Silicon solar cell process development, fabrication and analysis

Solar cells were fabricated from EFG ribbons dendritic webs, cast ingots by heat exchanger method, and cast ingots by ubiquitous crystallization process. Baseline and other process variations were applied to fabricate solar cells. EFG ribbons grown in a carbon-containing gas atmosphere showed significant improvement in silicon quality. Baseline solar cells from dendritic webs of various runs indicated that the quality of the webs under investigation was not as good as the conventional CZ silicon, showing an average minority carrier diffusion length of about 60 um versus 120 um of CZ wafers. Detail evaluation of large cast ingots by HEM showed ingot reproducibility problems from run to run and uniformity problems of sheet quality within an ingot. Initial evaluation of the wafers prepared from the cast polycrystalline ingots by UCP suggested that the quality of the wafers from this process is considerably lower than the conventional CZ wafers. Overall performance was relatively uniform, except for a few cells which showed shunting problems caused by inclusions

Silicon solar cell process development, fabrication, and analysis

Two large cast ingots were evaluated. Solar cell performance versus substrate position within the ingots was obtained and the results are presented. Dendritic web samples were analyzed in terms of structural defects, and efforts were made to correlate the data with the performance of solar cells made from the webs

Studying Diquark Structure of Heavy Baryons in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

We propose the enhancement of $\Lambda_c$ yield in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC as a novel signal for the existence of diquarks in the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma produced in these collisions as well as in the $\Lambda_c$. Assuming that stable bound diquarks can exist in the quark-gluon plasma, we argue that the yield of $\Lambda_c$ would be increased by two-body collisions between $ud$ diquarks and $c$ quarks, in addition to normal three-body collisions among $u$, $d$ and $c$ quarks. A quantitative study of this effect based on the coalescence model shows that including the contribution of diquarks to $\Lambda_c$ production indeed leads to a substantial enhancement of the $\Lambda_c/D$ ratio in heavy ion collisions.Comment: Prepared for Chiral Symmetry in Hadron and Nuclear Physics (Chiral07), Nov. 13-16, 2007, Osaka, Japa

Control of carbon nanotube morphology by change of applied bias field during growth

Carbon nanotube morphology has been engineered via simple control of applied voltage during dc plasma chemical vapor deposition growth. Below a critical applied voltage, a nanotube configuration of vertically aligned tubes with a constant diameter is obtained. Above the critical voltage, a nanocone-type configuration is obtained. The strongly field-dependent transition in morphology is attributed primarily to the plasma etching and decrease in the size of nanotube-nucleating catalyst particles. A two-step control of applied voltage allows a creation of dual-structured nanotube morphology consisting of a broad base nanocone (~200 nm dia.) with a small diameter nanotube (~7 nm) vertically emanating from the apex of the nanocone, which may be useful for atomic force microscopy

Magnetic levitation force between a superconducting bulk magnet and a permanent magnet

The current density in a disk-shaped superconducting bulk magnet and the magnetic levitation force exerted on the superconducting bulk magnet by a cylindrical permanent magnet are calculated from first principles. The effect of the superconducting parameters of the superconducting bulk is taken into account by assuming the voltage-current law and the material law. The magnetic levitation force is dominated by the remnant current density, which is induced by switching off the applied magnetizing field. High critical current density and flux creep exponent may increase the magnetic levitation force. Large volume and high aspect ratio of the superconducting bulk can enhance the magnetic levitation force further.Comment: 18 pages and 8 figure

Bound states of edge dislocations: The quantum dipole problem in two dimensions

We investigate bound state solutions of the 2D Schr\"odinger equation with a dipole potential originating from the elastic effects of a single edge dislocation. The knowledge of these states could be useful for understanding a wide variety of physical systems, including superfluid behavior along dislocations in solid $^4$He. We present a review of the results obtained by previous workers together with an improved variational estimate of the ground state energy. We then numerically solve the eigenvalue problem and calculate the energy spectrum. In our dimensionless units, we find a ground state energy of -0.139, which is lower than any previous estimate. We also make successful contact with the behavior of the energy spectrum as derived from semiclassical considerations.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR

Cluster Algorithms for Quantum Impurity Models and Mesoscopic Kondo Physics

Nanoscale physics and dynamical mean field theory have both generated increased interest in complex quantum impurity problems and so have focused attention on the need for flexible quantum impurity solvers. Here we demonstrate that the mapping of single quantum impurity problems onto spin-chains can be exploited to yield a powerful and extremely flexible impurity solver. We implement this cluster algorithm explicitly for the Anderson and Kondo Hamiltonians, and illustrate its use in the ``mesoscopic Kondo problem''. To study universal Kondo physics, a large ratio between the effective bandwidth $D_\mathrm{eff}$ and the temperature $T$ is required; our cluster algorithm treats the mesoscopic fluctuations exactly while being able to approach the large $D_\mathrm{eff}/T$ limit with ease. We emphasize that the flexibility of our method allows it to tackle a wide variety of quantum impurity problems; thus, it may also be relevant to the dynamical mean field theory of lattice problems.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Dislocation-induced superfluidity in a model supersolid

Motivated by recent experiments on the supersolid behavior of $^4$He, we study the effect of an edge dislocation in promoting superfluidity in a Bose crystal. Using Landau theory, we couple the elastic strain field of the dislocation to the superfluid density, and use a linear analysis to show that superfluidity nucleates on the dislocation before occurring in the bulk of the solid. Moving beyond the linear analysis, we develop a systematic perturbation theory in the weakly nonlinear regime, and use this method to integrate out transverse degrees of freedom and derive a one-dimensional Landau equation for the superfluid order parameter. We then extend our analysis to a network of dislocation lines, and derive an XY model for the dislocation network by integrating over fluctuations in the order parameter. Our results show that the ordering temperature for the network has a sensitive dependence on the dislocation density, consistent with numerous experiments that find a clear connection between the sample quality and the supersolid response.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure