Plasma Polymerization Inside Tubes in Hexamethyldisiloxanes and Ethyne Glow Discharges: Effects of Deposition Atmosphere on Wetting and Ageing in Solvents

The coating deposition inside tubes becomes increasingly important for fluidic applications, in which inner surfaces are chemically and mechanically strained by the flowing liquid and by scratching of particles. The developed process for tube coating, presented in this work, is based on the discharge in the precursor gas atmosphere between two mesh electrodes at the ends of the tube. The gas mixture is introduced on one end and pumped through the electrode on the other end. Igniting plasma inside the tube, the tube walls are the barrier to the atmosphere. Especially pulsed DC discharges for plasma polymerization in this alignment lead to good coating results, which is shown in this work focusing on deposition in pure and mixed hexamethyldisiloxane, ethyne, and oxygen atmospheres. Chemical binding, wetting, and ageing are strongly influenced by the choice of the gas mixtures. Sufficient oxygen partial pressure in the deposition atmosphere leads to hydrophilic behavior of the SiO₂-like polymer-like carbon coatings, all other applied atmospheres to generally hydrophobic behavior of pure and Si-doped plasma polymers, respectively.     

Pulsed laser deposition of non-stoichiometric silicon nitride (SiNx) thin films

Silicon nitride (SiN_x) thin films of various stoichiometries (x) were prepared on Si (100) substrates applying the Nd:YAG (=1064 nm) pulsed laser deposition (PLD) process in the shaded off-axis technique at room temperature. The specific arrangement of this technique with perpendicular target (Si) and substrate surfaces and a metallic screen in between guarantees very low particulate (droplet) deposition and, thus, excellent surface qualities. Compared to the usually used on-axis deposition technique consisting of a parallel arrangement of the target and substrate surface, the coating surface covered with particulates is about 100 times lower reaching a maximum of 0.2% on 400 nm thick films. The variation the N₂ partial pressure affects the nitrogen content and the silicon bonding structure of the films analysed by means of SIMS and XPS, respectively. As a consequence the optical properties (e.g.m refractive index) are tailorable in a wide spectral range between 250 and 1200 nm. PACS 81.15.Fg; 78.20.Ci     

Influence of the nuclear bulk properties and the MIT bag constant on the phase transition to the quark gluon plasma

We consider the influence of the bulk properties of nuclear matter, namely the ground state incompressibility and the effective nucleon mass, and of the MIT bag constant on the phase transition from hadron matter to quark gluon plasma. It is mainly the effective nucleon mass which determines the stiffness of the equation of state and therefore also the behaviour of the phase transition curves. The energy densities in the coexistence region are found to increase for finite chemical potentials and softer equations of state up to 10 GeV/fm³. For small bag constants and for softer nuclear equations of state the phase boundary exhibits unusual deformations, due to the fact that the phase transition sets in already at pressures not too far from the saturation value. Although this would increase the experimental possibility to create the QGP, it is more likely that one must regard bag constants in the range of the original MIT value as not producing a realistic behaviour of the quark-hadron matter phase transition in the context of an MIT bag equation of state for the quark side.     

On the shape of solution sets of systems of (functional) equations

Solution sets of systems of linear equations over fields are characterized as being affine subspaces. But what can we say about the “shape” of the set of all solutions of other systems of equations? We study solution sets over arbitrary algebraic structures, and we give a necessary condition for a set of n-tuples to be the set of solutions of a system of equations in n unknowns over a given algebra. In the case of Boolean equations we obtain a complete characterization, and we also characterize solution sets of systems of Boolean functional equations.     

Reflections on and of minor-closed classes of multisorted operations

The minor relation of functions is generalized to multisorted functions. Pippenger’s Galois theory for minor-closed sets of functions is extended to multisorted functions and multisorted relation pairs. Reflections of minor-closed sets are again minor-closed, and the effect of reflections on the invariant relation pairs of minor-closed sets of multisorted functions is described.     

Ideal nuclear fluid dynamics at ultra-relativistic energies

We investigate the reaction O+Au at 200 AGeV in an ideal relativistic (3+1)-dimensional one-fluid hydrodynamical model. We correct former calculations which contained acausal matter transport, leading to contradictions with experimental data for the baryonic rapidity distribution. We find that the corrected results are in good agreement with data, casting new light on the question of the applicability of ideal one-fluid hydrodynamics to heavy-ion collisions.     

Chemistry and microstructure of PLD (Ti,Al)CxN1-x coatings deposited at room temperature

The aim of the present work was the improvement of titanium-aluminium nitride (TiAlN) coatings by the solid-solution hardening with carbon atoms leading to titanium-aluminium carbon-nitride (Ti,Al)C_xN_1-x coatings with varying carbon (x) and nitrogen contents. The request of low deposition temperatures necessary for the coating of heat sensitive materials like tool steels of high hardness and polymers was reached by the application of the room temperature pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. A Nd:YAG laser of 1064 nm wavelength operated at two different laser pulse energies was used in the ablation experiments of pure TiAl targets (50 at.% Al) in various C₂H₂-Ar gas mixtures. Different pulse energies of the laser resulted in changes of the ratio of Ti/Al atoms in the grown coatings. Furthermore, the results reveal a strong proportionality of the gas mixture to the C and N content of the coatings. In the coatings deposited at low C₂H₂ gas flows the XRD investigations showed crystalline phases with fcc TiN type lattices, whereas high acetylene flows during deposition resulted in the formation of fully amorphous coatings and carbon precipitation or cluster boundaries found in Raman investigations. PACS 81.15.Fg; 46.55.+d