Mössbauer Studies of Nickel-Iron Hydrotalcites

Hydrotalcite-like Fe-Ni-hydroxides [Ni2/3IIFe1/3III(OH)2](CO3)1/6(H2O)y , [Ni3/4IIFe1/4III(OH)2]-(CO3)1/8(H2O)y and [Ni3/4II/IIIFe1/4III(OH)2](CO3)0.14(H20)y as well as the ternary oxide NaNi2/3Fe1/3O2 have been studied by 57Fe-Mössbauer spectroscopy. All samples contain Fe3+ in a high spin state. The quadrupole interaction is smaller if a magnetic splitting is present, which may indicate a non-parallel arrangement of the principal axis of the EFG and the hyperfine field. The temperature dependence of the spectra has been understood in terms of collective cluster excitations. In this model the magnetic energy of a single domain depends on the direction of the total magnetic moment and on magnetic interaction with the neighbourhood. The spectral lineshape could be fitted assum­ing uniaxial relaxation

The chromosphere: gateway to the corona, or the purgatory of solar physics?

I argue that one should attempt to understand the solar chromosphere not only for its own sake, but also if one is interested in the physics of: the corona; astrophysical dynamos; space weather; partially ionized plasmas; heliospheric UV radiation; the transition region. I outline curious observations which I personally find puzzling and deserving of attention.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the 25th NSO Workshop "Chromospheric Structure and Dynamics. From Old Wisdom to New Insights", Memorie della Societa' Astronomica Italiana, Eds. Tritschler et a

Entropy of chains placed on the square lattice

We obtain the entropy of flexible linear chains composed of M monomers placed on the square lattice using a transfer matrix approach. An excluded volume interaction is included by considering the chains to be self-and mutually avoiding, and a fraction rho of the sites are occupied by monomers. We solve the problem exactly on stripes of increasing width m and then extrapolate our results to the two-dimensional limit to infinity using finite-size scaling. The extrapolated results for several finite values of M and in the polymer limit M to infinity for the cases where all lattice sites are occupied (rho=1) and for the partially filled case rho<1 are compared with earlier results. These results are exact for dimers (M=2) and full occupation (\rho=1) and derived from series expansions, mean-field like approximations, and transfer matrix calculations for some other cases. For small values of M, as well as for the polymer limit M to infinity, rather precise estimates of the entropy are obtained.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure

Are hemispherical caps of boron-nitride nanotubes possible?

We report all-electron, density-functional calculations with large Gaussian polarization basis set of the recently synthesized octahedral B24N24 cage that is perfectly round by symmetry, and boron-nitride (BN) clusters that its existence might suggest. We consider whether it is energetically possible that the two halves of this round cage could cap the BN nanotubes, modeled by B28N28 and B32N32. The energetics show that BN nanotubes with such round caps, are only slightly less favorable than the BN clusters containing six squares as the only defects in the otherwise perfect hexagonal lattice. A larger B96N96 octahedral cage formed from B24N24 by adding sufficient hexagons to isolate all squares is not very favorable energetically. The squares protrude noticeably from its otherwise round surface.Comment: Uses elsart.cls (Elsevier Science), (Better pictures can be obtained from authors); Manuscript to appear in Chemical Physics Letter

Theory of Adsorption and Surfactant Effect of Sb on Ag (111)

We present first-principles studies of the adsorption of Sb and Ag on clean and Sb-covered Ag (111). For Sb, the {\it substitutional} adsorption site is found to be greatly favored with respect to on-surface fcc sites and to subsurface sites, so that a segregating surface alloy layer is formed. Adsorbed silver adatoms are more strongly bound on clean Ag(111) than on Sb-covered Ag. We propose that the experimentally reported surfactant effect of Sb is due to Sb adsorbates reducing the Ag adatom mobility. This gives rise to a high density of Ag islands which coalesce into regular layers.Comment: RevTeX 3.0, 11 pages, 0 figures] 13 July 199

Terrestrial solar radiation driven photodecomposition of ciprofloxacin in clinical wastewater applying mesostructured iron(III) oxide

Cationic cylindrical polymer brushes based on polybutadiene-block-poly(2-vinylpyridine) were applied as structure-directing agent for mesostructuring F

Modern Techniques for Memorizing Foreign Words

The article describes a comparative experiment studying the efficiency of five popular techniques which improve people's ability to memorize foreign words. The best results were achieved using two techniques: watching English movies with subtitles and writing letters in English

Hamiltonian walks on Sierpinski and n-simplex fractals

We study Hamiltonian walks (HWs) on Sierpinski and $n$--simplex fractals. Via numerical analysis of exact recursion relations for the number of HWs we calculate the connectivity constant $\omega$ and find the asymptotic behaviour of the number of HWs. Depending on whether or not the polymer collapse transition is possible on a studied lattice, different scaling relations for the number of HWs are obtained. These relations are in general different from the well-known form characteristic of homogeneous lattices which has thus far been assumed to hold for fractal lattices too.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures; final versio