The application of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy for characterizing the degradation of Ni(OH)2/NiOOH electrodes

The use of wide-band electrochemical impedance spectroscopy is described for characterizing the degradation of porous Ni(OH)2/NiOOH electrodes in concentrated KOH electrolyte solutions. The impedance spectra are interpreted in terms of a finite electrical transmission line and the changes in the components of the electrical analog are followed as a function of cycle number. The degradation of the capacity of rolled and bonded Ni(OH)2/NiOOH electrodes is caused by rupture of ohmic contacts within the active mass and by restructuring which results in a decrease in the number of active pores

Imaging interstitial iron concentrations in boron-doped crystalline silicon using photoluminescence

Imaging the band-to-band photoluminescence of silicon wafers is known to provide rapid and high-resolution images of the carrier lifetime. Here, we show that such photoluminescence images, taken before and after dissociation of iron-boron pairs, allow an accurate image of the interstitial iron concentration across a boron-doped p-type silicon wafer to be generated. Such iron images can be obtained more rapidly than with existing point-by-point iron mapping techniques. However, because the technique is best used at moderate illumination intensities, it is important to adopt a generalized analysis that takes account of different injection levels across a wafer. The technique has been verified via measurement of a deliberately contaminated single-crystal silicon wafer with a range of known iron concentrations. It has also been applied to directionally solidified ingot-grown multicrystalline silicon wafers made for solar cell production, which contain a detectible amount of unwanted iron. The iron images on these wafers reveal internal gettering of iron to grain boundaries and dislocated regions during ingot growth.D.M. is supported by an Australian Research Council QEII Fellowship. The Centre of Excellence for Advanced Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics at UNSW is funded by the Australian Research Council

Transport in Coherent Quantum Hall Bilayers

We discuss two phenomenological descriptions of low-current transport in bilayer quantum Hall system with exciton condensates, one based on a Landauer-Buttiker description of Andreev scattering at contacts to coherent bilayers and one based on a simplified single-parameter {\em p-ology} description of the weak to strong interlayer coupling crossover. The Andreev scattering phenomenology in intended to apply when the condensate is well developed and is used to predict current-voltage relationships for a variety of two contact geometries. We also apply this formalism to circumstances in which the tunnel current exceeds its critical value and the condensate is time-dependent. The {\em p-ology} approach is used to establish the universal development of large longitudinal drags, even in homogenous coherent samples, as the condensate weakens and the Hall drag is reduced.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Review of the environmental and organisational implications of cloud computing: final report.

Cloud computing – where elastic computing resources are delivered over the Internet by external service providers – is generating significant interest within HE and FE. In the cloud computing business model, organisations or individuals contract with a cloud computing service provider on a pay-per-use basis to access data centres, application software or web services from any location. This provides an elasticity of provision which the customer can scale up or down to meet demand. This form of utility computing potentially opens up a new paradigm in the provision of IT to support administrative and educational functions within HE and FE. Further, the economies of scale and increasingly energy efficient data centre technologies which underpin cloud services means that cloud solutions may also have a positive impact on carbon footprints. In response to the growing interest in cloud computing within UK HE and FE, JISC commissioned the University of Strathclyde to undertake a Review of the Environmental and Organisational Implications of Cloud Computing in Higher and Further Education [19]

Roughness effects in turbulent forced convection

We conducted direct numerical simulations (DNSs) of turbulent flow over three-dimensional sinusoidal roughness in a channel. A passive scalar is present in the flow with Prandtl number $Pr=0.7$, to study heat transfer by forced convection over this rough surface. The minimal channel is used to circumvent the high cost of simulating high Reynolds number flows, which enables a range of rough surfaces to be efficiently simulated. The near-wall temperature profile in the minimal channel agrees well with that of the conventional full-span channel, indicating it can be readily used for heat-transfer studies at a much reduced cost compared to conventional DNS. As the roughness Reynolds number, $k^+$, is increased, the Hama roughness function, $\Delta U^+$, increases in the transitionally rough regime before tending towards the fully rough asymptote of $\kappa_m^{-1}\log(k^+)+C$, where $C$ is a constant that depends on the particular roughness geometry and $\kappa_m\approx0.4$ is the von K\'arm\'an constant. In this fully rough regime, the skin-friction coefficient is constant with bulk Reynolds number, $Re_b$. Meanwhile, the temperature difference between smooth- and rough-wall flows, $\Delta\Theta^+$, appears to tend towards a constant value, $\Delta\Theta^+_{FR}$. This corresponds to the Stanton number (the temperature analogue of the skin-friction coefficient) monotonically decreasing with $Re_b$ in the fully rough regime. Using shifted logarithmic velocity and temperature profiles, the heat transfer law as described by the Stanton number in the fully rough regime can be derived once both the equivalent sand-grain roughness $k_s/k$ and the temperature difference $\Delta \Theta^+_{FR}$ are known. In meteorology, this corresponds to the ratio of momentum and heat transfer roughness lengths, $z_{0m}/z_{0h}$, being linearly proportional to $z_{0m}^+$, the momentum roughness length [continued]...Comment: Accepted (In press) in the Journal of Fluid Mechanic

Haldane Sashes in Quantum Hall Spectra

We show that the low-temperature sash features in the lowest Landau-level (LLL) tunneling density-of-states (TDOS) recently discovered by Dial and Ashoori are intimately related to the discrete Haldane-pseudopotential interaction energy scales that govern fractional quantum Hall physics. Our analysis is based on expressions for the tunneling density-of-states which become exact at filling factors close to $\nu=0$ and $\nu=1$, where the sash structure is most prominent. We comment on other aspects of LLL correlation physics that can be revealed by accurate temperature-dependent tunneling data.Comment: Added referenc

Photometric Redshift Biases from Galaxy Evolution

Proposed cosmological surveys will make use of photometric redshifts of galaxies that are significantly fainter than any complete spectroscopic redshift surveys that exist to train the photo-z methods. We investigate the photo-z biases that result from known differences between the faint and bright populations: a rise in AGN activity toward higher redshift, and a metallicity difference between intrinsically luminous and faint early-type galaxies. We find that even very small mismatches between the mean photometric target and the training set can induce photo-z biases large enough to corrupt derived cosmological parameters significantly. A metallicity shift of ~0.003dex in an old population, or contamination of any galaxy spectrum with ~0.2% AGN flux, is sufficient to induce a 10^-3 bias in photo-z. These results highlight the danger in extrapolating the behavior of bright galaxies to a fainter population, and the desirability of a spectroscopic training set that spans all of the characteristics of the photo-z targets, i.e. extending to the 25th mag or fainter galaxies that will be used in future surveys