Bipolar Nickel-hydrogen Batteries for Aerospace Applications

A bipolar nickel-hydrogen battery which effectively addresses all key requirements for a spacecraft power system, including long-term reliability and low mass, is discussed. The design of this battery is discussed in the context of system requirements and nickel-hydrogen battery technology in general. To achieve the ultimate goal of an aerospace application of a bipolar Ni-H2 battery several objectives must be met in the design and development of the system. These objectives include: maximization of reliability and life; high specific energy and energy density; reasonable cost of manufacture, test, and integration; and ease in scaling for growth in power requirements. These basic objectives translate into a number of specific design requirements, which are discussed

Shear Modulus of an Elastic Solid under External Pressure as a function of Temperature: The case of Helium

The energy of a dislocation loop in a continuum elastic solid under pressure is considered within the framework of classical mechanics. For a circular loop, this is a function with a maximum at pressures that are well within reach of experimental conditions for solid helium suggesting, in this case, that dislocation loops can be generated by a pressure-assisted thermally activated process. It is also pointed out that pinned dislocations segments can alter the shear response of solid helium, by an amount consistent with current measurements, without any unpinning.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

A comparison of the optical properties of radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars

We have made radio observations of 87 optically selected quasars at 5 GHz with the VLA in order to measure the radio power for these objects and hence determine how the fraction of radio-loud quasars varies with redshift and optical luminosity. The sample has been selected from the recently completed Edinburgh Quasar Survey and covers a redshift range of 0.3 < z < 1.5 and an optical absolute magnitude range of -26.5 < M_{B} < -23.5 (h, q_{0} = 1/2). We have also matched up other existing surveys with the FIRST and NVSS radio catalogues and combined these data so that the optical luminosity-redshift plane is now far better sampled than previously. We have fitted a model to the probability of a quasar being radio-loud as a function of absolute magnitude and redshift and from this model infer the radio-loud and radio-quiet optical luminosity functions. The radio-loud optical luminosity function is featureless and flatter than the radio-quiet one. It evolves at a marginally slower rate if quasars evolve by density evolution, but the difference in the rate of evolutions of the two different classes is much less than was previously thought. We show, using Monte-Carlo simulations, that the observed difference in the shape of the optical luminosity functions can be partly accounted for by Doppler boosting of the optical continuum of the radio-loud quasars and explain how this can be tested in the future.Comment: 33 pages, 9 postscript figures, uses the AAS aaspp4 LaTeX style file, to appear in the 1 February 1999 issue of The Astrophysical Journa

High-Field Pauli-Limiting Behavior and Strongly Enhanced Upper Critical Magnetic Fields near the Transition Temperature of an Arsenic-Deficient LaO_0.9F_0.1FeAs_(1-\delta) Superconductor

We report upper critical field B_c2(T) data for disordered (arsenic-deficient) LaO_0.9F_0.1FeAs_(1-delta) in a wide temperature and magnetic field range up to 47 T. Because of the large linear slope of Bc2 about -5.4 T/K to -6.6 T/K near Tc = 28.5 K the T-dependence of the in-plane Bc2(T) shows a flattening near 23 K above 30 T which points to Pauli-limited behavior with Bc2(0) about 63-68 T. Our results are discussed in terms of disorder effects within conventional and unconventional superconducting pairings.Comment: Change of the title as suggested by the Editors, one author added, typos corrected, references updated, final published versio

Temporary Bonding with Polydimethylglutarimide Based Lift Off Resist as a Layer Transfer Platform

Bonding of lift off resist (LOR) was performed to realize temporary wafer bonding without residue. Bonding process conditions such as spin speed, pre-bake temperature, and bonding temperature were optimized to obtain a large bonded area with high bond strength. Under optimized process conditions, a bonded area covering over 98% of the wafer surface, with a room temperature bond strength of nearly 5 J/m2 is achieved. During razor blade testing, fracture often occurs at the Si wafer. Moreover, debonding using an N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP)-based solvent left the wafer surface extremely small amount of residue. Thus, the optimized bonding processed developed in this research is suitable for a clean temporary bonding process

Genetic algorithm dynamics on a rugged landscape

The genetic algorithm is an optimization procedure motivated by biological evolution and is successfully applied to optimization problems in different areas. A statistical mechanics model for its dynamics is proposed based on the parent-child fitness correlation of the genetic operators, making it applicable to general fitness landscapes. It is compared to a recent model based on a maximum entropy ansatz. Finally it is applied to modeling the dynamics of a genetic algorithm on the rugged fitness landscape of the NK model.Comment: 10 pages RevTeX, 4 figures PostScrip