Atomic motion in Se nanoparticles embedded into a porous glass matrix

By neutron diffraction it was shown that nanostructured Se confined within a porous glass matrix exists in a crystalline as well as in an amorphous state. The spontaneous crystallization of crystalline Se from confined amorphous phase was observed. The root-mean-square amplitudes of the atomic motions in the bulk as well as in confinement are found to be essentially different in a basal plane and in the perpendicular direction along the hexagonal axis. The atomic motions in the confined Se differ from the atomic motions in the bulk at low temperatures. The results shows an unusual “freezing" of the atomic motion along the chains, while the atomic motions in the perpendicular plane still keep. This “freezing" is accompanied by the deformation of nanoparticles and the appearance of inner stresses. This effect is attributed to the interaction of confined nanoparticle with the cavity walls.     

Nanohybridization of Low-Dimensional Nanomaterials: Synthesis,Classification, and Application

Nanomaterials have attracted much attention from academic to industrial research. General methodologies are needed to impose architectural order in low-dimensional nanomaterials composed of nanoobjects of various shapes and sizes, such as spherical particles, rods, wires, combs, horns, and other non specified geometrical architectures. These nanomaterials are the building blocks for nanohybrid materials, whose applications have improved and will continuously enhance the quality of the daily life of mankind. In this article, we present a comprehensive review on the synthesis, dimension, properties, and present and potential future applications of nanomaterials and nanohybrids. Due to the large number of review articles on specific dimension, morphology, or application of nanomaterials, we will focus on different forms of nanomaterials, such as, linear, particulate, and miscellaneous forms. We believe that almost all the nanomaterials and nanohybrids will come under these three categories. Every form or dimension or morphology has its own significant properties and advantages. These low-dimensional nanomaterials can be integrated to create novel nano-composite material applications for next-generation devices needed to address the current energy crisis, environmental sustainability, and better performance requirements. We discuss the synthesis, properties, and morphology of different forms of nanomaterials (building blocks). Moreover, we elaborate on the synthesis, modification, and application of nanohybrids. The applications of these nanomaterials and nanohybrids in sensors, solar cells, lithium batteries, electronic, catalysis, photocatalysis, electrocatalysis, and bio-based applications will be detailed. The time is now ripe to explore new nanohybrids that use individual nanomaterial components as basic building blocks, potentially affording additionally novel behavior and leading to new, useful applications. In this regard, the combination or integration of linear nanorods/nanowires and spherical nanoparticles to produce mixed-dimensionality, higher-level nanocomposites of greater complexity is an interesting theme, which we explore in this review article.     

Square wells,quantum wells and ultra-thin metallic films

Abstract

The eigenvalue equations for the energy of bound states of a particle in a square well are solved, and the exact solutions are obtained, as power series. Accurate analytical approximate solutions are also given. The application of these results in the physics of quantum wells are discussed, especially for ultra-thin metallic films, but also in the case of resonant cavities, heterojunction lasers, revivals and super-revivals.     

Some Aspects of Time-Reversal in Chemical Kinetics

Chemical kinetics govern the dynamics of chemical systems leading towards chemical equilibrium. There are several general properties of the dynamics of chemical reactions such as the existence of disparate time scales and the fact that most time scales are dissipative. This causes a transient relaxation to lower dimensional attracting manifolds in composition space. In this work, we discuss this behavior and investigate how a time reversal effects this behavior. For this, both macroscopic chemical systems as well as microscopic chemical systems (elementary reactions) are considered.     

Short note on the excitonic Mott phase

An exciton gas on a lattice is analysed in terms of a convergent hopping expansion. For a given chemical potential, our calculation provides a sufficient condition for the hopping rate to obtain an exponential decay of the exciton correlation function. This result indicates the existence of a Mott phase in which strong fluctuations destroy the long range correlations in the exciton gas at any temperature, either by thermal or by quantum fluctuations.     

Fluid and plastic flow dynamics of the critical state for a strongly pinned 2D superconductor

The frequency of the Raman active A_1g radial breathing mode has been widely used as a tool to estimate the distribution of diameters of single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT). However, the relation between frequency and diameter is not straightforward and results are model-dependent. Because most of the experiments are performed on bundles and not on isolated tubes, the model should especially take into account the van der Waals intertube interactions. Here, we use a pair-potential approach to account for such interactions and we derive a nonlinear relation between the SWNT diameter and the frequency of the A_1g radial breathing modes. We demonstrate a good agreement between calculations and the diameters derived from diffraction experiments on the same samples. Received 22 December 1999 and Received in final form 17 July 2000     

Raman scattering of Ge dot superlattices

Self-organised Ge dot superlattices grown by molecular beam epitaxy of Ge and Si layers utilizing Stranski-Krastanov growth mode were investigated by Raman spectroscopy. An average size of Ge quantum dots was obtained from transmission electron microscopy measurements. The strain and interdiffusion of Ge and Si atoms in Ge quantum dots were estimated from the analysis of frequency positions of optical phonons observed in the Raman spectra. Raman scattering by folded longitudinal acoustic phonons in the Ge dot superlattices was observed and explained using of elastic continuum theory. Received 25 January 2000     

Interband collective electronic excitations in resonant Raman scattering of two-subband quantum wires

Using the bosonization technique, a theory for the collective excitations of the interacting electrons in quantum wires with two subbands occupied is developed. The dispersion relations for the inter-subband charge and spin density excitations are determined. The results are used to interpret the features observed in recent measurements of the Raman spectra of AlGaAs/GaAs quantum wires, particularly for photon energies near band gap resonance. It is shown that peaks previously identified as “single particle excitations” are signatures of higher order collective spin density excitations. Predictions about the observability of the interband modes are made. Received 8 February 1999     

Coherent resonant transport through a mesoscopic system with quantum ac microwave field

The time-dependent transport through an ultrasmall quantum dot coupling to two electron reservoirs is investigated. The quantum dot is perturbed by a quantum microwave field (QMF) through gate. The tunneling current formulae are obtained by taking expectation values over coherent state (CS), and SU(1,1) CS. We derive the transport formulae at low temperature by employing the nonequilibrium Green function technique. The currents exhibit coherent behaviors which are strongly associated with the applied QMF. The time-dependent currents appear compound effects of resonant tunneling and time-oscillating evolution. The time-averaged current and differential conductance are calculated, which manifest photon-assisted behaviors. Numerical calculations reveal the similar properties as those in classical microwave field (CMF) perturbed system for the situations concerning CS and squeezed vacuum SU(1,1) CS. But for other squeezed SU(1,1) CS, the tunneling behavior is quite different from the system perturbed by a single CMF through gate. Due to the quantum signal perturbation, the measurable quantities fluctuate fiercely. Received 28 May 1998     

Toward computationally efficient combustion DNS with complex fuels via principal component transport

We investigate the potential of accelerating chemistry integration during the direct numerical simulation (DNS) of complex fuels based on the transport equations of representative scalars that span the desired composition space using principal component analysis (PCA). The transport of principal components (PCs) can reduce the number of transported scalars and improve the spatial and temporal resolution requirements. The strategy is demonstrated using DNS of a premixed methane–air flame in a 2D vortical flow and is extended to the 3D geometry to demonstrate the resulting enhancement in the computational efficiency of PC transport. The PCs are derived from a priori PCA of the same composition space using DNS. This analysis is used to construct and tabulate the PCs’ chemical source terms in terms of the PCs using artificial neural networks (ANN). Comparison of DNS based on a full thermo-chemical state and DNS based on PC transport with six PCs shows excellent agreement even for terms that are not included in the PCA reduction. The transported PCs reproduce some of the salient features of strongly curved and strongly strained flames. The results also show a significant reduction of two orders of magnitude in the computational cost of the simulations, which enables an extension of the solution approach to 3D DNS under similar computational requirements.