1,790 research outputs found
The chemistry of Venus' atmosphere
A model for the Venus atmosphere involving photochemistry of oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine and sulfur species is presented. Sulfur reaction schemes and hydrogen and chlorine reaction schemes were included. The impact of sulfur on the oxygen budget and the subsequent production of H2SO4 molecules for the Venus cloud deck were explored. A major new reaction scheme for production of H2SO4 molecules involving sulfur and oxygen chemistry was established shown to dominate over the odd hydrogen scheme proposed earlier. The efficiency of the scheme in formation of H2SO4 is only about 50%, with the remaining sulfur residing in SO2 molecules. The calculated downward flux of H2SO4 may be sufficient to maintain a steady state sulfuric acid cloud if the resident time of H2SO4 droplets in the cloud is as long as a few years. If however, the resident time is half a year or shorter, additional chemistry capable of more efficient conversion of SO2 to SO3 is required
The development of a model to infer precipitation from microwave measurements
To permit the inference of precipitation amounts from radiometric measurements, a radiative interaction model was developed. This model uses a simple computational scheme to determine the effects of rain upon brightness temperatures and can be used with a statistical inversion procedure to invert for rain rate. Precipitating cloud models was also developed and used with the microwave model for frequencies of 19.35 and 37 GHz to determine the variability of the microwave-rain rate relationship on a global and seasonal basis
Surface potential at a ferroelectric grain due to asymmetric screening of depolarization fields
Nonlinear screening of electric depolarization fields, generated by a stripe
domain structure in a ferroelectric grain of a polycrystalline material, is
studied within a semiconductor model of ferroelectrics. It is shown that the
maximum strength of local depolarization fields is rather determined by the
electronic band gap than by the spontaneous polarization magnitude.
Furthermore, field screening due to electronic band bending and due to presence
of intrinsic defects leads to asymmetric space charge regions near the grain
boundary, which produce an effective dipole layer at the surface of the grain.
This results in the formation of a potential difference between the grain
surface and its interior of the order of 1 V, which can be of either sign
depending on defect transition levels and concentrations. Exemplary acceptor
doping of BaTiO3 is shown to allow tuning of the said surface potential in the
region between 0.1 and 1.3 V.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, submitted to J. Appl. Phy
Concentration-dependent mobility in organic field-effect transistors probed by infrared spectromicroscopy of the charge density profile
We show that infrared imaging of the charge density profile in organic
field-effect transistors (FETs) can probe transport characteristics which are
difficult to access by conventional contact-based measurements. Specifically,
we carry out experiments and modeling of infrared spectromicroscopy of
poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) FETs in which charge injection is affected by a
relatively low resistance of the gate insulators. We conclude that the mobility
of P3HT has a power-law density dependence, which is consistent with the
activated transport in disorder-induced tails of the density of states.Comment: 3+ pages, 2 figure
Space-charge mechanism of aging in ferroelectrics: an exactly solvable two-dimensional model
A mechanism of point defect migration triggered by local depolarization
fields is shown to explain some still inexplicable features of aging in
acceptor doped ferroelectrics. A drift-diffusion model of the coupled charged
defect transport and electrostatic field relaxation within a two-dimensional
domain configuration is treated numerically and analytically. Numerical results
are given for the emerging internal bias field of about 1 kV/mm which levels
off at dopant concentrations well below 1 mol%; the fact, long ago known
experimentally but still not explained. For higher defect concentrations a
closed solution of the model equations in the drift approximation as well as an
explicit formula for the internal bias field is derived revealing the plausible
time, temperature and concentration dependencies of aging. The results are
compared to those due to the mechanism of orientational reordering of defect
dipoles.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. accepted to Physical Review
Electroresistance effects in ferroelectric tunnel barriers
Electron transport through fully depleted ferroelectric tunnel barriers
sandwiched between two metal electrodes and its dependence on ferroelectric
polarization direction are investigated. The model assumes a polarization
direction dependent ferroelectric barrier. The transport mechanisms, including
direct tunneling, Fowler-Nordheim tunneling and thermionic injection, are
considered in the calculation of the electroresistance as a function of
ferroelectric barrier properties, given by the properties of the ferroelectric,
the barrier thickness, and the metal properties, and in turn of the
polarization direction. Large electroresistance is favored in thicker films for
all three transport mechanisms but on the expense of current density. However,
switching between two transport mechanisms, i.e., direct tunneling and
Fowler-Nordheim tunneling, by polarization switching yields a large
electroresistance. Furthermore, the most versatile playground in optimizing the
device performance was found to be the electrode properties, especially
screening length and band offset with the ferroelectric.Comment: 24pages, 7 figures, revised, one figure adde
Coupling Processes Between Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate
This is the first semi-annual report for NAS5-97039 summarizing work performed for January 1997 through June 1997. Work in this project is related to NAS1-20666, also funded by NASA ACMAP. The work funded in this project also benefits from work at AER associated with the AER three-dimensional isentropic transport model funded by NASA AEAP and the AER two-dimensional climate-chemistry model (co-funded by Department of Energy). The overall objective of this project is to improve the understanding of coupling processes between atmospheric chemistry and climate. Model predictions of the future distributions of trace gases in the atmosphere constitute an important component of the input necessary for quantitative assessments of global change. We will concentrate on the changes in ozone and stratospheric sulfate aerosol, with emphasis on how ozone in the lower stratosphere would respond to natural or anthropogenic changes. The key modeling tools for this work are the AER two-dimensional chemistry-transport model, the AER two-dimensional stratospheric sulfate model, and the AER three-wave interactive model with full chemistry
Oxidation mechanism in metal nanoclusters: Zn nanoclusters to ZnO hollow nanoclusters
Zn nanoclusters (NCs) are deposited by Low-energy cluster beam deposition
technique. The mechanism of oxidation is studied by analysing their
compositional and morphological evolution over a long span of time (three
years) due to exposure to ambient atmosphere. It is concluded that the
mechanism proceeds in two steps. In the first step, the shell of ZnO forms over
Zn NCs rapidly up to certain limiting thickness: with in few days -- depending
upon the size -- Zn NCs are converted to Zn-ZnO (core-shell), Zn-void-ZnO, or
hollow ZnO type NCs. Bigger than ~15 nm become Zn-ZnO (core-shell) type: among
them, NCs above ~25 nm could able to retain their initial geometrical shapes
(namely triangular, hexagonal, rectangular and rhombohedral), but ~25 to 15 nm
size NCs become irregular or distorted geometrical shapes. NCs between ~15 to 5
nm become Zn-void-ZnO type, and smaller than ~5 nm become ZnO hollow sphere
type i.e. ZnO hollow NCs. In the second step, all Zn-void-ZnO and Zn-ZnO
(core-shell) structures are converted to hollow ZnO NCs in a slow and gradual
process, and the mechanism of conversion proceeds through expansion in size by
incorporating ZnO monomers inside the shell. The observed oxidation behaviour
of NCs is compared with theory of Cabrera - Mott on low-temperature oxidation
of metal.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure
A flexible low-cost, high-precision, single interface electrical impedance tomography system for breast cancer detection using FPGA
Typically, in multi-frequency Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) systems, a current is applied and the voltages developed across the subject are detected. However, due to the complexity of designing stable current sources, there has been mention in the literature of applying a voltage to the subject whilst measuring the consequent current flow. This paper presents a comparative study between the two techniques in a novel design suitable for the detection of breast cancers. The suggested instrument borrows the best features of both the injection of current and the application of voltage, circumventing their limitations. Furthermore, the system has a common patient-electrode interface for both methodologies, whilst the control of the system and the necessary signal processing is carried out in a field programmable gate array (FPGA). Through this novel system, wide-bandwidth, low-noise, as well as high-speed (frame rate) can be achieved
Field-induced metal-insulator transition and switching phenomenon in correlated insulators
We study the nonequilibrium switching phenomenon associated with the
metal-insulator transition under electric field E in correlated insulator by a
gauge-covariant Keldysh formalism. Due to the feedback effect of the resistive
current I, this occurs as a first-order transition with a hysteresis of I-V
characteristics having a lower threshold electric field (\sim 10^4 Vcm^{-1})
much weaker than that for the Zener breakdown. It is also found that the
localized mid-gap states introduced by impurities and defects act as hot spots
across which the resonant tunneling occurs selectively, which leads to the
conductive filamentary paths and reduces the energy cost of the switching
function.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. A study on the metal-insulator transition in
correlated insulators was adde
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