Nanostructured Zinc Oxide as a Prospective Room Temperature Thermoelectric Material

Nanostructured Zinc oxide (ZnO) was synthesized via a ball milling for 10 hours using high energy planetary ball mill. Phase purity and homogeneity of all the samples have been investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM). All the diffraction peaks can be indexed to the hexagonal phase ZnO with hexagonal symmetry (space group P63mc). Average crystallite size was observed to be 20 nm. There was a remarkable suppression in thermal conductivity ({\kappa}) compared to the bulk values by a factor of ~50 at room temperature. This suggests to the possibility of using nanostructured ZnO as a prospective room temperature thermoelectric material.Comment: submitted to DAE SSPS 201

Geometry of deformations of branes in warped backgrounds

The `braneworld' (described by the usual worldvolume action) is a D dimensional timelike surface embedded in a N dimensional ($N>D$) warped, nonfactorisable spacetime. We first address the conditions on the warp factor required to have an extremal flat brane in a five dimensional background. Subsequently, we deal with normal deformations of such extremal branes. The ensuing Jacobi equations are analysed to obtain the stability condition. It turns out that to have a stable brane, the warp factor should have a minimum at the location of the brane in the given background spacetime. To illustrate our results we explicitly check the extremality and stability criteria for a few known co-dimension one braneworld models. Generalisations of the above formalism for the cases of (i) curved branes (ii) asymmetrical warping and (iii) higher co-dimension braneworlds are then presented alongwith some typical examples for each. Finally, we summarize our results and provide perspectives for future work along these lines.Comment: 21 pages. Version matching final version. Accepted for publication in Class. Quant. Gra

Smooth double barriers in quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanical tunneling across smooth double barrier potentials modeled using Gaussian functions, is analyzed numerically and by using the WKB approximation. The transmission probability, resonances as a function of incident particle energy, and their dependence on the barrier parameters are obtained for various cases. We also discuss the tunneling time, for which we obtain generalizations of the known results for rectangular barriers.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, a slightly reduced version to appear in American Journal of Physics, references correcte

Written medical discharge communication from an acute stroke service: a project to improve content through development of a structured stroke-specific template

Specific guidelines for the content of discharge summaries from acute stroke services do not currently exist. The aims of this project were to assess the strengths and weaknesses of stroke discharge communication from Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, to develop a structured template to guide completion, and to re-audit discharge communication following its implementation. The audit compared local performance against record standards from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (1), which was augmented by criteria generated from the British Association of Stroke Physicians (BASP) Stroke Service Standards (2). Discharge information was examined within the Trust’s Electronic Discharge Communication (EDC) system to determine the recording of selected items for consecutively discharged patients from the hyperacute and acute stroke units. The audit was repeated following implementation of a newly developed stroke-specific discharge summary template. Fifty-one EDC summaries were examined at baseline (July 2012) and 30 summaries at re-audit (January 2013). The criteria which showed low adherence initially and which showed the most significant improvement following the introduction of the template were the guidance on blood pressure and lipids targets (increased from 2% and 0% respectively at baseline, to 93% post intervention), and the driving and flying advice (from 3% to 79%). Documentation was also seen to improve for measures of physical and cognitive function, discharge arrangements, and follow up plans. This audit cycle has demonstrated improvement in the consistency of content within written discharge communication following the introduction of a structured stroke-specific template adhering to combined criteria from identified standards

Orbifold resolutions with general profile

A very general class of resolved versions of the C/Z_N, T^2/Z_N and S^1/Z_2 orbifolds is considered and the free theory of 6D chiral fermions studied on it. As the orbifold limit is taken, localized 4D chiral massless fermions are seen to arise at the fixed points. Their number, location and chirality is found to be independent on the detailed profile of the resolving space and to agree with the result of hep-th/0409229, in which a particular resolution was employed. As a consistency check of the resolution procedure, the massive equation is numerically studied. In particular, for S^1/Z_2, the "resolved" mass--spectrum and wave functions in the internal space are seen to correctly reproduce the usual orbifold ones, as the orbifold limit is taken.Comment: 28 pages, 3 figures, typos corrected, references adde

Can degenerate bound states occur in one dimensional quantum mechanics?

We point out that bound states, degenerate in energy but differing in parity, may form in one dimensional quantum systems even if the potential is non-singular in any finite domain. Such potentials are necessarily unbounded from below at infinity and occur in several different contexts, such as in the study of localised states in brane-world scenarios. We describe how to construct large classes of such potentials and give explicit analytic expressions for the degenerate bound states. Some of these bound states occur above the potential maximum while some are below. Various unusual features of the bound states are described and after highlighting those that are ansatz independent, we suggest that it might be possible to observe such parity-paired degenerate bound states in specific mesoscopic systems.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Europhysics Letter

A deep level transient spectroscopy study of hole traps in GexSe1-x-based layers for ovonic threshold switching selectors

status: publishe

Nanolasers grown on silicon

Integration of optical interconnects with silicon-based electronics can address the growing limitations facing chip-scale data transport as microprocessors become progressively faster. However, material lattice mismatch and incompatible growth temperatures have fundamentally limited monolithic integration of lasers onto silicon substrates until now. Here, we use a novel growth scheme to overcome this roadblock and directly grow on-chip InGaAs nanopillar lasers, demonstrating the potency of bottom-up nano-optoelectronic integration. Unique helically-propagating cavity modes are employed to strongly confine light within subwavelength nanopillars despite low refractive index contrast between InGaAs and silicon. These modes thereby provide an avenue for engineering on-chip nanophotonic devices such as lasers. Nanopillar lasers are as-grown on silicon, offer tiny footprints and scalability, and are thereby particularly suited to high-density optoelectronics. They may ultimately form the basis of the missing monolithic light sources needed to bridge the existing gap between photonic and electronic circuits.Comment: submitted to Nature Photonic