75 research outputs found
Combined Chemical and Thermal Sintering for High Conductivity Inkjet-printed Silver Nanoink on Flexible Substrates
Electrical conductivity is a key factor in measuring performance of printed electronics, but the conductivity of inkjet-printed silver nanoinks greatly depends on post-fabrication sintering. In this work, two different conductive silver nanoinks, in which the silver nanoparticles were stabilized by two different capping agents – Poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) and Poly(methacrylic acid) (PMA) – were synthesized. The inks were inkjet-printed on flexible PET substrates, coated with an additional polycation layer, which facilitated chemical sintering. The printed features were then exposed to moderately elevated temperatures to evaluate the effect of combined chemical and thermal sintering. Both inks produced conductive features at room temperature, and the conductivity increased with both temperature and duration of sintering. At temperatures above 100 °C, the choice of capping agent had no pronounced effect on conductivity, which approached very high values of 50 % of bulk silver in all cases. The lowest resistivity (2.24 μΩ cm) was obtained after sintering at 120 °C for 180 min. By combining chemical and conventional thermal sintering, we have produced remarkably conductive silver electrodes on flexible substrates, while using low-cost and simple processes
Discrete single-photon quantum walks with tunable decoherence
Quantum walks have a host of applications, ranging from quantum computing to
the simulation of biological systems. We present an intrinsically stable,
deterministic implementation of discrete quantum walks with single photons in
space. The number of optical elements required scales linearly with the number
of steps. We measure walks with up to 6 steps and explore the
quantum-to-classical transition by introducing tunable decoherence. Finally, we
also investigate the effect of absorbing boundaries and show that decoherence
significantly affects the probability of absorption.Comment: Published version, 5 pages, 4 figure
Intercalated vs Nonintercalated Morphologies in Donor-Acceptor Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells: PBTTT:Fullerene Charge Generation and Recombination Revisited
In this Letter, we study the role of the donor:acceptor interface nanostructure upon charge separation and recombination in organic photovoltaic devices and blend films, using mixtures of PBTTT and two different fullerene derivatives (PC70BM and ICTA) as models for intercalated and nonintercalated morphologies, respectively. Thermodynamic simulations show that while the completely intercalated system exhibits a large free-energy barrier for charge separation, this barrier is significantly lower in the nonintercalated system and almost vanishes when energetic disorder is included in the model. Despite these differences, both femtosecond-resolved transient absorption spectroscopy (TAS) and time-delayed collection field (TDCF) exhibit extensive first-order losses in both systems, suggesting that geminate pairs are the primary product of photoexcitation. In contrast, the system that comprises a combination of fully intercalated polymer:fullerene areas and fullerene-aggregated domains (1:4 PBTTT:PC70BM) is the only one that shows slow, second-order recombination of free charges, resulting in devices with an overall higher short-circuit current and fill factor. This study therefore provides a novel consideration of the role of the interfacial nanostructure and the nature of bound charges and their impact upon charge generation and recombination
Quantum Simulation of Tunneling in Small Systems
A number of quantum algorithms have been performed on small quantum
computers; these include Shor's prime factorization algorithm, error
correction, Grover's search algorithm and a number of analog and digital
quantum simulations. Because of the number of gates and qubits necessary,
however, digital quantum particle simulations remain untested. A contributing
factor to the system size required is the number of ancillary qubits needed to
implement matrix exponentials of the potential operator. Here, we show that a
set of tunneling problems may be investigated with no ancillary qubits and a
cost of one single-qubit operator per time step for the potential evolution. We
show that physically interesting simulations of tunneling using 2 qubits (i.e.
on 4 lattice point grids) may be performed with 40 single and two-qubit gates.
Approximately 70 to 140 gates are needed to see interesting tunneling dynamics
in three-qubit (8 lattice point) simulations.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Demon-like Algorithmic Quantum Cooling and its Realization with Quantum Optics
The simulation of low-temperature properties of many-body systems remains one
of the major challenges in theoretical and experimental quantum information
science. We present, and demonstrate experimentally, a universal cooling method
which is applicable to any physical system that can be simulated by a quantum
computer. This method allows us to distill and eliminate hot components of
quantum states, i.e., a quantum Maxwell's demon. The experimental
implementation is realized with a quantum-optical network, and the results are
in full agreement with theoretical predictions (with fidelity higher than
0.978). These results open a new path for simulating low-temperature properties
of physical and chemical systems that are intractable with classical methods.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, plus supplementarity material
Polynomial-time quantum algorithm for the simulation of chemical dynamics
The computational cost of exact methods for quantum simulation using
classical computers grows exponentially with system size. As a consequence,
these techniques can only be applied to small systems. By contrast, we
demonstrate that quantum computers could exactly simulate chemical reactions in
polynomial time. Our algorithm uses the split-operator approach and explicitly
simulates all electron-nuclear and inter-electronic interactions in quadratic
time. Surprisingly, this treatment is not only more accurate than the
Born-Oppenheimer approximation, but faster and more efficient as well, for all
reactions with more than about four atoms. This is the case even though the
entire electronic wavefunction is propagated on a grid with appropriately short
timesteps. Although the preparation and measurement of arbitrary states on a
quantum computer is inefficient, here we demonstrate how to prepare states of
chemical interest efficiently. We also show how to efficiently obtain
chemically relevant observables, such as state-to-state transition
probabilities and thermal reaction rates. Quantum computers using these
techniques could outperform current classical computers with one hundred
qubits.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures. Updated version as appears in PNA
Solving Quantum Ground-State Problems with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
Quantum ground-state problems are computationally hard problems; for general
many-body Hamiltonians, there is no classical or quantum algorithm known to be
able to solve them efficiently. Nevertheless, if a trial wavefunction
approximating the ground state is available, as often happens for many problems
in physics and chemistry, a quantum computer could employ this trial
wavefunction to project the ground state by means of the phase estimation
algorithm (PEA). We performed an experimental realization of this idea by
implementing a variational-wavefunction approach to solve the ground-state
problem of the Heisenberg spin model with an NMR quantum simulator. Our
iterative phase estimation procedure yields a high accuracy for the
eigenenergies (to the 10^-5 decimal digit). The ground-state fidelity was
distilled to be more than 80%, and the singlet-to-triplet switching near the
critical field is reliably captured. This result shows that quantum simulators
can better leverage classical trial wavefunctions than classical computers.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figure
Simulating quantum statistics with entangled photons: a continuous transition from bosons to fermions
In contrast to classical physics, quantum mechanics divides particles into
two classes-bosons and fermions-whose exchange statistics dictate the dynamics
of systems at a fundamental level. In two dimensions quasi-particles known as
'anyons' exhibit fractional exchange statistics intermediate between these two
classes. The ability to simulate and observe behaviour associated to
fundamentally different quantum particles is important for simulating complex
quantum systems. Here we use the symmetry and quantum correlations of entangled
photons subjected to multiple copies of a quantum process to directly simulate
quantum interference of fermions, bosons and a continuum of fractional
behaviour exhibited by anyons. We observe an average similarity of 93.6\pm0.2%
between an ideal model and experimental observation. The approach generalises
to an arbitrary number of particles and is independent of the statistics of the
particles used, indicating application with other quantum systems and large
scale application.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Far-ultraviolet Spectroscopy of Venus and Mars at 4 A Resolution with the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope on Astro-2
Far-ultraviolet spectra of Venus and Mars in the range 820-1840 A at 4 A
resolution were obtained on 13 and 12 March 1995, respectively, by the Hopkins
Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT), which was part of the Astro-2 observatory on the
Space Shuttle Endeavour. Longward of 1250 A, the spectra of both planets are
dominated by emission of the CO Fourth Positive band system and strong OI and
CI multiplets. In addition, CO Hopfield-Birge bands, B - X (0,0) at 1151 A and
C - X (0,0) at 1088 A, are detected for the first time, and there is a weak
indication of the E - X (0,0) band at 1076 A in the spectrum of Venus. The B -
X band is blended with emission from OI 1152. Modeling the relative intensities
of these bands suggests that resonance fluorescence of CO is the dominant
source of the emission, as it is for the Fourth Positive system. Shortward of
Lyman-alpha, other emission features detected include OII 834, OI lambda 989,
HI Lyman-beta, and NI 1134 and 1200. For Venus, the derived disk brightnesses
of the OI, OII, and HI features are about one-half of those reported by Hord et
al. (1991) from Galileo EUV measurements made in February 1990. This result is
consistent with the expected variation from solar maximum to solar minimum. The
ArI 1048, 1066 doublet is detected only in the spectrum of Mars and the derived
mixing ratio of Ar is of the order of 2%, consistent with previous
determinations.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ, July 20, 200
Quantum simulation of the wavefunction to probe frustrated Heisenberg spin systems
Quantum simulators are controllable quantum systems that can reproduce the
dynamics of the system of interest, which are unfeasible for classical
computers. Recent developments in quantum technology enable the precise control
of individual quantum particles as required for studying complex quantum
systems. Particularly, quantum simulators capable of simulating frustrated
Heisenberg spin systems provide platforms for understanding exotic matter such
as high-temperature superconductors. Here we report the analog quantum
simulation of the ground-state wavefunction to probe arbitrary Heisenberg-type
interactions among four spin-1/2 particles . Depending on the interaction
strength, frustration within the system emerges such that the ground state
evolves from a localized to a resonating valence-bond state. This spin-1/2
tetramer is created using the polarization states of four photons. The
single-particle addressability and tunable measurement-induced interactions
provide us insights into entanglement dynamics among individual particles. We
directly extract ground-state energies and pair-wise quantum correlations to
observe the monogamy of entanglement
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