National Institute Of Materials Physics - Romania

NiMnSb is expected to be a ferromagnetic half metal, an expectation that is based in part on band structure calculations. Here we report optical conductivity studies of the band structure for a film prepared by pulsed laser deposition onto a Si substrate held at a relatively low temperature as is required for some device applications-films which are susceptible to site disorder associated with the vacant site in this half-Heusler compound. We demonstrate that the direct interband transitions are essentially unshifted in comparison with bulk material, though they are somewhat broadened. Below the direct-transition absorption edge we report the presence of indirect spin-reversing transitions between the Fermi energy (E-f) and the extrema of the minority-spin valence and conduction bands, providing a measure of the band edge energies. Both of these edges appear closer to E-f than is seen in well-ordered bulk NiMnSb, with the conduction-band minimum showing weight at only 200 cm(-1) above E-f, close enough to have substantial occupation at ambient temperature. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.

Manganese and copper doped CdS nanowires were obtained by the template technique in a two step process. In the first step metallic alloy CdMnCu nano and microwires were electrodeposited in ion track membranes with pore diameters in the range 150 nm-2 mum. In the following step the resulted nanowires were anodized in a sodium sulphide alkaline solution. Electron microscopy results show participation of the whole metallic wire in the anodization process; manganese and copper doped CdS wires are obtained The composition of micro and nanowires was determined by energy dispersive X-ray analysis.

Magnetic properties of sintered Eu0.7Sm0.3Ba2Cu3O7-delta were investigated both in dc and ac magnetic fields. The dc response reflects the interplay between the rare earth ion paramagnetic and the superconducting charge carrier subsystems, respectively. The harmonic susceptibilities exhibit special features: the second harmonic is anomalously high and the third harmonic in zero dc-field has reversed temperature dependence with respect to the theoretical models. The magnetic relaxation at low fields is monotonous and occurs as a two-stage relaxation, each stage obeying logarithmical time dependence with different rates. At high fields, the relaxation is nonmonotonous with a peak at intermediate time suggesting a temporary re-entrance of irreversibility when the flux-line density increases in the center of the sample because of the redistribution of the vortices toward that region.

Chemical, physical and electrochemical general methods used for deposition of various materials were tested for preparation of BaTiO3 films. Researchers are focusing on the influence of processing parameters on the stoichiometry and the properties of BaTiO3 films for each deposition method. Dielectric properties of BaTiO3 thin films prepared by different methods shown various values suggesting that the optimal parameters for deposition of BaTiO3 be not well known. Great efforts are concentrated on the economical aspect of the deposition process. In the case of BaTiO3 films, it is important to prepare crystallized films at low temperatures. The methods for deposition of BaTiO3 look into and develop continuous due to increase of the domain to use of BaTiO3 films.

Nanostructured Ni/C-60 thin films, produced by co-evaporation of Ni and fullerene, have been investigated by both X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD). X-ray diffraction has shown the co-existence of diffraction specific peaks for the fullerene face-centered cubic crystal structure and diffraction peaks of Ni nanoparticles in the face-centered cubic structure, which are broadened by nanoparticule finite dimensions. Analysis of peak widths shows that the Ni nanocrystallite size ranges from 4.7 to 19.2 nm. The XMCD signals for a sample series, preparated on relatively low-temperature substrates during the co-evaporation, can be interpreted as having distinct contributions due to both bulk and surface Ni atoms. These two kind of atoms are antiferromagnetic coupled. The Ni atoms which are at the interface with the fullerite matrix show ail enhanced orbital magnetic moment, while the orbital magnetic moment of Ni atoms in the bulk has very low values, as it can be expected for a crystalline field with a cubic symmetry.

The results of both a line-broadening study on a ceria sample and a size - strain round robin on diffraction line-broadening methods, which was sponsored by the Commission on Powder Diffraction of the International Union of Crystallography, are presented. The sample was prepared by heating hydrated ceria at 923 K for 45 h. Another ceria sample was prepared to correct for the effects of instrumental broadening by annealing commercially obtained ceria at 1573 K for 3 h and slowly cooling it in the furnace. The diffraction measurements were carried out with two laboratory and two synchrotron X-ray sources, two constant-wavelength neutron and a time-of-flight (TOF) neutron source. Diffraction measurements were analyzed by three methods: the model assuming a lognormal size distribution of spherical crystallites, Warren-Averbach analysis and Rietveld refinement. The last two methods detected a relatively small strain in the sample, as opposed to the first method. Assuming a strain-free sample, the results from all three methods agree well. The average real crystallite size, on the assumption of a spherical crystallite shape, is 191 (5) Angstrom. The scatter of results given by different instruments is relatively small, although significantly larger than the estimated standard uncertainties. The Rietveld refinement results for this ceria sample indicate that the diffraction peaks can be successfully approximated with a pseudo-Voigt function. In a common approximation used in Rietveld refinement programs, this implies that the size-broadened profile cannot be approximated by a Lorentzian but by a full Voigt or pseudo-Voigt function. In the second part of this paper, the results of the round robin on the size - strain line-broadening analysis methods are presented, which was conducted through the participation of 18 groups from 12 countries. Participants have reported results obtained by analyzing data that were collected on the two ceria samples at seven instruments. The analysis of results received in terms of coherently diffracting, both volume-weighted and area-weighted apparent domain size are reported. Although there is a reasonable agreement, the reported results on the volume-weighted domain size show significantly higher scatter than those on the area-weighted domain size. This is most likely due to a significant number of results reporting a high value of strain. Most of those results were obtained by Rietveld refinement in which the Gaussian size parameter was not refined, thus erroneously assigning size-related broadening to other effects. A comparison of results with the average of the three-way comparative analysis from the first part shows a good agreement.

A closed cluster model for the binary arsenic-chalcogen glasses seems to be attractive for the explanation of the structural and electronic properties of non-crystalline chalcogenides. In the same time the direct consequence of the model is the absence of the defects of coordination. The full implication is discussed.

Using nuclear inelastic scattering of synchrotron radiation and inelastic neutron scattering we have investigated the vibrational properties of Fe and Co impurities in NiAl intermetallics, and compared them with the density functional theory calculations. The Fe phonon spectra show two sharp peaks appearing in the frequency gap between the Ni and Al phonon bands, and originating from the local modes of Fe residing in Ni, or Al sublattices. Co, which replaces Ni, vibrates within a narrow frequency interval occurring close to the upper edge, but still within the Ni phonon band. The ab initio calculations show that these effects are expected when impurity-host force constants differ from host-host force constants causing a dynamic mismatch between guest and host vibrations.

Magnetization in dc magnetic fields and at different temperatures has been measured on the antiperovskite Li2Pd3B with a cubic structure composed of distorted Pd6B octahedrons. This material was recently found to exhibit superconductivity at 7-8 K. The critical fields H-c1(0) and H-c2(0) are determined to be 135 Oe and 4 T, respectively. Critical current density, scaling of the pinning force within the Kramer model, and irreversibility field data are presented. Several superconductivity parameters were deduced: Coherence length xi=9.1 nm, penetration depth lambda=194 nm, and Ginzburg-Landau parameter kappa=21. The material resembles other boride superconductors from the investigated points of view. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.

Precipitate-free thin films of multicomponent materials (e.g. superconductors) have been successfully grown (see Figure) on substrates onto whose surfaces artificial steps have been generated. The steps had widths that were equal to twice the migration length of the atomic species being deposited on the films. The resulting clean, high-quality films were due to the gathering of precipitates at the step edges, where the free energy is lowest.