Molecular dynamic calculations have been made on glasses in the ZnCl2–KBr system in order to estimate the infrared (IR) absorption of these glasses. Oxygen-free glass was estimated to be transparent up to 25 μm. Glasses containing oxygen impurities were estimated to be transparent only up to 16 μm, with a weak absorption band around 10.4 μm. This agrees with experimental results of glasses in the ZnCl2–KBr–PbBr2 system.

An upper limit is placed on the overheating at the liquid/solid interface during melting of (100) Si at high interface velocity. The limit is based on an energy-balance analysis of melt depths measured in real time during pulsed-laser melting of Si on sapphire. When combined with previous measurements of the freezing kinetics of Si, this limit indicates that the kinetics of melting and freezing are nonlinear, i.e., the undercooling required to freeze at modest (15 m/s) velocities is proportionately much greater than the overheating required to melt at high (190 m/s) velocities.

A new technique for successfully fabricating high-quality optical waveguides in LiNbO3 is reported. A high concentration of Ti is implanted with the substrate at liquid nitrogen temperature and an amorphous, Ti-rich, nonequilibrium phase is produced in the implanted, near-surface region. Subsequent thermal annealing in water-saturated oxygen atmosphere at up to 1000°C initiates solid-phase epitaxial regrowth onto the crystalline substrate. A highquality single crystalline layer results that is rich in Ti and has excellent waveguiding properties.

An original preparation of ZnO is described where the powder is obtained by precipitaton from zinc nitrate in aqueous solution followed by a calcination. Scanning electron microscopy reveals a close relation between the initial density and the morphology of the powder, the latter being also strongly dependent on the calcining conditions. The investigation of the densification process shows the extreme sensitivity of the final density to sintering conditions. A physical model based on the competitive influences of shrinkage and evaporation successfully describes the observed phenomena.

This article is the first of a pair on a theory of chemically assisted fracture. It includes the Green's function analysis for a three-dimensional crack with a kink on it. Equations are developed for the activation energy for the motion and nucleation of such kinks using information to be found in the second article regarding the force laws appropriate for water attack of silica. The most general conclusion is that lattice trapping barriers to crack motion (including chemical effects) are associated with a narrow core region of the crack, which is in turn connected to the nature of the interatomic force laws of the material (including the modifications of these force laws induced by chemical reactions). Further, it is found that the force law must have a severely “snapping” characteristic in order to assure a narrow core, a feature not to be expected except under certain types of external chemical attack of the crack. Additional results are that the energy to nucleate a kink pair in silica under water attack is in the neighborhood of 2 eV and that the motion energy is of order 0.1 eV. Motion energies are expected to be considerably smaller than formation energies in general.

Various high-Tc superconductors of the La–(Ba,Sr)–Cu–O and the M–Ba–Cu–O systems with M = Y, Er, and Eu have been prepared by the solid-state reaction method. Single-phase samples with no additional diffraction peaks as verified by x-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements have been obtained. Measurements of the electrical resistivity and of the magnetization showed sharp superconducting transitions with a width of 1 K. The measurements of the magnetic susceptibility have been extended above room temperature up to 770 K. There is clear evidence for the formation of a magnetic moment in all M–Ba–Cu–O samples. Monochromated x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (MXPS) valence band and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) core level spectra have been measured on various samples at room temperature and at liquid nitrogen temperature.

The influence of In and Ag atoms on the dc electrical conductivity and optical properties in the short wavelength edge region in Ge20Sb10S70 and Ge30Sb10S60 glasses has been examined. Contrary to the effect of In atoms, the Ag atoms at concentration levels below 4 at. % of Ag significantly influence the dc conductivity. Changes of the optical properties are less significant, and they are affected in a similar way by incorporation of In and Ag atoms into a glassy matrix. It is supposed that some of the Ag atoms are positively ionized to an Ag+ species that remains in the network. The 5s1 electron of Ag interacts with D+ states making, in the final state, an increase of D− defect states. Thus the Fermi level is shifted to the valence band and the dc conductivity increases.

A varistor's life has been defined as the time required to reach a limiting power density at which the power generated exceeds the power dissipated. Based on this concept, a working model for predicting the life of a ZnO varistor has been developed in terms of several critical material and design parameters. The model provides a direction as to whether these parameters should be maximized or minimized in order to enhance a varistor's life. Alternately, given a predetermined amount of the varistor's life, the model predicts a safe operating voltage under a given set of conditions.

Lithium fluoride added to BaTiO3 as a sintering additive can be worthwhile for realizing cheap multilayer ceramic capacitors. Such an addition leads to a decrease both in sintering and Curie temperatures from 1400°–930°C and from 120°–10°C, respectively. A transmission electron microscopy (TEM) study of thin samples quenched from intermediary stages has shown the microstructure of the sintered material to be complex. A liquid-phase sintering, mechanism occurring at temperatures slightly lower than 730°C has been proposed. Volatility accounts for partial or complete disappearance of the liquid during heat treatments.

This article is this second of a pair on a theory of chemically assisted fracture. In it a simple bond orbital model of the force laws to be used in fracture is developed. In the bond orbital model, only a few of the atoms in the vicinity of the bond to be broken are considered and do not include interactions with the rest of the system, which is assumed to be Newtonian. Numerical accuracy is not required, but qualitative features of the force laws are believed to be valid. The silica bond is shown to rise quickly to a high peak, after which it develops a relatively long tail. When the bond is attacked by water, modeling by the same technique indicates that the bond has a “snapping” characteristic that is important in the theory developed in the first article. For bonds with smooth “back sides” the barriers to crack motion are shown to be low, but barriers are expected to be observable when the bond snaps. A tight binding treatment of a one-dimensional chain has been included in order to investigate the effect of including band effects in the force law. These effects are found to be small compared to the simple bond breaking of the bond orbital calculation.

Experiments are described in which hydrogen is injected into silicon by various techniques and detected by the neutralization of boron acceptor sites. Wet chemical etching is shown to inject protons several microns in a few seconds; this experiment is used to set a lower limit on the diffusivity of hydrogen of ⋍2⊠10−11 cm2/s at 300 K, a number in reasonable agreement with prior estimates deduced by Van Wieririgen and Warmholtz from high-temperature permeation measurements. A number of experiments are reported to elucidate the mechanism for “unintentional” hydrogenation occurring during argon ion bombardment. The data suggest that this effect is caused by bombardment-induced injection of hydrogen from surface H2O/hydrocarbon contaminants.

The superconductive state magnetization of the high-Tc compound Y1Ba2Cu3Oz has been investigated. Single-phase, polycrystalline samples of this archetype were prepared by solidstate reaction. The onset of the superconductive transition, measured magnetically, was 90.7 K. In addition to low-field dc magnetization results, measurements of the magnetic critical current density Jc (H,T) are presented as a function of magnetic field and temperature. The low values of Jc, especially at high temperature, are discussed in terms of intergranular supercurrents that flow within individual grains in superconductive layers of reduced dimensionality.

Results of in situ optical (reflectance, Raman scattering) and 00l x-ray diffraction studies of hydrogen chemisorption in Grafoil-based stage 1 C8K intercalation compounds are presented. Upon hydrogen uptake, stage 2 KC8H2/3 was found to coexist with C8K forming first in the optical skin depth. The intensities of the 00l x-ray diffraction peaks show quantitatively that the reaction C8K + 1/2xH2 ⇉ (1 − 3/2x)C8K + 3/2xC8KH2/3 occurs for x>0.4 in the bulk. The effects of the surface morphology of Grafoil on the near-normal incidence reflectance was investigated and found to be described by an energy (E) dependent function S(E) = exp[−aEn], such that the corrected spectrum Rc = SR, where R is the Grafoil reflectance. In this manner, reflectance spectra of C8K-Grafoil and C8KH2/3-Grafoil were quantitatively analyzed to determine the free carrier contribution. The free carrier lifetimes were found to be a factor of 2 shorter in Grafoil-based hosts, compared to highly oriented pyrolytic graphite-based hosts. The optical results for C8KH2/3 indicate the H(ls) band is full (or very nearly full).

The variation of resistivity of the lithium fast-ion conductor Li3+y Ge1−yO4 (y = 0.25, 0.6, 0.72) has been studied with hydrostatic pressure up to 70 kbar and compared with that of Li16−2x Znx (GeO4)4(x = 1, 2). Both types showed pronounced resistivity maxima between 20–30 kbar and marked decrease thereafter. Measurements as a function of temperature between 120–300 K permitted the determination of activation energies and prefactors that also showed corresponding maxima. The activation volumes (ΔV) of the first type of compound varied between 4.34 to −4.90 cm3/mol at 300 K and decreased monotonically with increasing temperature. For the second type ΔV was much smaller, varied with pressure between 0.58 and −0.24 cm3/mol, and went through a maximum with increasing temperature. High-pressure studies were also conducted on aged samples, and the results are discussed in conjunction with results of impedance measurements and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies. The principal effect of pressure appears to be variations of the sum of interatomic potentials and hence barrier height, which also causes significant changes in entropy.

The annealing behavior of ion-implanted α-SiC single crystal was determined for samples implanted with 62 keV 14N to doses of 5.5X1014/cm2 and 8.0X1016/cm2 and with 260 keV 52Cr to doses of 1.5X1014/cm2 and 1.0X1016/cm2. The high-dose samples formed amorphous surface layers to depths of 0.17 μm (N) and 0.28 μm (Cr), while for the low doses only highly damaged but not randomized regions were formed. The samples were isochronically annealed up to 1600°C, holding each temperature for 10 min. The remaining damage was analyzed by Rutherford backscattering of 2 MeV He+, Raman scattering, and electron channeling. About 15% of the width of the amorphous layers regrew cpitaxially from the underlying undamaged material up to 1500°C, above which the damage annealed rapidly in a narrow temperature interval. The damage in the crystalline samples annealed linearly with temperature and was unmeasurable above 1000°C.

Pressure dependence of the superconducting transition temperature in La1.85Sr0.15CuO4 has been measured to 8 GPa using a diamond anvil cell. The experimental results are discussed within the conventional electron-phonon model of superconductivity.

The use of structurally and/or compositionally diphasic gels has been shown earlier to have profound effects in lowering the crystallization temperature and enhancing densification in several systems. In this study of solid-state epitaxy the ThSiO4 composition has been investigated. The use of compositional diphasicity allows one to lower the huttonite (β-ThSiO4) crystallization temperature by as much as 200°C. Using crystalline thorite (α-ThSiO4) as second phase nuclei partially stabilizes this phase (hypothetically metastable), while the introduction of huttonite nuclei completely inhibits the formation of the α form, which appears in detectable quantities in the unseeded precursors. This confirms the structural (epitaxial) control of the solid-state reaction. The use of structural or compositional nanoheterogeneity clearly helps to lower the crystallization temperature and to stabilize a particular polymorph in ccramics processed by the sol-gel route, and this principle can certainly be utilized more generally.

The magnetic susceptibility of Te, MnTe2, and three dilute TeMn alloys was measured from room temperature to 800°C. The effective magnetic moment of dilute Mn in liquid Te is 5.0(2) μB and appears to be slightly temperature dependent. The effective moment for Mn in MnTe2 is 6.05 μB, approximately equal to that of a free 5/2 spin. The Weiss temperature of MnTe2 is 610(20) K. These data are used to determine an accurate phase diagram for Terich Mnx Te1−x. The eutectic is found at 0.6(1) at. % Mn with a eutectic temperature within 2°C of the tellurium melting temperature. Because liquid tellurium remains in metastable equilibrium with solid MnTe2 as much as 80°C below the eutectic, a metastable lowtemperature extension of the liquidus is also determined.

Results from x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS or ESCA), low-energy ion scattering spectrometry (LEIS or ISS); and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analyses are presented for unmodified and modified poly (methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) polymer films. Analysis of the unmodified PMMA polymers (isotactic, syndiotactic, and atactic) via ESCA, ISS, and FTIR, established the surface composition, bonding, and functionality before the modification was employed. An rf-plasma glow discharge created from an Ar/H2O gas mixture at different exposure times and power levels was used to treat the polymer surface. Subsequent ESCA, ISS, and FTIR analyses of these modified PMMA's show the effects of surface modification in terms of a model of structural differences, over a limited depth (50–100 Å). The composition and functionality changes of the resulting surfaces are discussed with respect to proposed mechanisms of the plasma reaction and differences in tacticity of the reactant. A two-step reaction mechanism involving reactive decarboxylation/reduction followed by H2O adsorption is proposed to understand the spectroscopic results.

Using ultrasonic methods, the quasi-isotropic elastic stiffnesses of void-containing Y1Ba2Cu3O7−x were determined By a composite-material model, these were corrected to the void-free state. From these, the Debye characteristic temperature was calculated. All the elastic stiffnesses fall well below those of polycrystalline BaTiO3, an approximate crystalstructural building block of Y1Ba2Cu3O7−x. The low apparent stiffness may result from oxygen vacancies, which soften interionic forces. Also, it may result from microcracks, which reduce elastic stiffness without lowering mass density.