Optical and acoustic study of nucleation and growth of bubbles at a liquid-solid interface induced by nanosecond-pulsed-laser heating

The dynamics of liquid-vapor phase-change in the nanosecond time-scale induced by pulsed-laser heating of a liquid on a solid sample is studied by means of optical reflectance and scattering measurements, and the piezoelectric detection technique. The liquids studied include water, ethanol, methanol, IsoproPropyl Alcohol (IPA), and mixtures of water and IPA. The threshold fluence for nucleation is determined with high accuracy using the optical and acoustic signals. Heat diffusion calculations performed for the threshold fluences indicate that the liquids are sufficiently superheated before nucleation sets on. The transient optical reflectance signal is analyzed by an effective-medium theory to provide bubble-growth kinetics, so that the bubble-growth velocity for the test liquids could be estimated. In addition, it is observed that, following the thermally induced nucleation, repetitive acoustic cavitation at the surface of the solid sample occurs, with a time interval related to the speed of sound in the liquid.     

Smooth over-parameterized solvers for non-smooth structured optimization

Mathematical Programming - Non-smooth optimization is a core ingredient of many imaging or machine learning pipelines. Non-smoothness encodes structural constraints on the solutions, such as...     

Automated fringe pattern analysis for moiré interferometry

The theory of an automated fringe-pattern analysis using temporal phase stepping method for moiré interferometry is presented. The automated method provides a fast and accurate strain measurement for moiré interferometry. Measurements on a tapered composite specimen with a dropped ply are shown to highlight the capability of this technique to obtain the strain distribution, particularly around the region with a dropped ply.     

Structure dependent sampling in compressed sensing: Theoretical guarantees for tight frames

Many of the applications of compressed sensing have been based on variable density sampling, where certain sections of the sampling coefficients are sampled more densely. Furthermore, it has been observed that these sampling schemes are dependent not only on sparsity but also on the sparsity structure of the underlying signal. This paper extends the result of Adcock, Hansen, Poon and Roman (arXiv:1302.0561, 2013) [2] to the case where the sparsifying system forms a tight frame. By dividing the sampling coefficients into levels, our main result will describe how the amount of subsampling in each level is determined by the local coherences between the sampling and sparsifying operators and the localized level sparsities – the sparsity in each level under the sparsifying operator.     

Theoretical study on the rearrangement of metallabenzenes to cyclopentadienyl complexes

The thermodynamic and kinetic aspects of the rearrangement reactions of a series of metallabenzenes to cyclopentadienyl complexes have been investigated by DFT computational study in order to reveal how substituents on the metallacycle, ligands around the metal center, and metals affect the transformation. We found that substitutents and their locations on the metallacycle have a significant effect on the thermodynamics and kinetics of the rearrangement reactions.     

Small-world rheology: an introduction to probe-based active microrheology

We introduce active, probe-based microrheological techniques for measuring the flow and deformation of complex fluids. These techniques are ideal for mechanical characterization either when little sample is available, or when samples show significant spatial heterogeneity. We review recent results, paying particular attention to comparing and contrasting rheological parameters obtained from micro- and macro-rheological techniques.     

Damage accumulation and hysteretic behavior of MAX phase materials

The compressive response of fully dense and 10 vol% porous Ti₂AlC MAX phase materials subjected to quasi-static uniaxial and cyclic loading including their repeatable hysteretic behavior is presented. Damage accumulation in the form of kink bands and microcracking is characterized using ultrasonics and scanning electron microscopy under different levels of compressive loading. The observations and measurements are correlated quantitatively using a model based on friction between the crack faces, which is the main dissipation process. The model is shown to capture the hysteretic behavior of Ti₂AlC MAX phase and quantitatively reproduce the experimentally measured stress–strain curves.     

Synthesis and light‐emitting properties of platinum‐containing oligoynes and polyynes derived from oligo(fluorenyleneethynylenesilylene)s

A series of blue‐light‐emitting oligo(fluorenyleneethynylenesilylene)s (OFESs) of the general formula HC?CRC?C(EC?CRC?C)_mEC?CRC?CH (E = SiPh₂, SiMe₂, or SiMe₂? SiMe₂; m = 0–2; R = 9,9‐dihexylfluorene‐2,7‐diyl) and their phosphorescent platinum‐containing oligoynes and polyynes were synthesized and characterized. The solution properties and regiochemical structures of this new structural class of organosilicon‐based polyplatinayne polymers {trans‐[? Pt(PBu₃)₂C ?CRC?C(EC?CRC?C)_mEC?CRC?C? ]_n} were studied with IR and NMR (¹H, ¹³C, ²⁹Si, and ³¹P) spectroscopy. The optical absorption and photoluminescence spectra of these metallopolymers were examined and compared with their discrete oligomeric model complexes. Our studies led to a novel approach of using the sp³‐silyl moiety as a conjugation interrupter to limit the effective conjugation length in metal polyynes, which could boost the phosphorescence decay rates essential for light‐energy harvesting from the triplet excited state. The influence of the heavy platinum atom and the group 14 silyl unit possessing different side‐group substituents on the thermal and phosphorescence properties was investigated in detail. We also established the goal of studying the evolution of the lowest singlet and triplet excited states with chain length m of OFESs and the nature of E in these metallopolymers. This work indicated that the phosphorescence emission efficiency harnessed through the heavy‐atom effect of platinum in the main chain did not change very much with oligomer chain length m but generally decreased with the E group in the order SiMe₂ > SiMe₂? SiMe₂ > SiPh₂. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 44: 4804–4824, 2006     

The Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction in amorphous La80Au20 alloys with dilute Gd impurities

From magnetization measurements on some amorphous dilute La_80?xGd_xAu₂₀ alloys with x ? 1 we have shown that the magnetic behavior follows the scaling laws of a spin-glass system, characteristic of the 1/r³ dependence of the pairwise interaction. We have also determined the strength of the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction V(r) = (V₀cos 2k_Fr)/r³, to be V₀ = 0.20 × 10^?37 ergcm³. The corresponding value of the s-f exchange integral is |J_sf| = 0.14 eV, which is compared with values determined from other experiments.