Oxygen Transport Ceramic Membranes

The present quarterly report describes some of the investigations on the structural properties of dense OTM bars provided by Praxair and initial studies on newer composition of Ti doped LSF. Dense OTM bars provided by Praxair were loaded to fracture at varying stress rates. Studies were done at room temperature in air and at 1000 C in a specified environment to evaluate slow crack growth behavior. In addition, studies were also begun to obtain reliable estimates of fracture toughness and stable crack growth in specific environments. Newer composition of Ti doped LSF membranes were characterized by neutron diffraction analysis. Quench studies indicated an apparent correlation between the unit cell volume and oxygen occupancy. The studies however, indicated an anomaly of increasing Fe/Ti ratio with change in heat treatment. Ti doped LSF was also characterized for stoichiometry as a function of temp and pO{sub 2}. The non stoichiometry parameter {delta} was observed to increase almost linearly on lowering pO{sub 2} until a ideal stoichiometric composition of {delta} = 0.175 was approached

Oxygen Transport Ceramic Membranes

The present quarterly report describes some of the investigations on the structural properties of dense OTM bars provided by Praxair and studies on newer composition of Ti doped LSF. In this report, in situ neutron diffraction was used to characterize the chemical and structural properties of La{sub 0.2}Sr{sub 0.8}Fe{sub 0.55}Ti{sub 0.45}O{sub 3-{delta}} (here after as L2SF55T) specimen, which was subject to measurements of neutron diffraction from room temperature to 900 C. It was found that space group of R3c yielded a better refinement than a cubic structure of Pm3m. Oxygen occupancy was nearly 3 in the region from room temperature to 700 C, above which the occupancy decreased due to oxygen loss. Dense OTM bars provided by Praxair were loaded to fracture at varying stress rates. Studies were done at room temperature in air and at 1000 C in a specified environment to evaluate slow crack growth behavior. The X-Ray data and fracture mechanisms points to non-equilibrium decomposition of the LSFCO OTM membrane. The non-equilibrium conditions could probably be due to the nature of the applied stress field (stressing rates) and leads to transition in crystal structures and increased kinetics of decomposition. The formations of a Brownmillerite or Sr2Fe2O5 type structures, which are orthorhombic are attributed to the ordering of oxygen vacancies. The cubic to orthorhombic transitions leads to 2.6% increase in strains and thus residual stresses generated could influence the fracture behavior of the OTM membrane. Continued investigations on the thermodynamic properties (stability and phase-separation behavior) and total conductivity of prototype membrane materials were carried out. The data are needed together with the kinetic information to develop a complete model for the membrane transport. Previously characterization, stoichiometry and conductivity measurements for samples of La{sub 0.2}Sr{sub 0.8}Fe{sub 0.55}Ti{sub 0.45}O{sub 3-{delta}} were reported. In this report, measurements of the chemical and thermal expansion as a function of temperature and p{sub O2} are described

Electron spin as a spectrometer of nuclear spin noise and other fluctuations

This chapter describes the relationship between low frequency noise and coherence decay of localized spins in semiconductors. Section 2 establishes a direct relationship between an arbitrary noise spectral function and spin coherence as measured by a number of pulse spin resonance sequences. Section 3 describes the electron-nuclear spin Hamiltonian, including isotropic and anisotropic hyperfine interactions, inter-nuclear dipolar interactions, and the effective Hamiltonian for nuclear-nuclear coupling mediated by the electron spin hyperfine interaction. Section 4 describes a microscopic calculation of the nuclear spin noise spectrum arising due to nuclear spin dipolar flip-flops with quasiparticle broadening included. Section 5 compares our explicit numerical results to electron spin echo decay experiments for phosphorus doped silicon in natural and nuclear spin enriched samples.Comment: Book chapter in "Electron spin resonance and related phenomena in low dimensional structures", edited by Marco Fanciulli. To be published by Springer-Verlag in the TAP series. 35 pages, 9 figure

Dynamic nuclear polarization and spin-diffusion in non-conducting solids

There has been much renewed interest in dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), particularly in the context of solid state biomolecular NMR and more recently dissolution DNP techniques for liquids. This paper reviews the role of spin diffusion in polarizing nuclear spins and discusses the role of the spin diffusion barrier, before going on to discuss some recent results.Comment: submitted to Applied Magnetic Resonance. The article should appear in a special issue that is being published in connection with the DNP Symposium help in Nottingham in August 200