Vapor crystal growth technology development: Application to cadmium telluride

Growth of bulk crystals by physical vapor transport was developed and applied to cadmium telluride. The technology makes use of effusive ampoules, in which part of the vapor contents escapes to a vacuum shroud through defined leaks during the growth process. This approach has the advantage over traditional sealed ampoule techniques that impurity vapors and excess vapor constituents are continuously removed from the vicinity of the growing crystal. Thus, growth rates are obtained routinely at magnitudes that are rather difficult to achieve in closed ampoules. Other advantages of this effusive ampoule physical vapor transport (EAPVT) technique include the predetermination of transport rates based on simple fluid dynamics and engineering considerations, and the growth of the crystal from close to congruent vapors, which largely alleviates the compositional nonuniformities resulting from buoyancy driven convective transport. After concisely reviewing earlier work on improving transport rates, nucleation control, and minimization of crystal wall interactions in vapor crystal growth, a detail account is given of the largely computer controlled EAPVT experimentation

Pressure dependence of raman modes in double wall carbon nanotubes filled with 1D tellurium

The preparation of highly anisotropic one-dimensional (1D) structures confined into carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in general is a key objective in nanoscience. In this work, capillary effect was used to fill double wall carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) with trigonal Tellurium. The samples are characterized by high resolution transmission electronic microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. In order to investigate their structural stability and unravel the differences induced by intershell interactions, unpolarized Raman spectra of radial and tangential modes of DWCNTs filled with 1D nanocrystalline Te excited with 514 nm were studied at room temperature and high pressure. Up to 11 GPa we found a pressure coefficient of 3.7 cm−1 GPa−1 for the internal tube and 7 cm−1 GPa−1 for the external tube. In addition, the tangential band of the external and internal tubes broaden and decrease in amplitude. All findings lead to the conclusion that the outer tube acts as a protection shield for the inner tube (at least up 11 GPa). No pressure-induced structural phase transition was observed in the studied range

Preparation and investigation of high purity Ge-Te-AgI glasses for optical application

International audienceThe method for the preparation of high purity Ge-Te-AgI glasses with low content of the limiting impurities has been developed. The method includes the synthesis of GeTe4 glass using chemical distillation purification, loading AgI and GeTe4 into silica glass reactor by evaporation in all-sealed glass vacuumed system, melting the (GeTe4)100 − x(AgI)x (x = 0-20) glass into muffle rocking furnace at 850 °С, quenching the glass in water with subsequent annealing and cooling. The prepared glass samples were investigated by energy-dispersive X-ray microanalysis, DSC, FTIR-spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and laser calorimetry. The high purity (GeTe4)100 − x(AgI)x (x = 0-20) glass samples are characterized by good transparency in the spectral range of 2-20 μm, glass transition temperature of 140-160 °С, Tc − Tg difference of more than 100 °С, and a very low content of the limiting impurities. Some glass compositions with AgI content between 10 and 20 at.% manifest a good thermal stability against crystallization

Cosmogenic-neutron activation of TeO2 and implications for neutrinoless double- β decay experiments

Flux-averaged cross sections for cosmogenic-neutron activation of natural tellurium were measured using a neutron beam containing neutrons of kinetic energies up to ∼800 MeV and having an energy spectrum similar to that of cosmic-ray neutrons at sea level. Analysis of the radioisotopes produced reveals that Ag110m will be a dominant contributor to the cosmogenic-activation background in experiments searching for neutrinoless double-β decay of Te130, such as the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Plus (SNO+). An estimate of the cosmogenic-activation background in the CUORE experiment has been obtained using the results of this measurement and cross-section measurements of proton activation of tellurium. Additionally, the measured cross sections in this work are also compared with results from semiempirical cross-section calculations

Chemical fractionations in meteorites, 4. Abundances of fourteen trace elements in L-chondrites - Implications for cosmothermometry

Trace element abundances in L-chondrites determined by neutron activation analysis, and implications cosmothermometr

Technology for Manufacturing Working Substances for Thermoelements Branches and Determination of their Thermoelectric Characteristics

The article discusses the technology of producing thermoelectric materials under inert gas pressure, which makes it possible to provide reproducible results from melting to melting and to synthesize sufficiently large amounts of a working substance