Improved 10Be and 26Al-AMS with a 5 MV spectrometer

Detector and ion source changes have increased Be and Al count rates and reduced measurement background at SUERC. Low energy 16 MeV ²⁶Al³⁺ ions can be separated from interferences by adopting thin silicon nitride membrane detector windows. In contrast, a thick Havar detector window is used to preferentially slow boron ions for simplified ¹⁰Be vs. ¹⁰B separation without an additional gas cell.     

Step-Scan T-Cell Fourier Transform Infrared Photoacoustic Spectroscopy (FTIR-PAS) for Monitoring Environmental Air Pollutants

Air pollutants have adverse effects on the Earth’s climate system. There is an urgent need for cost-effective devices capable of recognizing and detecting various ambient pollutants. An FTIR photoacoustic spectroscopy (FTIR-PAS) method based on a commercial FTIR spectrometer developed for air contamination monitoring will be presented. A resonant T-cell was determined to be the most appropriate resonator in view of the low-frequency requirement and space limitations in the sample compartment. Step-scan FTIR-PAS theory for regular cylinder resonator has been described as a reference for prediction of T-cell vibration principles. Both simulated amplitude and phase responses of the T-cell show good agreement with measurement data Carbon dioxide IR absorption spectra were used to demonstrate the capacity of the FTIR-PAS method to detect ambient pollutants. The theoretical detection limit for carbon dioxide was found to be 4 ppmv. A linear response to carbon dioxide concentration was found in the range from 2500 ppmv to 5000 ppmv. The results indicate that it is possible to use step-scan FTIR-PAS with a T-cell as a quantitative method for analysis of ambient contaminants.     

Imaging of Polarons in Ferromagnetic Bilayered Manganites by Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy

We report scanning tunnelling microscopy images of polaronic charge ordered patch on the layered ferromagnet La_2−2x Sr_1+2x Mn₂O₇, x=0.32. The spectroscopic investigation shows that the material is gapped above and below the critical temperature, where the gap changes from 500 to 800 mV, giving evidence for polaronic transport behaviour. This work has been supported by European Project No. 517039 CoMePhS (Controlling Mesoscopic Phase Separation).     

Vibrations of Layered Beams under Conditions of Damaging and Slipping Interfaces

A nonlinear laminate layerwise beam theory is developed to simulate the effect of inelastic interlayer slip on the stiffness degradation of layered beam structures. Layerwise continuous and linear in-plane displacement fields are implemented. It is shown that by definition of an effective cross-sectional rotation the complex problem reduces to the simpler case of a homogenized shear-deformable beam with effective stiffness and a corresponding set of boundary conditions. Inelastic defects of the interlayer material are equivalent to eigenstrains in an identical but unlimited elastic background structure of the homogenized beam with proper effective virgin stiffness. Cross-sectional resultants of these eigenstrains are defined. Since the incremental response of the background to the given load and to the properly imposed eigenstrain increments is considered to be linear within a given time step, effective solution methods of the linear theory of flexural vibrations become applicable. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.