Determination of mechanical properties of thin films: a theoretical feasibility study

The aim of this work was to determine the principal mechanical parameters of a thin film on a substrate, i.e. Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, intrinsic stress, and coefficient of linear thermal expansion. First, standard experiments possibly suitable for this purpose were investigated theoretically. The margin of error of the mechanical parameters determined was estimated as dependent on the geometrical conditions, substrate properties, and error in the respective measurements. In addition, the homogeneity and stability of the parameters were taken into account, for instance inhomogeneity of the film thickness and possible modification of substrate parameters during film growth. To obtain meaningful results, the accuracy of the measurements as well as the homogeneity and stability of several geometrical and physical parameters in general must be extremely high. However, the experimental conditions were found to fulfill these requirements.     

Dynamic light scattering by gels under hydrostatic pressure

Measurements of variation with pressure of the collective diffusion constant D_c in polyacrylamide gels using both a good solvent (water) and a theta solvent (methanol 30% - water 70% by volume) are reported. From these observations the variation of ξ_h, the hydrodynamic screening length in the gel, is obtained, and compared with ξ_st, the static screening length. The latter is obtained from measurements of the density of the polymer solutions. In the concentration range studied (3%–10%) and for pressures up to 3 kbar, both ξ_h and ξ_st diminish with increasing pressure (i.e. the solvent quality improves), but the variation of ξ_h is more than an order of magnitude smaller than ξ_st for both the poor and good solvent cases.     

Inhibition of 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone mouse lung tumorigenesis by arylalkynes, mechanism-based inactivators of cytochrome P450

Arylalkynes such as 4-phenyl-1-butyne (PBY), 5-phenyl-1-pentyne (PPY) and 2-ethynylnaphthalene (2-EN) are suicide inhibitors of cytochrome P450 enzymes. Arylalkyl isothiocyanates such as 6-phenylhexyl isothiocyanate (PHITC) are structurally related to arylalkynes and are known to inhibit the cytochrome P450 mediated metabolic activation and tumorigenicity of a tobacco-specific lung carcinogen, 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK). In this study, we compared the ability of PBY, PPY, 2-EN and PHITC to inhibit A/J mouse lung tumorigenesis by NNK. Groups of 20 female mice were gavaged with 5 mumol of arylalkyne or PHITC in corn oil. Two hours later they were given a single i.p. injection of 10 mumol NNK. The mice were killed 16 weeks later. PPY and PHITC were both potent inhibitors of tumorigenesis by NNK, reducing lung tumor multiplicity from 8.35 tumors per mouse to 0.40 and 0.35 respectively. PBY and 2-EN also significantly inhibited tumor multiplicity. The results of this study demonstrate that arylalkynes and PHITC are potent inhibitors of NNK induced lung tumorigenesis in A/J mice, consistent with the hypothesis that inhibition of specific cytochrome P450 enzymes is involved in inhibition of tumorigenesis.     

Optimizing wheel profiles and suspensions for railway vehicles operating on specific lines to reduce wheel wear: a case study

Multibody System Dynamics - The selection of a wheel profile is a topic of great interest as it can affect running performances and wheel wear, which needs to be determined based on the actual...     

Fabrication of collimating grids for an x-ray solar telescope using LIGA methods

 We are fabricating sub-collimating X-ray grids that are to be used in an orbiting solar X-ray telescope. The telescope optics consist of twelve rotating pairs of high aspect ratio grids. The pitch for the grids ranges from 34 μm to 317 μm. The grid thickness-to-grid-slit ratio must be approximately 50:1, resulting in grid thicknesses of 1 to 10 millimeters. We are implementing a design in which a 34 μm pitch, free-standing PMMA grid is fabricated with 20 μm wide slits through a 800 μm thickness. After exposure and developing, metal is electrodeposited into the slits in the PMMA grid and the PMMA is left in place to hold the individual metal pieces. For optimum imaging performance, the root-mean-square pitch of the two grids of each pair must match to within 1 part in 10000 and simultaneous exposures of stacked sheets of PMMA have insured that this requirement is met. Received: 30 October 1995 / Accepted: 25 January 1996     

Fault-tolerant distributed shared memory on a broadcast-based architecture

Due to advances in fiber-optics and VLSI technology, interconnection networks that allow multiple simultaneous broadcasts are becoming feasible. Distributed-shared-memory implementations on such networks promise high performance even for applications with small granularity. This paper presents the architecture of one such implementation, called the simultaneous optical multiprocessor exchange bus, and examines the performance of augmented DSM protocols that exploit the natural duplication of data to maintain a recovery memory in each processing node and provide basic fault tolerance. Simulation results show that the additional data duplication necessary to create fault-tolerant DSM causes no reduction in system performance during normal operation and eliminates most of the overhead at checkpoint creation. Under certain conditions, data blocks that are duplicated to maintain the recovery memory are utilized by the underlying DSM protocol, reducing network traffic, and increasing the processor utilization significantly.     

Coarsening of Inter- and Intra-granular Proeutectoid Cementite in an Initially Pearlitic 2C-4Cr Ultrahigh Carbon Steel

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - We have examined spheroidization and coarsening of cementite in an initially pearlitic 2C-4Cr ultrahigh carbon steel containing a cementite network....