Photocatalytic generation of hydrogen from water

A concept designed to overcome the problems encountered when using photodissociation for the generation of hydrogen is discussed. The problems limiting the efficiency of photodissociation of water are the separation of the photolysis products and the high energy photons necessary for the reaction. It is shown that the dissociation energy of a large number of molecules is catalytically reduced when these molecules are in intimate contact with the surface of certain metals. It is proposed to develop a surface which will take advantage of this catalytic shift in dissociation energies to reduce the photon energy required to produce hydrogen. This same catalytic surface can be used to separate the reaction products if it is made so that one of the dissociations products is soluble in the metal and others are not. This condition is met by many metal systems such as platinum group metals which have been used commercially to separate hydrogen from other gases and liquids

Noise produced by a small-scale, externally blown flap

Noise data were obtained with a model of an externally blown flap of the type that is currently being considered for STOL aircraft. The noise caused by impingement of the jet on the flap is much louder than the nozzle jet noise. It is especially so directly below the wing. The noise level increases as the jet velocity and flap angle are increased. The sound power level increased with the sixth power of velocity. Several physical variations to the STOL model configuration were also tested. Two such variations, a large board and a slotless curved plate wing, had the same power spectra density (Strouhal number curve) as the model

Pump linewidth requirement for optical parametric oscillators

Pumping laser bandwidth requirement for optical parametric oscillator

Nonlinear Competition Between Small and Large Hexagonal Patterns

Recent experiments by Kudrolli, Pier and Gollub on surface waves, parametrically excited by two-frequency forcing, show a transition from a small hexagonal standing wave pattern to a triangular ``superlattice'' pattern. We show that generically the hexagons and the superlattice wave patterns bifurcate simultaneously from the flat surface state as the forcing amplitude is increased, and that the experimentally-observed transition can be described by considering a low-dimensional bifurcation problem. A number of predictions come out of this general analysis.Comment: 4 pages, RevTex, revised, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Accommodation of lattice mismatch in Ge_(x)Si_(1−x)/Si superlattices

We present evidence that the critical thickness for the appearance of misfit defects in a given material and heteroepitaxial structure is not simply a function of lattice mismatch. We report substantial differences in the relaxation of mismatch stress in Ge_(0.5)Si_(0.5)/Si superlattices grown at different temperatures on (100) Si substrates. Samples have been analyzed by x‐ray diffraction, channeled Rutherford backscattering, and transmission electron microscopy. While a superlattice grown at 365 °C demonstrates a high degree of elastic strain, with a dislocation density <10^5 cm^(−2) , structures grown at higher temperatures show increasing numbers of structural defects, with densities reaching 2×10^(10) cm^(−2) at a growth temperature of 530 °C. Our results suggest that it is possible to freeze a lattice‐mismatched structure in a highly strained metastable state. Thus it is not surprising that experimentally observed critical thicknesses are rarely in agreement with those predicted by equilibrium theories