4,604 research outputs found
Analytical techniques for determining boron in graphite
Two analytical techniques, a gold nucleation and an etch-decoration technique have been developed for determining the presence and mobility of boron in graphite
Reaction rates of graphite with ozone measured by etch decoration
Etch-decoration technique of detecting vacancies in graphite has been used to determine the reaction rates of graphite with ozone in the directions parallel and perpendicular to the layer planes. It consists essentially of peeling single atom layers off graphite crystals without affecting the remainder of the crystal
Cooperative surmounting of bottlenecks
The physics of activated escape of objects out of a metastable state plays a
key role in diverse scientific areas involving chemical kinetics, diffusion and
dislocation motion in solids, nucleation, electrical transport, motion of flux
lines superconductors, charge density waves, and transport processes of
macromolecules, to name but a few. The underlying activated processes present
the multidimensional extension of the Kramers problem of a single Brownian
particle. In comparison to the latter case, however, the dynamics ensuing from
the interactions of many coupled units can lead to intriguing novel phenomena
that are not present when only a single degree of freedom is involved. In this
review we report on a variety of such phenomena that are exhibited by systems
consisting of chains of interacting units in the presence of potential
barriers.
In the first part we consider recent developments in the case of a
deterministic dynamics driving cooperative escape processes of coupled
nonlinear units out of metastable states. The ability of chains of coupled
units to undergo spontaneous conformational transitions can lead to a
self-organised escape. The mechanism at work is that the energies of the units
become re-arranged, while keeping the total energy conserved, in forming
localised energy modes that in turn trigger the cooperative escape. We present
scenarios of significantly enhanced noise-free escape rates if compared to the
noise-assisted case.
The second part deals with the collective directed transport of systems of
interacting particles overcoming energetic barriers in periodic potential
landscapes. Escape processes in both time-homogeneous and time-dependent driven
systems are considered for the emergence of directed motion. It is shown that
ballistic channels immersed in the associated high-dimensional phase space are
the source for the directed long-range transport
Nonlinear response of a linear chain to weak driving
We study the escape of a chain of coupled units over the barrier of a
metastable potential. It is demonstrated that a very weak external driving
field with suitably chosen frequency suffices to accomplish speedy escape. The
latter requires the passage through a transition state the formation of which
is triggered by permanent feeding of energy from a phonon background into humps
of localised energy and elastic interaction of the arising breather solutions.
In fact, cooperativity between the units of the chain entailing coordinated
energy transfer is shown to be crucial for enhancing the rate of escape in an
extremely effective and low-energy cost way where the effect of entropic
localisation and breather coalescence conspire
Surmounting collectively oscillating bottlenecks
We study the collective escape dynamics of a chain of coupled, weakly damped
nonlinear oscillators from a metastable state over a barrier when driven by a
thermal heat bath in combination with a weak, globally acting periodic
perturbation. Optimal parameter choices are identified that lead to a drastic
enhancement of escape rates as compared to a pure noise-assisted situation. We
elucidate the speed-up of escape in the driven Langevin dynamics by showing
that the time-periodic external field in combination with the thermal
fluctuations triggers an instability mechanism of the stationary homogeneous
lattice state of the system. Perturbations of the latter provided by incoherent
thermal fluctuations grow because of a parametric resonance, leading to the
formation of spatially localized modes (LMs). Remarkably, the LMs persist in
spite of continuously impacting thermal noise. The average escape time assumes
a distinct minimum by either tuning the coupling strength and/or the driving
frequency. This weak ac-driven assisted escape in turn implies a giant speed of
the activation rate of such thermally driven coupled nonlinear oscillator
chains
Fractal Conductance Fluctuations of Classical Origin
In mesoscopic systems conductance fluctuations are a sensitive probe of
electron dynamics and chaotic phenomena. We show that the conductance of a
purely classical chaotic system with either fully chaotic or mixed phase space
generically exhibits fractal conductance fluctuations unrelated to quantum
interference. This might explain the unexpected dependence of the fractal
dimension of the conductance curves on the (quantum) phase breaking length
observed in experiments on semiconductor quantum dots.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, to appear in PR
Transport in Graphene: Ballistic or Diffusive?
We investigate the transport of electrons in disordered and pristine graphene
devices. Fano shot noise, a standard metric to assess the mechanism for
electronic transport in mesoscopic devices, has been shown to produce almost
the same magnitude () in ballistic and diffusive graphene devices
and is therefore of limited applicability. We consider a two-terminal geometry
where the graphene flake is contacted by narrow metallic leads. We propose that
the dependence of the conductance on the position of one of the leads, a
conductance profile, can give us insight into the charge flow, which can in
turn be used to analyze the transport mechanism. Moreover, we simulate scanning
probe microscopy (SPM) measurements for the same devices, which can visualize
the flow of charge inside the device, thus complementing the transport
calculations. From our simulations, we find that both the conductance profile
and SPM measurements are excellent tools to assess the transport mechanism
differentiating ballistic and diffusive graphene systems.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures. Renamed by editorial staff as "Ballistic versus
diffusive transport in graphene
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