurements indicated that poly‐1 is composed of a highly branched structure, i.e., the hyperbranched poly (2‐hydroxymethyloxetane). © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2011     

Micro-hole processing of polyimide film by ultra-short laser pulses and its applications

Micro machining of a polyimide film with ultra-short pulsed laser was demonstrated. A through-hole with a diameter of less than 10 μm could be produced by optimizing the pulse duration, repetition rate, and number of shots. Thermal damage around the through-hole can be made negligibly small when the pulse duration was shorter than 140 fs. We also found that the minimum shot number needed for the creation of a through-hole becomes smaller as the repetition rate of laser shot increases. On the basis of the optimum irradiation condition, we demonstrated laser cutting of a polyimide film without thermal damage and copper filling in through-holes with diameters of 9 μm by a plating process.     

Bias voltage dependence of tunneling magnetoresistance in granular C60–Co films with current-perpendicular-to-plane geometry

Voltage-dependence of the tunneling magnetoresistance effect in the granular C₆₀–Co films has been investigated for the samples with the current-perpendicular-to-plane geometry. The transport measurements under this geometry demonstrate that the granular C₆₀–Co films show an unusual exponential bias voltage dependence of the magnetoresistance ratio down to zero voltage. Small characteristic energies of less than 10's meV are derived from the temperature dependences of the characteristic voltage in the exponential relationship. Considering the magnitudes of the voltage drop between Co nanoparticles and also the effect of cotunneling on the energy values, the characteristic energies for the voltage-induced degradation of the spin polarization are found to show a satisfactory agreement with that for the thermally-induced one. It can be reasonably expected that the onset of magnetic disorder to the localized d-electron spins at the interface region of the C₆₀-based matrix (C₆₀–Co compound) with Co nanoparticles leading to the unusual voltage and temperature dependence of the magnetoresistance ratio and the spin polarization at low temperatures.     

Pnictogen-Bonding Catalysis: An Interactive Tool to Uncover Unorthodox Mechanisms in Polyether Cascade Cyclizations

Pnictogen-bonding catalysis and supramolecular σ-hole catalysis in general is currently being introduced as the non-covalent counterpart of covalent Lewis acid catalysis. With access to anti-Baldwin cyclizations identified as unique characteristic, pnictogen-bonding catalysis appeared promising to elucidate one of the hidden enigmas of brevetoxin-type epoxide opening polyether cascade cyclizations, that is the cyclization of certain trans epoxides into cis-fused rings. In principle, a shift from S_N2- to S_N1-type mechanisms could suffice to rationalize this inversion of configuration. However, the same inversion could be explained by a completely different mechanism: Ring opening with C−C bond cleavage into a branched hydroxy-5-enal and the corresponding cyclic hemiacetal, followed by cascade cyclization under conformational control, including stereoselective C−C bond formation. In this report, a pnictogen-bonding supramolecular Sb^V catalyst is used to demonstrate that this unorthodox polyether cascade cyclization mechanism occurs.