National Institute Of Materials Physics - Romania

Structural aspects and atomic intermixing processes in Be/W bilayers deposited on Si(0 0 1) substrates with Fe buffer layers enriched in the (57)Fe Mossbauer isotope have been studied via atomic force microscopy, grazing incidence X-ray diffractometry, X-ray reflectometry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and conversion electron Mossbauer spectroscopy. The mentioned investigations allowed a full sequential characterization of the involved interfaces. Various ionic configurations appeared for Fe or W, while an amorphous state was observed in the case of Be. It has been proven that the Be layer has a negative influence on the roughness of the whole structure, which however presents an oxidation gradient from more oxidized elements at the surface towards more reduced elements in deeper layers. A strong diffusion of the W atoms inside the Be layer, induced by the deposition method, as well as of the Fe atoms inside the Be layer, induced by thermal annealing, has been evidenced. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Manganese is deposited onto GaAs(001) substrates in high vacuum conditions (10(-7) hPa), with substrates held at 300 degrees C. It is shown that this procedure yields to the diffusion of magnanese into gallium arsenide and the formation of a layer which exhibits room temperature ferromagnetism, with highly diluted Mn (below 1 atomic percent). X-ray absorption fine structure determinations at the Mn and Ga K-edges evidenced that Mn is not placed into substitutional Ga sites in GaAs. Most probably, Mn forms MnO clusters with rocksalt local structure. These clusters are the origin of the detected ferromagnetism.

The band (or Stoner) ferromagnetism in systems exhibiting a linear density of states, such as a graphene sheet, where the density of states g(e) is proportional to e, is investigated as function of temperature. The calculations are performed by neglecting spin-wave excitations and some arguments are presented for this approximation. It is found that the occurrence of ferromagnetism becomes easier at finite temperature than in the low temperature limit, especially for systems with low values of carrier density. An almost linear dependence of the magnetization on temperature is predicted; the temperature of vanishing magnetization is linear with the value of the equilibrium Fermi energy, irrespective of the value of the interaction (Hubbard) parameter. Also, for low values of the Hubbard energy an increase in the average value of the polarization with the temperature is predicted in the range of low temperatures. The most important application of such systems consists of control over the onset of magnetization by the charge density (the value of the Fermi energy).

TiO2:Fe thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition exhibit in some case light dependent saturation magnetization, as determined from Kerr magnetometry measurements performed in dark or by illuminating the sample. This phenomenon is studied in correlation with local atomic structure investigated by extended X-ray absorption fine structure, composition and chemical state analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and by X-ray absorption near-edge structure. It is found that light-controllable magnetism is a property of a mixture of Fe and oxidized Fe clusters embedded in the anatase TiO2 matrix.

This work presents recent studies concerning the synthesis of ultrathin ferromagnetic Fe layers on Si(001) and the correlated follow-up measurement of their structural properties, interface reactivity, and magnetism. This study is undertaken as function of the amount of Fe deposited and of substrate temperature. The interface reactivity is characterized by Auger electron spectroscopy. The surface structure is characterized by low electron energy diffraction (LEED). The local order of Fe atoms is investigated by X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) and the magnetism by magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE). A general trend established is that a higher deposition temperature stabilizes a better surface ordering, but also enhances Fe and Si interdiffusion and therefore decreases the magnetism. A surprising effect obtained by Fe deposition at room temperature is that, despite the rapid disappearance of the long range order with Fe deposition (no LEED pattern is observed for Fe coverage exceeding one monolayer), the material exhibits a significant uniaxial in-plane magnetic anisotropy. When the deposition is performed at high temperature (500 degrees C), a weak ferromagnetism is still observed, with saturation magnetization of about 10 % of the value obtained for room temperature deposition. The combined MOKE and EXAFS studies allowed inferring consistent values for the range of Fe thicknesses where the reaction takes place and the main properties of the distinct formed layers.

Inhibitive properties of the antibacterial sulfa drug sulfathiazole-IUPAC name being 4-amino-N-(1,3-thiazol-2-yl) benzene sulfonamide-on the corrosion of carbon steel in 1.0M HCl solution were investigated using weight loss measurements, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Sulfathiazole is a good adsorption inhibitor, and the inhibition efficiency increases with increasing concentration. Adsorption is spontaneous and is best described by Temkin isotherm. XPS analysis showed, at this stage, that the main product of corrosion is a nonstoichiometric Fe3+ oxide/oxyhydroxide consisting of a mixture of Fe2O3, alpha, and gamma-FeO(OH) and/or Fe(OH)(3), where alpha, gamma-FeO(OH) is the main phase.

Caesalpinia pulcherrima (Linn) popularly known as Peacock flower in India belongs to family Caesalpiniace. In this work, we describe environment friendly technique for green synthesis of gold nanoparticles from AuCl4 solution using the Caesalpinia pulcherrima (Peacock flower) flower extract as reducing agent. The gold nanoparticles were characterized using UV-visible spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The UV-visible spectra indicate a strong Plasmon resonance that is located at similar to 450 nm. The TEM analysis shows that products have spherical morphology with size ranging between 10-50 nm. The study also indicates that gold nanoparticles show good antimicrobial activities when compared to the standard antibiotics.

A genuine GaAs surface is covered with a relatively thick layer (similar to nm) of native oxide pinning the Surface Fermi level within the band gap of semiconductor. The method presented in this work is related to sulfur passivation by treating n-GaAs in different solutions of alkane thiols. At the surface of GaAs it is developed an adherent layer of sulfur compound as a result of chemical interaction of sulfur ions with GaAs(100) face, that are putted in evidence by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and second harmonic generation (SHG) analysis. Using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is presented a detailed analysis of XPS data at the surface of thiols on GaAs together with the presence of the covalent bond As-S. The electric characteristics of the AuGeNi/Thiol/GaAs structure are presented in I (V) curves recorded in the region of small currents.

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.