Phase relations in the HgCr2Se4-CdCl2 system

The phase relations in the HgCr₂Se₄-CdCl₂ system have been investigated using differential thermal analysis and x-ray diffraction, and the primary crystallization field of the spinel phase in this system has been located: 560–750°C, 84–97 mol % CdCl₂. By optimizing growth conditions and using CdCl₂ as a flux, single crystals of Hg_1?x Cd_xCr₂Se₄ solid solutions containing up to 5 wt % Cd have been grown.     

磁控溅射法镀制氮化铝薄膜特性研究

氮化铝薄膜具有高折射率,良好的化学稳定性,耐磨摩、高电阻等特性在微电子器件和光学薄膜中有着广泛地应用.本文研究了反应式磁控溅射方法利用Ar/N2混合气体镀制氮化铝薄膜的工艺过程,实验表明在高真空和高泵浦速率条件下,放电电压直接依赖于反应气体珠浓度.薄膜的折射率,消光系数和薄膜硬度都依赖于氮气浓度的比例.通过工艺研究,找到了氮气在不同浓度下对氮化铝薄膜的折射率,消光系数以及薄膜硬度的影响,找出了镀制氮化镀制氮化铝薄膜的最佳工艺参数.在Ar/N2工作气体中氮气含量保持在40%条件下,用反应式磁控溅射方法,可以精确镀制出良好的氮化铝薄膜,其中折射率范围在2.25~2.4之间,消光系数为10-3,薄膜显微硬度大于20GPa.该薄膜可以广泛应用于微电子器件和光电器件上.     

Self-assembly routes towards creating superconducting and magnetic arrays

Using self-assembly from colloidal suspensions of polystyrene latex spheres we prepared well-ordered templates. By electrochemical deposition of magnetic and superconducting metals in the pores of such templates highly ordered magnetic and superconducting anti-dot nano-structures with 3D architectures were created. Further developments of this template preparation method allow us to obtain dot arrays and even more complicated structures. In magnetic anti-dot arrays we observe a large increase in coercive field produced by nanoscale (50–1000nm) holes. We also find the coercive field to demonstrate an oscillatory dependence on film thickness. In magnetic dot arrays we have explored the genesis of 3D magnetic vortices and determined the critical dot size. Superconducting Pb anti-dot arrays show pronounced Little-Parks oscillations in T_c and matching effects in magnetization and magnetic susceptibility. The spherical shape of the holes results in significantly reduced pinning strength as compared to standard lithographic samples. Our results demonstrate that self-assembly template methods are emerging as a viable, low cost route to prepare sub-micron structures.     

A Conjecture on Wiener Indices in Combinatorial Chemistry

Drugs and other chemical compounds are often modeled as polygonal shapes, where each vertex represents an atom of the molecule, and covalent bonds between atoms are represented by edges between the corresponding vertices. This polygonal shape derived from a chemical compound is often called its molecular graph, and can be a path, a tree, or in general a graph. An indicator defined over this molecular graph, the Wiener index, has been shown to be strongly correlated to various chemical properties of the compound. The Wiener index conjecture for trees states that for any integer n (except for a finite set), one can find a tree with Wiener index n. This conjecture has been open for quite some time, and many authors have presented incremental progress on this problem. In this paper we present further progress towards proving this conjecture—through the design of efficient algorithms, we show that enumerating all possible trees to verify this conjecture (as done by all the previous approaches) is not necessary, but instead searching in a small special family of trees suffices, thus achieving the first polynomial (in n) time algorithm to verify the conjecture up to integer n. More precisely, we (i) present an infinite family of trees and prove various properties of these trees, (ii) show that a large number of integers, up to at least 10⁸ (compared with the previous best 10⁴) are representable as Wiener indices of trees in this succinct family, (iii) provide several efficient algorithms for computing trees with given Wiener indices, and (iv) implement our algorithms and experimentally show that their performance is asymptotically much better than their theoretical worst-case upper bound.     

Holographic digital Fourier microscopy for selective imaging of biological tissue

We present an application of digital Fourier holography for selective imaging of scatterers with different sizes in turbid media such as biological tissues. A combination of Fourier holography and high‐resolution digital recording, digital Fourier microscopy (DFM) permits crucial flexibility in applying filtering to highlight scatterers of interest in the tissue. The high‐resolution digital hologram is a result of the collation of Fourier holographic frames to form a large‐size composite hologram. It is expected that DFM has an improved signal‐to‐noise ratio as compared to conventional direct digital imaging, e.g., phase microscopy, as applied to imaging of small‐size objects. The demonstration of the Fourier filtering capacity of DFM using a biological phantom represents the main focus of this article. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 14, 253–258, 2004; Published online inWiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ima.20031     

Ellipsoidal parameter or state estimation under model uncertainty

Ellipsoidal outer-bounding of the set of all feasible state vectors under model uncertainty is a natural extension of state estimation for deterministic models with unknown-but-bounded state perturbations and measurement noise. The technique described in this paper applies to linear discrete-time dynamic systems; it can also be applied to weakly non-linear systems if non-linearity is replaced by uncertainty. Many difficulties arise because of the non-convexity of feasible sets. Combined quadratic constraints on model uncertainty and additive disturbances are considered in order to simplify the analysis. Analytical optimal or suboptimal solutions of the basic problems involved in parameter or state estimation are presented, which are counterparts in this context of uncertain models to classical approximations of the sum and intersection of ellipsoids. The results obtained for combined quadratic constraints are extended to other types of model uncertainty.     

Direct Measurement of Fusion Enthalpy of LaAlO3 and Comparison of Energetics of Melt,Glass, and Amorphous Thin Films

Enthalpy of fusion and melting temperature of perovskite LaAlO₃ were measured using thermal analysis method as 124 ± 10 kJ/mol at 2134 ± 10°C, providing a value of 52 ± 4 J·(mol·K)^?1 for entropy of fusion. Crystallization enthalpy of amorphous LaAlO₃ thin films was found to change from ?24 to ?17 kJ/mol with decrease in film thickness from 100 to 20 nm. Differences in energetics of amorphous LaAlO₃ films and glass cannot be explained exclusively by surface energy contribution but must reflect differences in structure between films and glasses in this system.     

Geometry control of the junction between two fractal curves

The general objective of our work is to create a geometric modeller based on iterative processes. With this objective in mind, we have to provide tools that work with fractal objects in the same manner as with objects of classical topology. In this article we focus on the constructing of an intermediate curve between two other curves defined by different iterative construction processes. A similar problem often arises with subdivision surfaces, when the goal is to connect two surfaces with different subdivision masks. We start by dealing with curves, willing to later generalise our approach to surfaces. We formalise the problem with the Boundary Controlled Iterated Function System model. Then we deduct the conditions that guarantees continuity of the intermediate curve. These conditions determine the structure of subdivision matrices. By studying the eigenvalues of the subdivision operators, we characterise the differential behaviour at the connection points between the curves and the intermediate one. This behaviour depends on the nature of the initial curves and coefficients of the subdivision matrices. We also suggest a method to control the differential behaviour by adding intermediate control points.     

High-frequency electrical properties of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser with a monolithically integrated electro-optical modulator

The high-frequency electrical properties of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser with a monolithically integrated electro-optical modulator are studied using small-signal modulation analysis of the electroreflectance. The experimental data obtained are approximated using the suggested equivalent electrical circuit, which accounts for the formation of a nonequilibrium space charge in the carrier-depletion region of the modulator. The bandwidth of the high-frequency electrical-signal transfer to the electro-optical region, determined for the suggested equivalent electrical circuit of the modulator, is shown to be 3GHz.