7,661 research outputs found
Fundamentals of metal-semiconductor contacts
The fundamentals of metal-semiconductor contacts are discussed. Contact resistance values for solar cells are also discussed
van der Waals interactions of the benzene dimer: towards treatment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon dimers
Although density functional theory (DFT) in principle includes even
long-range interactions, standard implementations employ local or semi-local
approximations of the interaction energy and fail at describing the van der
Waals interactions. We show how to modify a recent density functional that
includes van der Waals interactions in planar systems [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91,
126402 (2003)] to also give an approximate interaction description of planar
molecules. As a test case we use this modified functional to calculate the
binding distance and energy for benzene dimers, with the perspective of
treating also larger, flat molecules, such as the polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons (PAH).Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures (3 figure files) submitted to Materials Science
and Engineering
Perturbation Analysis of Competition and Overlap in Habitat Utilization Between Dipodomys Ordii and Dipodomys Merriami
This study measures the magnitude of the competition between two nocturnal, desert rodents, Dipodomys ordii and D. merriami, on 10 unenclosed, 16 hectare plots along a narrow band of sympatry in south-central New Mexico. Population perturbations of one or the other species were periodically performed on eight of the plots, while natural population changes were monitored on two controls. The relative numerical responses of the kangaroo rats to these perturbations are thought to reflect the true magnitude of their competitive interaction
Coherent transport in Nb/delta-doped-GaAs hybrid microstructures
Coherent transport in Nb/GaAs superconductor-semiconductor microstructures is
presented. The structures fabrication procedure is based on delta-doped layers
grown by molecular-beam-epitaxy near the GaAs surface, followed by an As cap
layer to protect the active semiconductor layers during ex situ transfer. The
superconductor is then sputter deposited in situ after thermal desorption of
the protective layer. Two types of structures in particular will be discussed,
i.e., a reference junction and the engineered one that contains an additional
insulating AlGaAs barrier inserted during the growth in the semiconductor. This
latter configuration may give rise to controlled interference effects and
realizes the model introduced by de Gennes and Saint-James in 1963. While both
structures show reflectionless tunneling-dominated transport, only the
engineered junction shows additionally a low-temperature single marked
resonance peaks superimposed to the characteristic Andreev-dominated subgap
conductance. The analysis of coherent magnetotransport in both microstructures
is successfully performed within the random matrix theory of Andreev transport
and ballistic effects are included by directly solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes
equations. The impact of junction morphology on reflectionless tunneling and
the application of the employed fabrication technique to the realization of
complex semiconductor-superconductor systems are furthermore discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, invited review paper, to be published in Mod.
Phys. Lett.
Screening for antinuclear antibodies by enzyme immunoassay
Journal ArticleIndirect fluorescent antibody (IFA) is the most widely used method in clinical laboratories to screen for autoantibodies against a wide variety of nuclear antigens. Recently, a number of antinuclear antibody (ANA) enzyme immunoassay (EIA) screens have become commercially available and claim to be an alternative method to screen for ANAs. Given the subjectivity of technical interpretation of IFA and the high number of ANA negative samples, a suitable EIA method for ANA screening would be beneficial to clinical laboratories with large sample volumes. Five ANA EIA screens were compared (Efias, Helix, Sanofi, ThcraTcst and Zeus) to IFA using a human epithelial cell line (HEp-2). Sera from 601 patients submitted to our reference laboratory for autoimmune testing, and from 202 normal healthy blood donors, were included in this study. Samples with discordant results between IFA and EIA were further analyzed using single antigen EIAs for SSA, SSB, Sm, RNP, Scl-70, histones, dsDNA, and ssDNA
Voltage modulated electro-luminescence spectroscopy and negative capacitance - the role of sub-bandgap states in light emitting devices
Voltage modulated electroluminescence spectra and low frequency ({\leq} 100
kHz) impedance characteristics of electroluminescent diodes are studied.
Voltage modulated light emission tracks the onset of observed negative
capacitance at a forward bias level for each modulation frequency. Active
participation of sub-bandgap defect states in minority carrier recombination
dynamics is sought to explain the results. Negative capacitance is understood
as a necessary dielectric response to compensate any irreversible transient
changes in the minority carrier reservoir due to radiative recombinations
mediated by slowly responding sub-bandgap defects. Experimentally measured
variations of the in-phase component of modulated electroluminescence spectra
with forward bias levels and modulation frequencies support the dynamic
influence of these states in the radiative recombination process. Predominant
negative sign of the in-phase component of voltage modulated
electroluminescence signal further confirms the bi-molecular nature of light
emission. We also discuss how these states can actually affect the net density
of minority carriers available for radiative recombination. Results indicate
that these sub-bandgap states can suppress external quantum efficiency of such
devices under high frequency operation commonly used in optical communication.Comment: 21 pages, 4 sets of figure
Ohmic contacts to n-type germanium with low specific contact resistivity
A low temperature nickel process has been developed that produces Ohmic contacts to n-type germanium with specific contact resistivities down to (2.3 ± 1.8) x10<sup>-7</sup> Ω-cm<sup>2</sup> for anneal temperatures of 340 degC. The low contact resistivity is attributed to the low resistivity NiGe phase which was identified using electron diffraction in a transmission electron microscope. Electrical results indicate that the linear Ohmic behaviour of the contact is attributed to quantum mechanical tunnelling through the Schottky barrier formed between the NiGe alloy and the heavily doped n-Ge.<p></p>
Multilevel convergence analysis of multigrid-reduction-in-time
This paper presents a multilevel convergence framework for
multigrid-reduction-in-time (MGRIT) as a generalization of previous two-grid
estimates. The framework provides a priori upper bounds on the convergence of
MGRIT V- and F-cycles, with different relaxation schemes, by deriving the
respective residual and error propagation operators. The residual and error
operators are functions of the time stepping operator, analyzed directly and
bounded in norm, both numerically and analytically. We present various upper
bounds of different computational cost and varying sharpness. These upper
bounds are complemented by proposing analytic formulae for the approximate
convergence factor of V-cycle algorithms that take the number of fine grid time
points, the temporal coarsening factors, and the eigenvalues of the time
stepping operator as parameters.
The paper concludes with supporting numerical investigations of parabolic
(anisotropic diffusion) and hyperbolic (wave equation) model problems. We
assess the sharpness of the bounds and the quality of the approximate
convergence factors. Observations from these numerical investigations
demonstrate the value of the proposed multilevel convergence framework for
estimating MGRIT convergence a priori and for the design of a convergent
algorithm. We further highlight that observations in the literature are
captured by the theory, including that two-level Parareal and multilevel MGRIT
with F-relaxation do not yield scalable algorithms and the benefit of a
stronger relaxation scheme. An important observation is that with increasing
numbers of levels MGRIT convergence deteriorates for the hyperbolic model
problem, while constant convergence factors can be achieved for the diffusion
equation. The theory also indicates that L-stable Runge-Kutta schemes are more
amendable to multilevel parallel-in-time integration with MGRIT than A-stable
Runge-Kutta schemes.Comment: 26 pages; 17 pages Supplementary Material
Diffusion-emission theory of photon enhanced thermionic emission solar energy harvesters
Numerical and semi-analytical models are presented for
photon-enhanced-thermionic-emission (PETE) devices. The models take diffusion
of electrons, inhomogeneous photogeneration, and bulk and surface recombination
into account. The efficiencies of PETE devices with silicon cathodes are
calculated. Our model predicts significantly different electron affinity and
temperature dependence for the device than the earlier model based on a
rate-equation description of the cathode. We show that surface recombination
can reduce the efficiency below 10% at the cathode temperature of 800 K and the
concentration of 1000 suns, but operating the device at high injection levels
can increase the efficiency to 15%.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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