National Institute Of Materials Physics - Romania

Titanium oxide is one of the most promising candidate for relatively low cost, simple manufacture and high-performance new generation solar cells and the recent achievements in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) efficiencies and life time confirm the fact that these new generation solar cells becomes one of the future solutions in energy conversion. In DSSCs the presence of a dense titanium oxide layer is necessary in order to avoid short circuits between electrodes. Then, the interest to have a second porous TiO2 layer is determined by the fact that compared to a flat surface, a dye-sensitized porous surface area increase the absorption and hence conduct to the increase of solar cells efficiencies. Generally these two layers are prepared by successive depositions using two different methods. In this paper we present a simple technique to prepare both layers during the same spraying process. Films morphology and structure of titanium oxide deposited on glass and ITO substrate was investigated by AFM, SEM and XRD respectively.

The rapid evolution of GPS, mobile and wireless communication systems in the last years is based, substantially, on ceramic based dielectrics with effect on miniaturization of components (antennas, filters, oscillators), cost and temperature stability. The development of high dielectric constant materials was critical for the dimensions reduction of the equipment but also for their performance improvements. These materials have high dielectric constant, epsilon(r), between 20 and 90; low losses in microwave and millimetre wave domain and a low variation of dielectric constant with the temperature. The paper describes a high dielectric constant material, Barium Neodymium Titanate - (Ba,Pb)Nd2Ti4O12 (BNT), and presents some results obtained by using this ceramic based material to manufacture a dielectric resonator antenna.

The hydrogen storage material lithium borohydride was infiltrated from solvent solution into the pores of the carbon replica of MSU-H mesoporous silica by the incipient wetness method. Different amounts of lithium borohydride up to 40 % from the weight of the high surface area carbonic material were used. By this method was achieved a good dispersion of the hydride into the carbonaceous support. The hydrogen desorption starts at temperatures as low as 150 degrees C for the sample with 8 wt% LiBH4 dispersed onto the MSU-H carbon replica while pure LiBH4 does not release hydrogen below 300 degrees C. After rehydrogenation, a lower amount of hydrogen is desorbed due to the fact that increasing temperature up to 400 degrees C a part of hydride segregates outside the pores of the carbonaceous support.

In this paper, we want to present a simple and efficient numerical method for SHG analysis in one-dimensional photonic crystals (PhCs) based on full nonlinear system of equations. For solving the nonlinear SHG problem we used a simple method of finite elements coupled with fixed point iteration. Our model does not need additional analytic approximation compared with some existing methods, and it can be easily extended to study the SHG problem in two-dimensional photonic crystals. We used the FlexPDE Professional program to plot the diagrams varying the parameters. At the end we obtained two maximum intensities of the second harmonic wave within each high index layer, that being in contrast to the fundamental wave peak. This result can be found also in the literature. In addition, we have plotted the lattice using the Optiwave FDTD software and we observed the propagation of the field in time.

We present the fabrication, structural, and transport properties of MgB2-based ceramic composites with magnetic nanospheres fabricated by spark plasma sintering. The nanospheres are either carbon encapsulated iron or iron oxide. The former nanospheres have been prepared by laser pyrolysis whereas the iron oxide was obtained by the pyrolysis of the polysiloxane-based copolymers embedded into MgB2 matrix during the sintering process. The structural data show the shrinkage of the a-axis lattice constant as a result of the partial carbon substitution for boron. However, the transport data suggest that carbon diffusion is limited to the outer layer of the MgB2 grains in both cases.

We study the conductance G and Seebeck coefficient S of a side-coupled double quantum dot system. The transport properties are the result of the competition between the Fano interference and Kondo correlations, being also controlled by the Coulomb blockade of the multilevel side-dot. The external parameters are the gate potential V-g applied on the side-dot and the temperature. When V-g is varied continuously the blockade is switched on and off periodically, resulting in oscillations of the transport coefficients. The profile of the oscillations and the temperature dependence are studied. An extended Anderson model and the Keldysh transport formalism are used.

The zero bias anomaly of the differential conductance of mesoscopic systems is a fingerprint of the electron-electron interaction. The common example is the peak of the differential conductance in Kondo mesoscopic systems. We show that in complex mesoscopic systems, in particular in the side-coupled double dot, the dip of the differential conductance at zero bias is also possible due to simultaneous effects of interference and correlations. The external parameters that control this effect are the temperature and the gate potential on the lateral dot. We argue that even in single dots, in a multiple lead configuration, the shift from suppression to enhancement of dI/dV with increasing bias is allowed if the bias applied on the leads is not symmetric. The differential conductance exhibits a peak-dip crossover, the effect being controlled by the strength of the asymmetry and the ratio of the dot-lead couplings. The scaling of the differential conductance for the double-dot system is also discussed. The results are obtained using an extended Anderson model, the Keldysh transport formalism and the equation of motion technique extended to the non-equilibrium.

We present the magnetic and transport properties of superconducting composites fabricated by admixing carbon-encapsulated Fe nanospheres and MgB2 powder. The addition of nanoparticles is expected to enhance the critical current density by carbon-doping the MgB2 matrix and by providing artificial pinning sites. Three samples with estimated amounts of 0.35, 0.6, and 1.0 wt. % metallic Fe were prepared using the spark plasma sintering technique. The average size of these nanoparticles is comparable to the superconducting coherence length of MgB2 at approximately 5 nm. We found that the additions do not significantly alter the critical temperature which is very high, close to that of the pure MgB2 samples. We have also observed improved current densities, as high as 1100 kA/cm(2) for the samples with 0.35 wt. % metallic Fe at 5 K and 1 T. A core-shell model for explaining the transport data is presented. The field and temperature dependence of the reduced pinning force is described in terms of pinning on grain boundaries and/or on point defects. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3672820]

Synthesis of nanosized particle of Ag-doped hydroxyapatite with antibacterial properties is in the great interest in the development of new biomedical applications. In this article, we propose a method for synthesized the Ag-doped nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite. A silver-doped nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite was synthesized at 100A degrees C in deionized water. Other phase or impurities were not observed. Silver-doped hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (Ag:HAp) were performed by setting the atomic ratio of Ag/[Ag + Ca] at 20% and [Ca + Ag]/P as 1.67. The X-ray diffraction studies demonstrate that powders made by co-precipitation at 100A degrees C exhibit the apatite characteristics with good crystal structure and no new phase or impurity is found. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations suggest that these materials present a little different morphology, which reveals a homogeneous aspect of the synthesized particles for all samples. The presence of calcium (Ca), phosphor (P), oxygen (O), and silver (Ag) in the Ag:HAp is confirmed by energy dispersive X-ray (EDAX) analysis. FT-IR and FT-Raman spectroscopies revealed that the presence of the various vibrational modes corresponds to phosphates and hydroxyl groups. The strain of Staphylococcus aureus was used to evaluate the antibacterial activity of the Ca10-x Ag (x) (PO4)6(OH)2 (x = 0 and 0.2). In vitro bacterial adhesion study indicated a significant difference between HAp (x = 0) and Ag:HAp (x = 0.2). The Ag:Hap nanopowder showed higher inhibition.

Indium zinc oxide films were grown from targets with two different In atomic concentration [In/(In+Zn)] of 40% and 80% by the pulsed laser deposition technique on glass substrates from room temperature up to 100 degrees C. X-ray diffraction and reflectometry investigations showed that films were amorphous and dense. Thin films (thickness<100 nm) exhibited higher optical transmittance and resistivities than thick films (thickness>1000 nm), probably caused by a significant decrease of oxygen vacancies due to atmosphere exposure. Films deposited from the In rich target under an oxygen pressure of 1 Pa exhibited optical transmittance higher than 85%, resistivities around 5-7x10(-4) Omega cm and mobilities in the 47-54 cm(2)/V s range. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.