Structural and Superconducting Property Variations with Nominal Mg Non‐Stoichiometry in MgxB2 and Its Enhancement of Upper Critical Field

By applying a combination of characterisation tools, changes in structural and superconducting properties with nominal Mg non‐stoichiometry in Mg_xB₂ are found. The non‐stoichiometry produces enhanced in‐field critical current densities (J_c's) and upper critical field / irreversibility field (H_c2/H_irr(T)) values. Upper critical fields of ～ 21 T (4.2 K) were obtained in nominal Mg‐deficient samples compared to ～ 17 T (4.2 K) for near‐stoichiometric samples.     

Influence of temperature dependent properties on cooling behavior of cylindrical steels

Metallic materials, especially steels, are undertaken to different heat treatment processes in industry and cooling and heating times are of great importance. In this study, influence of variable physical properties of ANSI 1025 and AISI 304 steels and different boundary conditions namely forced convection, free convection and radiation on the calculation of cooling process was investigated. Governing differential equations were solved numerically for non-steady cases. It was found that variable properties should be taken into consideration for ANSI 1025, while the physical properties determined at an average temperature can be used for AISI 304. Another conclusion is that free convection can be neglected compared with radiation especially if forced convection coefficient is low.     

Antireflection coating on InP for semiconductor detectors

Aluminum nitride thin film by RF magnetron sputtering is used to produce antireflection coating on InP. The index of refection variation of aluminum nitride for different thickness at different wavelength in the range of 400 to 1500 nm is investigated using reflection spectroscopy. Subsequent Ar+ ion implantation at 30 keV with different doses on these coated layers has been performed. The morphology of aluminum nitride after ion implantation is characterized using atomic force microscopy AFM.     

Electrosprayed and selenized Cu/In metal particle films

Nano-particulate copper and indium metal layers of 1-2 μm have been deposited by non-vacuum techniques such as doctor blade, screen printing and electrospray using alcoholic suspension pastes. Electrospray showed a high efficiency of material usage and yielded the most uniform morphology. The metal precursor layers were subjected to a thermal treatment (500-600 °C) in selenium vapor to convert the porous metal layers into CuInSe₂ compound layers. The chemical conversion, investigated by X-ray diffraction, showed the presence of the In₂O₃ impurity phase in the precursor as well as in the selenized layers.     

Parallel adaptive discontinuous Galerkin approximation for thin layer avalanche modeling

This paper describes the development of highly accurate adaptive discontinuous Galerkin schemes for the solution of the equations arising from a thin layer type model of debris flows. Such flows have wide applicability in the analysis of avalanches induced by many natural calamities, e.g. volcanoes, earthquakes, etc. These schemes are coupled with special parallel solution methodologies to produce a simulation tool capable of very high-order numerical accuracy. The methodology successfully replicates cold rock avalanches at Mount Rainier, Washington and hot volcanic particulate flows at Colima Volcano, Mexico.     

Systematic methodology for exploration of performance – Energy trade-offs in network applications using Dynamic Data Type refinement

Modern network applications require high performance and consume a lot of energy. Their inherent dynamic nature makes the dynamic memory subsystem a critical contributing factor to the overall energy consumption and to the execution time performance. This paper presents a novel, systematic methodology for generating performance-energy trade-offs by implementing optimal Dynamic Data Types, finely tuned and refined for network applications. Our systematic methodology is supported by a new, fully automated tool. We assess the effectiveness of the proposed approach in four representative, real-life case studies and provide significant energy savings and performance improvements compared to the original implementations.     

Lateral habits ofn-alkane single crystals

The lateral crystal habits ofn-alkanes (n-C _n H_2n+2) have been observed just below the melting points by optical microscopy forn=18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 34, 44, 50 and 65. The shape of the crystals depends on the crystal phase: circular in the rotator phase, lenticular in phase C, and diamond in the low-temperature phase. The rounding of the lateral shape can be explained in terms of thermal roughening of the lateral faces in the disordered phases at high temperature.     

Dielectric and piezoelectric properties of Pb(Ni1/3Nb2/3)O3–PbTiO3–PbZrO3 ceramics modified with bismuth and zinc substitutions

The dielectric and piezoelectric properties of the (Pb_0.985Bi_0.01)(Ni_1/4Zn_1/12Nb_2/3)_x- (Zr_σTi_1-σ)_1-xO₃ piezoelectric ceramic system (0.2 ≤ x ≤ 0.7, 0.1 ≤ σ ≤ 0.9) were systematically investigated. The results showed that, after poling, the dielectric constant, ε ₃₃ ^T , increased for the tetragonal compositions but decreased for the rhombohedral compositions. Furthermore, high values of ε ₃₃ ^T and piezoelectric modulus, d ₃₁ were found for the compositions along the extension of the morphotropic phase boundary. The highest values of the planar electromechanical coupling factor, K _p, and the piezoelectric modulus, d ₃₁, were found to be 0.70 and − 274 × 10^-12 C N^-1, respectively. The Curie temperature, remanent polarization, coercive field and the lattice constants of the a and c axes in relation to the Pb(Ni_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃ content and the Zr/Zr + Ti ratio were also determined. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.