Ionic diffusion on a lattice: Effects of the order-disorder transition on the dynamics of non-equilibrium systems

We examine the behaviour of the concentration profiles of particles with repulsive interactions diffusing on a host lattice. At low temperature, the diffusion process is strongly influenced by the presence of ordered domains. We use mean field equations and Monte-Carlo simulations to describe the various effects which influence the kinetic behaviour. An effective diffusion coefficient is determined analytically and is compared with the simulations. Finite gradient effects on the ordered domains and on the diffusion are discussed. The kinetics studied is relevant for superionic conductors, for intercalation and also for the diffusion of particles adsorbed on a substrate. Received: 26 June 1997 / Revised: 18 September 1997 / Accepted: 10 November 1997     

Third order nonlinear optical properties of oligophenylene dyads by open-aperture Z-scan technique

The third order nonlinear optical response of some oligophenylene dyads were obtained at 30 ps, 532 nm using the Z-scan technique. The large nonlinearity of oligomers deriving from different substituted anisole is attributed to its rigid planar and intrachain charge transfer within the structure. The nonlinear absorption has been attributed to reverse saturable absorption-type behavior of the samples, while the imaginary part of the third order nonlinear susceptibility found has been of the order of 10 $^{-13}$ esu.     

Mound morphology and growth dynamic of the wedding-cake interfaces

We aimed in this work to study numerically the scaling behavior and the mound morphological properties of the interfaces generated by the multilayer deposition process. We have found that when the diffusion process dominates strongly the deposition one, the obtained interfaces consist of wedding-cake like structures. The width of the surface is a self-affine fractal exhibiting non-trivial scaling with the surface height and the system size, and the obtained interfaces follow the Family–Vicsek law with exponent values more consisting with the Edwards–Wilkinson model.     

Dynamics of Cu monomer,dimer and trimer on Ag (110) (1 × 2) missing‐row reconstructed surface

The authors aimed to investigate the diffusion of Cu monomer, dimer and trimer on Ag (110) (1×2) missing‐row surface. This problem is addressed through molecular dynamic simulation based on semi‐empirical many‐body potential, derived from the embedded atom method. Within this approach, we have identified and calculated the activation energy of each microscopic mechanism. Thus, for Cu monomer, the diffusion process occurs essentially by simple hopping between nearest‐neighbor sites. While for the Cu dimer, three processes have been identified such as dissociation–reassociation (DR), concerted jump (CJ) and leapfrog mechanisms (LF) with a slight predominance of DR process and a dual competition between CJ and LF processes. But, in the case of small one‐dimensional cluster such as trimer on (110)(1×2) missing‐row reconstructed surface, the main diffusion mechanism is the LF process. These results shed light on the diffusion processes on missing‐row reconstructed surfaces, especially for heterogeneous systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy barriers of single-adatoms diffusion on unreconstructed and reconstructed (110) surfaces

The present paper is aimed mainly to investigate theoretically the diffusion of Ag, Cu, Au and Pt adatoms on the (1 × 1) unreconstructed geometry for Ag, Cu and Pt (110), and reconstructed geometries ((1 × 2), (1 × 3) and (1 × 4)) for Pt and Au (110) surfaces. We consider the single adatom diffusion when additional atoms are deposited in adjacent row. For this study, we have used the molecular statics simulations combined with the embedded atom method. For several systems, we have calculated the activation barriers for hopping mechanism. For the diffusion on the unreconstructed surfaces, the trends for the activation barriers are the same for all considered systems except for Cu/Ag (110) system, where the activation barrier do not change. Further, our results indicate that additional atoms lead to a small decreasing of activation barriers for diffusion on reconstructed surfaces for some systems, while for other systems; the activation barrier remains practically unchanged.     

Impurities potential effect on the charge density wave dynamics in one-dimensional systems

In this work, we present in the weak pinning case the numerical simulation results of the one-dimensional deformable charge density wave (CDW) properties considering the potential amplitude fluctuations effect generated by different impurity types randomly distributed in the lattice. When the electric field approaches threshold value ET, the static equilibrium characteristic time τ and the polarization PCDW become large and seem to diverge at critical field Ecr from below ET following a power law [1−(E/Ecr)]^−α where α is an impurity dependant critical exponent. This divergence indicates that the CDW depinning can be described in terms of a dynamical critical phenomena, where the critical field Ecr plays the role of a transition temperature as in ordinary phase transitions. In agreement with several experimental results, we show that the electric current density JCDW and electric conductivity σCDW follow respectively a power law β[(E/ET)−1] and (ET/E)ν[(E/ET)−1] where β and ν are critical exponents. This results are analogous to these obtained in the case of one impurity type.     

Theoretical modeling of piezoelectric energy harvesting in the system using technical textile as a support

An approach to harvesting electrical energy from a mechanically excited piezoelectric element has been described. The topic of this paper studies the most important properties of piezoelectric polymer polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) in energy harvesting. We have chosen to develop a recovery application within the clothes. By the use of a piezoelectric energy harvester capable to convert the mechanical energy produced by the knee during walking to an electrical energy. This will be achieved by replacing the traditional textile of the kneepad with the one that is made of the technical textile based on acrylic knitted and PVDF as a patch stuck on the textile. Furthermore, PVDF has many unique features, such as excellent mechanical behavior, large strain without structure fatigue, which enables it to act strongly as the load bearing member, and corrosion resistance. The technical textile, functioning as multifunctional wearable human interfaces, is considered today as a useful tool in several energy fields. In this paper, a smart structure based on piezoelectric polymer (PVDF) has been presented, which a power analytical model, based on the frequency, the geometrical parameters and other factors were investigated. Furthermore, the set of numerical results illustrating the harvested power for a given size of the device has been performed and discussed and how this harvested power may be used as a source for a wearable device. Finally, the theory presented in this study can be used for the realization of other optimal designs, for a wearable sensor with low consumption and so on. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.