Bulk and shear mechanical loss of titania-doped tantala

We report on the mechanical loss from bulk and shear stresses in thin film, ion beam deposited, titania-doped tantala. The numerical values of these mechanical losses are necessary to fully calculate the Brownian thermal noise in precision optical cavities, including interferometric gravitational wave detectors like LIGO. We found the values from measuring the normal mode mechanical quality factors, Q's, in the frequency range of about 2000-10,000 Hz, of silica disks coated with titania-doped tantala coupled with calculating the elastic energy in shear and bulk stresses in the coating using a finite element model. We fit the results to both a frequency independent and frequency dependent model and find ${?}_{\mathrm{shear}}=(8.3\pm 1.1)\times {10}^{?4}$, ${?}_{\mathrm{bulk}}=(6.6\pm 3.8)\times {10}^{?4}$ with a frequency independent model and ${?}_{\mathrm{shear}}\left(f\right)=(5.0\pm 0.7)\times {10}^{?4}+(5.4\pm 1.1)\times {10}^{?8}f$, ${?}_{\mathrm{bulk}}\left(f\right)=(11\pm 2.8)\times {10}^{?4}?(8.7\pm 4.7)\times {10}^{?8}f$ with a frequency dependent (linear) model. The ratio of these values suggest that modest improvement in the coating thermal noise may be possible in future gravitational wave detector optics made with titania-doped tantala as the high index coating material by optimizing the coating design to take advantage of the two different mechanical loss angles.     

Anodic and Cathodic Platinum Dissolution Processes Involve Different Oxide Species

The degradation of Pt-containing oxygen reduction catalysts for fuel cell applications is strongly linked to the electrochemical surface oxidation and reduction of Pt. Here, we study the surface restructuring and Pt dissolution mechanisms during oxidation/reduction for the case of Pt(100) in 0.1 M HClO₄ by combining operando high-energy surface X-ray diffraction, online mass spectrometry, and density functional theory. Our atomic-scale structural studies reveal that anodic dissolution, detected during oxidation, and cathodic dissolution, observed during the subsequent reduction, are linked to two different oxide phases. Anodic dissolution occurs predominantly during nucleation and growth of the first, stripe-like oxide. Cathodic dissolution is linked to a second, amorphous Pt oxide phase that resembles bulk PtO₂ and starts to grow when the coverage of the stripe-like oxide saturates. In addition, we find the amount of surface restructuring after an oxidation/reduction cycle to be potential-independent after the stripe-like oxide has reached its saturation coverage.