The Concept of Ecologically Oriented Progress and Natural Resource Preservation

The most important issue of scientific and technological progress is considering the environment challenges of industrial development. It means that the progress must be ecologically oriented and environmentally friendly. The most adequate concept for the approach to the issue of "man - society – nature" relations is the ontology of the noosphere - the idea of a common space for human beings and nature. It presents an ideal example of an optimistic attitude towards the coordination between accelerating the scientific and technological development and natural resource saving. However, to maintain the balance between human needs and environmental processes determined by this concept, it is essential to include the lean production training into technological development of society

Incorporating Fluorine Substitution into Conjugated Polymers for Solar Cells: Three Different Means, Same Results

Fluorinating conjugated polymers is a proven strategy for creating high performance materials in polymer solar cells, yet few studies have investigated the importance of the fluorination method. We compare the performance of three fluorinated systems: a poly(benzodithieno-dithienyltriazole) (PBnDT-XTAZ) random copolymer where 50% of the acceptor units are difluorinated, PBnDT-mFTAZ where every acceptor unit is monofluorinated, and a 1:1 physical blend of the difluorinated and nonfluorinated polymer. All systems have the same degree of fluorination (50%) yet via different methods (chemically vs physically, random vs regular). We show that these three systems have equivalent photovoltaic behavior: ∼5.2% efficiency with a short-circuit current (Jsc) at ∼11 mA cm-2, an open-circuit voltage (Voc) at 0.77 V, and a fill factor (FF) of ∼60%. Further investigation of these three systems demonstrates that the charge generation, charge extraction, and charge transfer state are essentially identical for the three studied systems. Transmission electron microscopy shows no significant differences in the morphologies. All these data illustrate that it is possible to improve performance not only via regular or random fluorination but also by physical addition via a ternary blend. Thus, our results demonstrate the versatility of incorporating fluorine in the active layer of polymer solar cells to enhance device performance. (Graph Presented)

Low frequency 1/f noise in doped manganite grain-boundary junctions

We have performed a systematic analysis of the low frequency 1/f-noise in single grain boundary junctions in the colossal magnetoresistance material La_{2/3}Ca_{1/3}MnO_{3-delta}. The grain boundary junctions were formed in epitaxial La_{2/3}Ca_{1/3}MnO_{3-delta} films deposited on SrTiO_3 bicrystal substrates and show a large tunneling magnetoresistance of up to 300% at 4.2 K as well as ideal, rectangular shaped resistance versus applied magnetic field curves. Below the Curie temperature T_C the measured 1/f noise is dominated by the grain boundary. The dependence of the noise on bias current, temperature and applied magnetic field gives clear evidence that the large amount of low frequency noise is caused by localized sites with fluctuating magnetic moments in a heavily disordered grain boundary region. At 4.2 K additional temporally unstable Lorentzian components show up in the noise spectra that are most likely caused by fluctuating clusters of interacting magnetic moments. Noise due to fluctuating domains in the junction electrodes is found to play no significant role.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Tuning the Er³⁺ sensitization by Si nanoparticles in nanostructured as-grown Al₂O₃ films

5 páginas, 5 figuras.Nanostructured films consisting of single Si nanoparticles (NPs) and Er3+ ions layers separated by nanometer-scale Al2O3 layers of controlled thickness have been prepared in order to tune the energy transfer between Si NPs and Er3+ ions. The amorphous Si NPs with an effective diameter of ~4.5 nm are formed during growth and are able to sensitize the Er3+ ions efficiently with no postannealing treatments. The characteristic distance for energy transfer from Si NPs to Er3+ ions in Al2O3 is found to be in the 1 nm range. It is shown that in the nanostructured films, it is possible to achieve an optimized configuration in which almost all the Er3+ ions have the potential to be excited by the Si NPs. This result stresses the importance of controlling the dopant distribution at the nanoscale to achieve improved device performance.This work has been supported by CICYT (Spain) under Project No. TEC2006-04538-MIC and by the EU under IST-NMP STREP-017501 contract. S.N.-S. acknowledges the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (Spain) for support from a FPU contract. TEM was performed in the Electron Microscopy Center at Argonne National Laboratory, supported under Contract No. DEAC02-06CH11357 between UChicago Argonne, LLC, and the DOE.Peer reviewe

Aberration correction for analytical in situ TEM - the NTEAM concept.

Future aberration corrected transmission electron microscopes (TEM) will have a strong impact in materials science, since such microscopes yield information on chemical bonding and structure of interfaces, grain boundaries and lattice defects at an atomic level. Beyond this aberration correction offers new possibilities for in situ experiments performed under controlled temperature, magnetic field, strain etc. at atomic resolution. Such investigations are necessary for solving problems arising from electronic component miniaturization, for example. Significant progress can be expected by means of analytical aberration corrected TEM. These next generation microscopes will be equipped with an aberration corrected imaging system, a monochromator and aberration corrected energy filters. These novel elements have already been designed and partially realized [1,2,3]