371 research outputs found
Static conductivity of charged domain wall in uniaxial ferroelectric-semiconductors
Using Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire theory we calculated numerically the static
conductivity of both inclined and counter domain walls in the uniaxial
ferroelectrics-semiconductors of n-type. We used the effective mass
approximation for the electron and holes density of states, which is valid at
arbitrary distance from the domain wall. Due to the electrons accumulation, the
static conductivity drastically increases at the inclined head-to-head wall by
1 order of magnitude for small incline angles theta pi/40 by up 3 orders of
magnitude for the counter domain wall (theta=pi/2). Two separate regions of the
space charge accumulation exist across an inclined tail-to-tail wall: the thin
region in the immediate vicinity of the wall with accumulated mobile holes and
the much wider region with ionized donors. The conductivity across the
tail-to-tail wall is at least an order of magnitude smaller than the one of the
head-to-head wall due to the low mobility of holes, which are improper carries.
The results are in qualitative agreement with recent experimental data for
LiNbO3 doped with MgO.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, 1 appendi
Finite size and intrinsic field effect on the polar-active properties of the ferroelectric-semiconductor heterostructures
Using Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire approach we calculated the equilibrium
distributions of electric field, polarization and space charge in the
ferroelectric-semiconductor heterostructures containing proper or incipient
ferroelectric thin films. The role of the polarization gradient and intrinsic
surface energy, interface dipoles and free charges on polarization dynamics are
specifically explored. The intrinsic field effects, which originated at the
ferroelectric-semiconductor interface, lead to the surface band bending and
result into the formation of depletion space-charge layer near the
semiconductor surface. During the local polarization reversal (caused by the
inhomogeneous electric field induced by the nanosized tip of the Scanning Probe
Microscope (SPM) probe) the thickness and charge of the interface layer
drastically changes, it particular the sign of the screening carriers is
determined by the polarization direction. Obtained analytical solutions could
be extended to analyze polarization-mediated electronic transport.Comment: 35 pages, 12 figures, 1 table, 2 appendices, to be submitted to Phys.
Rev.
Thermodynamics of nanodomain formation and breakdown in Scanning Probe Microscopy: Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire approach
Thermodynamics of tip-induced nanodomain formation in scanning probe
microscopy of ferroelectric films and crystals is studied using the
Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire phenomenological approach. The local redistribution
of polarization induced by the biased probe apex is analyzed including the
effects of polarization gradients, field dependence of dielectric properties,
intrinsic domain wall width, and film thickness. The polarization distribution
inside subcritical nucleus of the domain preceding the nucleation event is very
smooth and localized below the probe, and the electrostatic field distribution
is dominated by the tip. In contrast, polarization distribution inside the
stable domain is rectangular-like, and the associated electrostatic fields
clearly illustrate the presence of tip-induced and depolarization field
components. The calculated coercive biases of domain formation are in a good
agreement with available experimental results for typical ferroelectric
materials. The microscopic origin of the observed domain tip elongation in the
region where the probe electric field is much smaller than the intrinsic
coercive field is the positive depolarization field in front of the moving
counter domain wall. For infinitely thin domain walls local domain breakdown
through the sample depth appears. The results obtained here are complementary
to the Landauer-Molotskii energetic approach.Comment: 35 pages, 8 figures, suplementary attached, to be submitted to Phys.
Rev.
Domain wall conduction in multiaxial ferroelectrics
The conductance of domain wall structures consisting of either stripes or
cylindrical domains in multi-axial ferroelectric-semiconductors is analyzed.
The effects of the domain size, wall tilt and curvature, on charge
accumulation, are analyzed using the Landau-Ginsburg Devonshire (LGD) theory
for polarization combined with Poisson equation for charge distributions. Both
the classical ferroelectric parameters including expansion coefficients in
2-4-6 Landau potential and gradient terms, as well as flexoelectric coupling,
inhomogeneous elastic strains and electrostriction are included in the present
analysis. Spatial distributions of the ionized donors, free electrons and holes
were found self-consistently using the effective mass approximation for the
respective densities of states. The proximity and size effect of the electron
and donor accumulation/depletion by thin stripe domains and cylindrical
nanodomains are revealed. In contrast to thick domain stripes and thicker
cylindrical domains, in which the carrier accumulation (and so the static
conductivity) sharply increases at the domain walls only, small nanodomains of
radius less then 5-10 correlation length appeared conducting across entire
cross-section. Implications of such conductive nanosized channels may be
promising for nanoelectronics.Comment: 39 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables, 4 appendice
BC4GO: a full-text corpus for the BioCreative IV GO task
Gene function curation via Gene Ontology (GO) annotation is a common task among Model Organism Database groups. Owing to its manual nature, this task is considered one of the bottlenecks in literature curation. There have been many previous attempts at automatic identification of GO terms and supporting information from full text. However, few systems have delivered an accuracy that is comparable with humans. One recognized challenge in developing such systems is the lack of marked sentence-level evidence text that provides the basis for making GO annotations. We aim to create a corpus that includes the GO evidence text along with the three core elements of GO annotations: (i) a gene or gene product, (ii) a GO term and (iii) a GO evidence code. To ensure our results are consistent with real-life GO data, we recruited eight professional GO curators and asked them to follow their routine GO annotation protocols. Our annotators marked up more than 5000 text passages in 200 articles for 1356 distinct GO terms. For evidence sentence selection, the inter-annotator agreement (IAA) results are 9.3% (strict) and 42.7% (relaxed) in F1-measures. For GO term selection, the IAAs are 47% (strict) and 62.9% (hierarchical). Our corpus analysis further shows that abstracts contain ∼10% of relevant evidence sentences and 30% distinct GO terms, while the Results/Experiment section has nearly 60% relevant sentences and >70% GO terms. Further, of those evidence sentences found in abstracts, less than one-third contain enough experimental detail to fulfill the three core criteria of a GO annotation. This result demonstrates the need of using full-text articles for text mining GO annotations. Through its use at the BioCreative IV GO (BC4GO) task, we expect our corpus to become a valuable resource for the BioNLP research community
The diagnostic accuracy of (18) F-FGD-PET/CT for cancer of the gallbladder: a retrospective study
Background Gallbladder cancer has a poor prognosis and imaging can have variable diagnostic accuracy. We assessed the ability of preoperative 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography computed tomography (18F-FDG-PET/CT) imaging to predict a postoperative histological diagnosis of gallbladder cancer. Method A retrospective analysis was undertaken in a cohort of patients, who had suspected gallbladder cancer on cross-sectional imaging and that underwent preoperative FDG-PET/CT scan. The discriminatory power of FDG-PET/CT was determined in receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis and diagnostic accuracy parameters were estimated at different thresholds of maximum standard unit value (SUVmax). Results Twenty-two patients were included in the study; 7 had malignant and 15 benign diagnoses. There was no statistically significant difference between the measured SUVmax between the two groups (p = 0.71). With an area under the curve of 0.486, the ROC curve did not indicate any discriminatory power of FDG-PET/CT at any potential threshold of SUVmax. Conclusion This study indicates that the diagnosis of primary gallbladder cancer cannot be accurately confirmed with FDG PET/CT scanning
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