2,228 research outputs found
Glass transition in Ultrathin Polymer Films : A Thermal Expansion Study
Glass transition process gets affected in ultrathin films having thickness
comparable to the size of the molecules. We observe systematic broadening of
glass transition temperature (Tg) as the thickness of the polymer film reduces
below the radius of gyration but the change in the average Tg was found to be
very small. Existence of reversible negative and positive thermal expansion
below and above Tg increased the sensitivity of our thickness measurements
performed using energy dispersive x-ray reflectivity. A simple model of Tg
variation as a function of depth expected from sliding motion could explain the
results. We observe clear glass transition even for 4 nm polystyrene film that
was predicted to be absent from ellipsometry measurements of thicker films.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
Energy dependent wavelength of the ion induced nanoscale ripple
Wavelength variation of ion beam induced nanoscale ripple structure has
received much attention recently due to its possible application in
nanotechnology. We present here results of Ar bombarded Si in the energy
range 50 to 140 keV to demonstrate that with beam scanning the ripple
wavelength increases with ion energy and decreases with energy for irradiation
without ion beam scanning. An expression for the energy dependence of ripple
wavelength is proposed taking into simultaneous effect of thermally activated
surface diffusion and ion induced effective surface diffusion.Comment: REVTeX (4 pages), 3 EPS figure
Two-dimensional Induced Ferromagnetism
Magnetic properties of materials confined to nanometer length scales are
providing important information regarding low dimensional physics. Using
gadolinium based Langmuir-Blodgett films, we demonstrate that two-dimensional
ferromagnetic order can be induced by applying magnetic field along the
in-plane (perpendicular to growth) direction. Field dependent exchange coupling
is evident in the in-plane magnetization data that exhibit absence of
hysteresis loop and show reduction in field required to obtain saturation in
measured moment with decreasing temperature.Comment: 4 pages, 3 postscript figures, corrected paper forma
Formation of rectifier with gold nanoclusters
Gold nanoclusters encapsulated with organic molecules are of great interest
for its possible applications in the fields of molecular electronics, catalysis
and medical science. Here we demonstrate that monolayer and bilayer films of
thiol-capped gold nanoclusters can exhibit diode-like properties provided
controlled spatial asymmetry exist between two tunnel junctions used to connect
a thiol capped gold nanoclusters. Current-voltage characteristics of this
rectifier were obtained from conducting probe atomic force microscopy
measurements and also from conventional two probe resistance measurements.
Systematic x-ray reflectivity and atomic force microscopy measurements were
carried out to characterize the spatial asymmetry introduced by a monolayer of
fatty acid salt gadolinium stearate used to deposit thiol-capped gold
nanocluster molecules on hydrophilic SiO2-Si(001) substrate by Langmuir
Blodgett technique. This information was used to explain prominent
rectification observed in these nano-structured films.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure
Growth mechanism of Langmuir-Blodgett films
Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) deposition is an astonishingly simple technique to grow well-ordered correlated metal-organic multilayers. To understand this growth mechanism, we have performed X-ray scattering and atomic force microscopic (AFM) studies on cadmium arachidate LB films exhibiting self-affine and logarithmic in-plane correlation at the interfaces. Using linear stochastic theory for interface evolution, it is proposed that a 1D deposition followed by a 2D desorption process is the growth mechanism of LB films. X-ray and AFM measurements confirm the crossover between these two growth regimes
Excited hadrons as a signal for quark-gluon plasma formation
At the quark-hadron transition, when quarks get confined to hadrons, certain
orbitally excited states, namely those which have excitation energies above the
respective states of the same order as the transition temperature
, may form easily because of thermal velocities of quarks at the
transition temperature. We propose that the ratio of multiplicities of such
excited states to the respective states can serve as an almost model
independent signal for the quark-gluon plasma formation in relativistic
heavy-ion collisions. For example, the ratio of multiplicities of
and when plotted
with respect to the center of mass energy of the collision (or vs.
centrality/number of participants), should show a jump at the value of
beyond which the QGP formation occurs. This should happen
irrespective of the shape of the overall plot of vs. . Recent
data from RHIC on vs. N for large values of
N may be indicative of such a behavior, though there are large error
bars. We give a list of several other such candidate hadronic states.Comment: 19 pages, RevTex, no figures, minor change
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