Irradiation-induced reduction and luminescence properties of Sm doped in BaBPO5

Usually, Sm²⁺ ions could be reduced by heating the materials in reducing atmospheres. Exposure to ionizing radiations is also known to cause Sm³⁺→Sm²⁺ conversion. In this work, BaBPO₅ doped with the samarium ion was prepared by high temperature solid-state reaction. Sm²⁺ ions were obtained by two different reduction methods, i.e., heating in H₂ reduced atmosphere and X-ray irradiation. The measurements of X-ray diffraction (XRD), and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were investigated. It is found that the conversion of Sm³⁺→Sm²⁺ is very efficient in BaBPO₅ hosts after X-ray irradiation. Sm²⁺ ions under these two reduction methods exhibit different characteristics that were studied by measurements of luminescence and decay. The results showed that the luminescence properties of Sm²⁺ ions in BaBPO₅ were highly dependent on the sample preparation conditions.     

Characteristics of Ti0.97Co0.03O2:Sb0.01 dilute magnetic semiconducting thin films deposited at 500 °C by pulsed laser deposition

Epitaxial Ti_0.97Co_0.03O₂:Sb_0.01(TCO:Sb) films were deposited on R-Al₂O₃ (1 1 0 2) substrates at 500 °C in various deposition pressures by pulsed laser deposition. The solubility of cobalt within the films increases with decreasing deposition pressure at a deposition temperature of 500 °C. The TCO:Sb films deposited at 5×10⁻⁶ Torr exhibit a p-type anomalous Hall effect having a hole concentration of 6.1×10²²/cm³ at 300 K. On the other hand, films deposited at 4×10⁻⁴ Torr exhibits an n-type anomalous Hall effect having an electron concentration of about 1.1×10²¹/cm³. p- or n-type DMS characteristics depends on the change of the structure of TCO:Sb films and the solubility of Co is possible by controlling the deposition pressure.     

Beam Combination using Stimulated Brillouin Scattering for the Ultimate High Power-Energy Laser System Operating at High Repetition Rate over 10 Hz for Laser Fusion Driver

After the laser was invented in 1960, a phase conjugation mirror has been respected to be the most fantastic one for the laser resonator composition because it can compensate any distortions of the laser beams occurred by the many inhomogenuities of the laser media and optical components. Among the many phase conjugation configurations, the stimulated Brillouin scattering phase conjugation mirror is the most simple one and many researchers have tried to utilize it to develop high power/energy laser systems. For realizing a high energy/power laser system the thermal problem is the most difficult to solve, and some researchers suggested a beam combination technique to reduce the thermal load of the big laser media to many small sized ones. To accomplish the beam combination using stimulated Brillouin scattering phase conjugation mirrors (SBS-PCMs), it is necessary to lock/control the phases of the SBS-PCMs. And some researchers have developed several ways for it, but they can lock the phases of a limited number of beams overlapped at the foci less than 5, or lock the phases by back-seeding technique but it loses the phase conjugation characteristics. For realization of the laser fusion driver, it is necessary to combine more than 10 or 100 beams. And the authors have developed recently a new phase controlling/locking technique which is isolated and independent totally from other beams and it can be applied to an unlimited number of beams in principle.     

Divinylsiloxane‐bisbenzocyclobutene‐based polymer modified with polystyrene–polybutadiene–polystyrene triblock copolymers

Divinylsiloxane‐bisbenzocyclobutene (DVS‐bisBCB) polymer has very low dielectric constant and dissipation factor, good thermal stability, and high chemical resistance. The fracture toughness of the thermoset polymer is moderate due to its high crosslink density. A thermoplastic elastomer, polystyrene–polybutadiene–polystyrene triblock copolymer, was incorporated into the matrix to enhance its toughness. The cured thermoset matrix showed different morphology when the elastomer was added to the B‐staged prepolymer or when the elastomer was B‐staged with the DVS‐bisBCB monomer. Small and uniformly distributed elastomer domains were detected by transmission electron micrographs (TEM) in the former case, but TEM did not detect a separate domain in the latter case. A high percentage of the polystyrene–polybutadiene–polystyrene triblock copolymer could be incorporated into the DVS‐bisBCB thermoset matrix by B‐staging the triblock copolymer with the BCB monomer. The elastomer increased the fracture toughness of DVS‐bisBCB polymer as indicated by enhanced elongation at break and increased K1c values obtained by the modified edge‐lift‐off test. Elastomer modified DVS‐bisBCB maintained excellent electrical properties, high T_g and good thermal stability, but showed higher coefficient of linear thermal expansion values. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 44: 1591–1599, 2006     

Effects of the architecture and environment on polymeric molecular assemblies of novel amphiphilic diblock copolynorbornenes with narrow polydispersity via living ring‐opening metathesis polymerization

Diblock copolymers of 5‐(methylphthalimide)bicyclo[2.2.1]hept‐2‐ene (NBMPI) and 1,5‐cyclooctadiene were synthesized by living ring‐opening metathesis polymerization with a well‐defined catalyst {RuCl₂(CHPh)[P(C₆H₁₁)₃]₂}. Unhydrogenated diblock copolymers showed two glass transitions due to poly(NBMPI) and polybutadiene segments, such as two glass‐transition temperatures at ?86.5 and 115.3 °C for poly 1a and ?87.2 and 115.3 °C for poly 1b . However, only one melting temperature could be observed for hydrogenated copolymers, such as 119.8 °C for poly 2a and 121.7 °C for poly 2b . The unhydrogenated diblock copolymer with the longer poly(NBMPI) chain (poly 1a ; temperature at 10% mass loss = 400 °C) exhibited better thermal stability than the one with the shorter poly(NBMPI) chain (poly 1b ; temperature at 10% mass loss = 385 °C). Two kinds of hydrogenated diblock copolymers, poly 2a and poly 2b , exhibited relatively poor solubility but better thermal stability than unhydrogenated diblock copolymers because of the polyethylene segments. Poly[(hydrochloride quaternized 2‐norbornene‐5‐methyleneamine)‐b‐butadiene]‐1 (poly 3a ) was obtained after the hydrolysis and quaternization of poly 1a . Dynamic light scattering measurements indicated that the hydrodynamic diameters of the cationic copolymer (poly 3a ) in water (hydrodynamic diameter = 1580 nm without salt), methanol/water (4/96 v/v; hydrodynamic diameter = 1500 nm without salt), and tetrahydrofuran/water (4/96 v/v; hydrodynamic diameter = 1200 nm without salt) decreased with increasing salt (NaCl) concentration. The effect of temperature on the hydrodynamic diameter of hydrophobically modified poly 3a was also studied. The inflection point of the hydrodynamic diameter of poly 3a was observed at various polymer concentrations around 30 °C. The critical micelle concentration of hydrophobically modified poly 3a was observed at 0.018 g dL^?1. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 44: 2901–2911, 2006     

Mathematical modeling of crystallization analysis fractionation (Crystaf) of polyethylene

Four polyethylene samples (PE) with different molecular weight distributions (MWD) were analyzed by crystallization analysis fractionation (Crystaf) at several cooling rates to investigate the effect of MWD and cooling rate on their Crystaf profiles. Using these results, we developed a mathematical model for Crystaf that considers crystallization kinetic effects, which are ignored in all previous Crystaf models. The Crystaf model we proposed can fit the experimental Crystaf profiles of the 4 polyethylene resins very well. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 44: 2749–2759, 2006     

Investigation of the Doughnut Effect in Cy3-Labeled Protein Microarrays using Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscope

We demonstrate the fluorescence mapping of protein microarrays by the technique of scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) and confocal microscopy. Micron sized spots (300 μm) of human Immunoglobulin G (hIgG) protein with and without a Cy3 dye labeling have been fabricated on glass substrates by an immobilization method which makes use of calixcrown derivatives termed Prolinker. We have also tried to probe into the well-known “doughnut effect” observed in fluorescence images of proteins using the SNOM technique. The topographic and fluorescence SNOM images revealed that the number of proteins at the boundary of the spot were more than at the center in the case of the microarray spot which showed brighter luminescence at the edge than at the center in the confocal image.     

On the phase structure of the compact abelian lattice Higgs model

This paper studies the vacuum overlap order parameter proposed by Fredenhagen and Marcu in the case of the compactU(1) gauge model with the Wilson action coupled to a Higgs field with fixed length ||=1. The existence of two distinct phases inD space-time dimensions (D4) is established.     

The basis set superposition error in multilevel methods: a test on the H2O and HF dimer

The basis set superposition error (BSSE) is often very important in the accurate calculation of dimerization energies. Accurate prediction of thermochemical properties requires appropriate consideration of the basis set incompleteness error. Multilevel methods introduce adjustable parameters to reproduce experimental data, that is, the higher level correction (HLC) in G3 and adjustable coefficients in the MCCM. However, the HLC term is cancelled out and the adjustable coefficients in the MCCM do not remove the BSSE completely. We have calculated the BSSE involved in the multilevel methods. The H₂O and HF dimer systems were used as a test case. This study shows that empirical coefficients do reduce the BSSE in some cases and an MCCM with good parameters can be used to reproduce dimerization energies within chemical accuracy without the BSSE correction.