NO adsorption and thermal behavior on Pd surfaces. A detailed comparative study

The adsorption and thermal behavior of NO on `flat¿ Pd(111) and `stepped¿ Pd(112) surfaces has been investigated by temperature programmed desorption (TPD), high resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy (HREELS), and electron stimulated desorption ion angular distribution (ESDIAD) techniques. NO is shown to molecularly adsorb on both Pd(111) and Pd(112) in the temperature range 100¿373 K. NO thermally desorbs predominantly molecularly from Pd(111) near 500 K with an activation energy and pre-exponential factor of desorption which strongly depend on the initial NO surface coverage. In contrast, NO decomposes substantially on Pd(112) upon heating, with relatively large amounts of N2 and N2O desorbing near 500 K, in addition to NO. The fractional amount of NO dissociation on Pd(112) during heating is observed to be a strong function of the initial NO surface coverage. HREELS results indicate that the thermal dissociation of NO on both Pd(111) and Pd(112) occurs upon annealing to 490 K, forming surface-bound O on both surfaces. Evidence for the formation of sub-surface O via NO thermal dissociation is found only on Pd(112), and is verified by dissociative O2 adsorption experiments. Both surface-bound O and sub-surface O dissolve into the Pd bulk upon annealing of both surfaces to 550 K. HREELS and ESDIAD data consistently indicate that NO preferentially adsorbs on the (111) terrace sites of Pd(112) at low coverages, filling the (001) step sites only at high coverage. This result was verified for adsorption temperatures in the range 100¿373 K. In addition, the thermal dissociation of NO on Pd(112) is most prevalent at low coverages, where only terrace sites are occupied by NO. Thus, by direct comparison to NO/Pd(111), this study shows that the presence of steps on the Pd(112) surface enhances the thermal dissociation of NO, but that adsorption at the step sites is not the criterion for this decomposition

Circulation signature of vortical structures in turbulent boundary layers

The strength of vortical structures in a turbulent boundary layer is of interest in determining the generation and development of hairpin vortices. The dual-plane Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) data at z+ = 110 (z/ = 0.09) and z/ = 0.53 (z+ = 575) in a turbulent boundary layer at Re = 1160 obtained by Ganapathisubramani et al. [7] were used to characterize the strength of the vortical structures by their circulation. The 3Dswirl was used to identify the vortex cores. The average number of swirl cores per field identified at z+ = 110 was approximately twice the average number at z/ = 0.53. The mean radius of the cores was found to decrease with increasing wall-normal distance. The main eigenvector of the velocity gradient tensor was used to determine the orientation of each vortex core. Circulation of the vortical structures was then calculated using the vorticity vector projected onto the main eigenvector direction. At z/ = 0.53, the mean circulation calculated using the eigenvector was almost the same as that using the full vorticity vector, but for z+ = 110 the mean circulation calculated using the eigenvector was 12% less than the mean circulation calculated using the vorticity vector

Implant isolation of Zn-doped GaAs epilayers: effects of ion species, doping concentration, and implantation temperature

The electrical isolation of Zn-doped GaAs layers grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition was studied using H, Li, C, and O ion implantation. The ion mass did not play a significant role in the stability of isolation, and a similar activation energy of ∼(0.63±0.03 eV) was obtained for isolation using either H or O ions. Furthermore, the isolation was stable against isochronal annealing up to 550 °C as long as the ion dose was 2–3.5 times the threshold dose for complete isolation, Dth, for the respective ion species. By studying the thermal stability and the temperature dependence of isolation, we have demonstrated the various stages leading to the production of stable isolation with the increasing dose of 2 MeV C ions. For ion doses less than 0.5Dth,point defects which are stable below 250 °C are responsible for the degradation of hole mobility and hole trapping. The stability of isolation is increased to ∼400 °C for a dose Dth due to the creation of defect pairs. Furthermore, the hopping conduction mechanism is already present in the damaged epilayer implanted to Dth. Higher order defect clusters or complexes, such as the arsenic antisite, AsGa, are responsible for the thermal stability of implantation isolation at 550 °C. The substrate temperature (−196–200 °C) does not have an effect on the isolation process further revealing that the stability of isolation is related to defect clusters and not point-like defects. An average number of eight carbon ions with energy of 2 MeV are required to compensate 100 holes, which provides a general guideline for choosing the ion dose required for the isolation of a GaAs layer doped with a known Zn concentration. A discussion of the results on the implantation isolation of p-GaAs previously reported in the literature is also included.P.N.K.D. acknowledges the Australian Research Council for financial support

A Simultaneous Quantum Secure Direct Communication Scheme between the Central Party and Other M Parties

We propose a simultaneous quantum secure direct communication scheme between one party and other three parties via four-particle GHZ states and swapping quantum entanglement. In the scheme, three spatially separated senders, Alice, Bob and Charlie, transmit their secret messages to a remote receiver Diana by performing a series local operations on their respective particles according to the quadripartite stipulation. From Alice, Bob, Charlie and Diana's Bell measurement results, Diana can infer the secret messages. If a perfect quantum channel is used, the secret messages are faithfully transmitted from Alice, Bob and Charlie to Diana via initially shared pairs of four-particle GHZ states without revealing any information to a potential eavesdropper. As there is no transmission of the qubits carrying the secret message in the public channel, it is completely secure for the direct secret communication. This scheme can be considered as a network of communication parties where each party wants to communicate secretly with a central party or server.Comment: 4 pages, no figur

Co-pyrolysis kinetics analysis of stone coal and biomass for vanadium extraction

In this paper, co-pyrolysis of stone coal and biomass was performed. The activation energy of pyrolysis was analyzed, and the mechanism of biomass on the stone coal pyrolysis was discussed. The results show that biomass contributed to the pyrolysis of stone coal. The optimum pyrolysis heating rate of the biomass and stone coal was 25 °C/min and 20 °C/min respectively. The alkaline and alkaline earth metals derived from biomass pyrolysis improved thermal decompose of stone coal, yet stone coal inhibited biomass pyrolysis under co-pyrolysis conditions. The promotion of corn stalk on the stone coal pyrolysis was better than that of sawdust

Co-pyrolysis kinetics analysis of stone coal and biomass for vanadium extraction

In this paper, co-pyrolysis of stone coal and biomass was performed. The activation energy of pyrolysis was analyzed, and the mechanism of biomass on the stone coal pyrolysis was discussed. The results show that biomass contributed to the pyrolysis of stone coal. The optimum pyrolysis heating rate of the biomass and stone coal was 25 °C/min and 20 °C/min respectively. The alkaline and alkaline earth metals derived from biomass pyrolysis improved thermal decompose of stone coal, yet stone coal inhibited biomass pyrolysis under co-pyrolysis conditions. The promotion of corn stalk on the stone coal pyrolysis was better than that of sawdust

The trispectrum in ghost inflation

We calculate the trispectrum in ghost inflation where both the contact diagram and scale-exchange diagram are taken into account. The shape of trispectrum is discussed carefully and we find that the local form is absent in ghost inflation. In general, for the non-local shape trispectrum there are not analogous parameters to $\tau_{NL}^{loc.}$ and $g_{NL}^{loc.}$ which can completely characterize the size of local form trispectrum.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures; clarifications and corrections added, version accepted for publication in JCA

Transition Dependency: A Gene-Gene Interaction Measure for Times Series Microarray Data

Gene-Gene dependency plays a very important role in system biology as it pertains to the crucial understanding of different biological mechanisms. Time-course microarray data provides a new platform useful to reveal the dynamic mechanism of gene-gene dependencies. Existing interaction measures are mostly based on association measures, such as Pearson or Spearman correlations. However, it is well known that such interaction measures can only capture linear or monotonic dependency relationships but not for nonlinear combinatorial dependency relationships. With the invocation of hidden Markov models, we propose a new measure of pairwise dependency based on transition probabilities. The new dynamic interaction measure checks whether or not the joint transition kernel of the bivariate state variables is the product of two marginal transition kernels. This new measure enables us not only to evaluate the strength, but also to infer the details of gene dependencies. It reveals nonlinear combinatorial dependency structure in two aspects: between two genes and across adjacent time points. We conduct a bootstrap-based Ç2 test for presence/absence of the dependency between every pair of genes. Simulation studies and real biological data analysis demonstrate the application of the proposed method. The software package is available under request