On a current mechanism in Ta2O5 thin films

Electrical conduction in the temperature range of 120–370 K has been studied in sandwiched structures of Al/Ta₂O₅/Si. The tantalum oxide films were prepared by evaporation of tantalum on a p-Si crystal substrate, followed by oxidation at a temperature of 600°C. The temperature-dependent current-voltage (I–V) characteristics are explained on the basis of a phonon-assisted tunnelling model. The same explanation is given for I–V data measured on Ta₂O₅ films by other investigators. From the comparison of experimental data with theory the density of states in the interface layer is derived and the electron-phonon interaction constant is assessed.      

Analysis and modification of nonhyperbolic kinetic models

A nonhyperbolic model of Rabin (Biochem J 1967, 102, 22C–23C) in which four conformational states are considered has been simplified to the three‐state one. Only multistate models (if the concentration of enzyme or receptor is assumed to be low) can yield nonhyperbolic kinetics. The simplified model has been shown to retain all the essential properties of the original four‐state model. The model yields a diversity of nonhyperbolic dose–response curves both with higher and lower steepness than that of Henri‐type ones. The three‐state model can be further reduced to the hyperbolic one by making identical the different (unliganded) states. The bistate model in which protein concentration is assumed to be high yields nonhyperbolic kinetics as well; the model is reduced to the hyperbolic one if the protein concentration is assumed to be low. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Chem Kinet 40: 253–258, 2008     

The explosive divergence in iterative maps of matrices

The effect of explosive divergence in generalized iterative maps of matrices is defined and described using formal algebraic techniques. It is shown that the effect of explosive divergence can be observed in an iterative map of square matrices of order 2 if and only if the matrix of initial conditions is a nilpotent matrix and the Lyapunov exponent of the corresponding scalar iterative map is greater than zero. Computational experiments with the logistic map and the circle map are used to illustrate the effect of explosive divergence occurring in iterative maps of matrices.     

Influence of Ar/C2H2 ratio on the structure of hydrogenated carbon films

The amorphous hydrogenated carbon films (a-C:H) were obtained on Si (1 1 1) wafers by plasma jet chemical vapor deposition (PJCVD). a-C:H coatings have been prepared at 1000 Pa in argon/acetylene mixture. The Ar/C₂H₂ gas volume ratio varied from 1:1 to 8:1. It was demonstrated that by varying the Ar/C₂H₂ ratio the composition, growth rate of the coatings, and consequently the structure of the film, can be controlled. The growth rate and surface porosity of coatings deposited at Ar/C₂H₂ = 8:1 ratio decrease slightly with an increase in the distance between the plasma torch nozzle and substrate from 0.04 to 0.095 m. The transmittance of the coatings in the IR region of 2.5–25 μm slightly increases, while the absorption peaks at 2850–2960 cm^?1 related with sp³ CH_2–3 modes remain unchanged with an increase in the distance. The Raman spectroscopy indicated that the a-C:H coating formed at the Ar/C₂H₂ = 8:1 and 0.06 m has the highest sp³ C–C fraction. The proposed PJCVD technique allows to achieve the growth rates up to 300 nm/s.     

Modification of the amorphous carbon films by the ns-laser irradiation

The effect of a nanosecond laser irradiation of thin (60 and 145 nm) amorphous, diamond-like carbon films deposited on Si substrate by an ion beam deposition (IBD) from pure acetylene and acetylene/hydrogen (1:2) gas mixture was analyzed in this work. The films were irradiated with the infrared (IR) and ultraviolet (UV) radiation of the nanosecond Nd:YAG lasers working at the first (1.16 eV) and the third (3.48 eV) harmonics, using a multi-shot regime. The IR laser irradiation stimulated a minor increase in the fraction of sp² bonds, causing a slight decrease in the hardness of the films and initiated SiC formation. Irradiation with the UV laser caused the formation of carbides and increased hydrogenization of the Si substrate and the fraction of sp² sites. Spalliation and ablation were observed at a higher energy density and with a large number of laser pulses per spot.     

A Hybrid Genetic-Hierarchical Algorithm for the Quadratic Assignment Problem

In this paper, we present a hybrid genetic-hierarchical algorithm for the solution of the quadratic assignment problem. The main distinguishing aspect of the proposed algorithm is that this is an innovative hybrid genetic algorithm with the original, hierarchical architecture. In particular, the genetic algorithm is combined with the so-called hierarchical (self-similar) iterated tabu search algorithm, which serves as a powerful local optimizer (local improvement algorithm) of the offspring solutions produced by the crossover operator of the genetic algorithm. The results of the conducted computational experiments demonstrate the promising performance and competitiveness of the proposed algorithm.     

A Tabu Search Algorithm for the Quadratic Assignment Problem

Tabu search approach based algorithms are among the widest applied to various combinatorial optimization problems. In this paper, we propose a new version of the tabu search algorithm for the well-known problem, the quadratic assignment problem (QAP). One of the most important features of our tabu search implementation is an efficient use of mutations applied to the best solutions found so far. We tested this approach on a number of instances from the library of the QAP instances—QAPLIB. The results obtained from the experiments show that the proposed algorithm belongs to the most efficient heuristics for the QAP. The high efficiency of this algorithm is also demonstrated by the fact that the new best known solutions were found for several QAP instances.