Repository for natural sciences and technology
The repository is used for the free publication of scientific publications from the fields of natural sciences and technology in the sense of Open Access and is open to all authors. The publications placed in the repository are permanently freely available and citable worldwide. The repository is operated by the Technical Information Library (TIB).
17916 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 10 of 17916
- ItemDFG final report for the Walter Benjamin Programme : Stationary and time-dependent radiative heat transfer with cylindrical waveguides(Hannover : Technische Informationsbibliothek, 2025) Asheichyk, KirylFollowing the progress in development of micro- and nanodevices, the physics of thermal radiation at these small length scales has been studied intensively in the current century. It requires more sophisticated theories and obeys different laws compared to radiative heat exchange at large scales, for example, between the Sun and the Earth. Yet main questions remain similar: How to improve the efficiency of radiative heat transfer, suppress or enhance the cooling rate of an object, thermally isolate a part of a system? Another important and only recently emerged research area concerns systems subject to nonstationary conditions, such as time-dependent temperatures or material properties of the objects, where the heat fluxes can depend on time and show fundamentally different properties compared to the stationary case. In this project, we addressed the aforementioned questions for the stationary heat transfer between two nanoparticles placed close to a nanowire or inside a cylindrical cavity. In the former case, the heat transfer was shown to decay logarithmically with the interparticle distance, thus greatly outperforming the transfer without an additional object or in the presence of objects of other shapes. In the latter case, a cylindrical cavity can largely suppress or resonantly enhance the heat flow, depending on its radius. If we consider that one particle starts to radiate at a certain time, the heat flux to another one is no longer stationary, which requires an extension of the existing theoretical formalisms. Making this extension, we derived a formula for the time-dependent flux, numerically demonstrating it for two isolated nanoparticles, where picosecond-scale oscillatory exponential relaxation to the stationary value was observed. In addition to the aforementioned studies of radiative heat flow through vacuum, we also developed a theory for computing this flow inside media, and derived the corresponding thermal conductivity tensor for an arbitrary object. In agreement with recent experiments, it was found that the radiative part of conductivity of a nanosheet can be larger compared to the phononic part due to the electromagnetic surface waves contribution. The developed theoretical frameworks can be used to further advance the subject area, while the found results may be relevant for practical applications, such as thermal microscopy, thermal logic, or nanomedicine.
- ItemDFG Final Report for Automatic Fact Checking for Biomedical Information in Social Media and Scientific Literature (FIBISS), project number 667374(Hannover : Technische Informationsbibliothek, 2025-04-10) Klinger, Roman; Wührl, AmelieResearch into methods for the automatic verification of facts, i.e., computational models that can distinguish correct information from misinformation or disinformation, is largely focused on the news domain and on the analysis of posts in social media. Among other things, texts are checked for their truthfulness. This can be done by analyzing linguistic features that suggest an intention to deceive or by comparing them with other sources that make comparable statements in terms of content. Most studies focus on politically relevant areas. The biomedical domain is also an area of particular social relevance. In social media, various actors and medical laypersons share reports on treatment methods, successes and failures, such as the (disproven) method of treating viral infections with deworming agents or disinfectants. There are also reports on (disproven) links between treatments and adverse effects, such as the causation of autism by vaccination. However, the biomedical domain, unlike other areas relevant for automated fact checking, benefits from a large resource of reliable scientific articles. The aim of the FIBISS project was therefore to develop and evaluate methods that can extract biomedical claims in social media and compare them with reliable sources. One challenge here is that social media does not typically use technical language, so different vocabularies have to be combined. The approach in FIBISS was therefore to develop generalizing information extraction methods. In the course of the project, large language models also became prominent as a further methodological approach. The project was therefore adapted to optimize general representations of claims in such a way that they are suitable for comparison using automatic fact-checking procedures. As a result, we contribute text corpora that are used to develop and evaluate automated biomedical fact-checking systems. We propose methods that automatically reformulate claims so that they are suitable to be automatically verified. Furthermore, we present approaches that can automatically assess the credibility of claims, even independently of existing evidence.
- ItemFinal Report of the DFG Project "Drawing Graphs: Geometric Aspects Beyond Planarity" (project number 654838)(Hannover : Technische Informationsbibliothek, 2025-04) Wolff, AlexanderThe aim of our project was to get a better understanding of the mathematical structures that correspond to the different ways of measuring the visual complexity of a drawing of a graph. Examples for such measures are the local crossing number, that is, the maximum number of crossings per edge, the slope number, that is, the number of different slopes in a crossing-free straight-line drawing, the segment number or the line cover number, that is, the number of straight-line segments or straight lines needed to cover a crossing-free straight-line drawing. For a graph, the measures are defined as the minimum over all drawings (of the corresponding type). The center of our studies became the measure segment number, which is known to be NP-hard to compute. In particular, we showed that there is a parameterized algorithm for computing the segment number of a given graph with respect to the several parameters; the natural parameter, the line cover number, and the vertex cover number. The latter proof was the technically most challenging. In a different work, we showed that it is ETR-complete to compute the segment number of a given graph, that is, the segment number of a graph can be expressed in terms of the existential theory of the reals, but its computation is at least as hard as every problem in the complexity class ETR. Moreover, we extended a result concerning the segment number of triconnected cu- bic planar graphs by showing that the segment number of every triconnected 4-regular planar graph with n vertices is at most n + 3, which is tight up to the additive constant. We have proved the first linear universal lower bounds for the segment number of out- erpaths, maximal outerplanar graphs, 2-trees, and planar 3-trees. This shows that the existing algorithms for these graph classes are in fact constant-factor approximation algorithms. For maximal outerpaths, our universal lower bound is best possible.
- ItemBerechnung, Messung und Kontrolle der Energiebarrieren und der lichtinduzierten Kinetik des ASi-Sii-Defektes(Hannover : Technische Informationsbibliothek, 2025-04-09) Lauer, KevinDie Siliziumtechnologie hat umfangreiche Anwendungsmöglichkeiten, die sich im gegenwärtigen Alltag überall wiederfinden. Anwendungen wie Computer, Smartphones, Sensoren, Detektoren, Solarzellen und viele mehr sind nur möglich geworden durch jahrzehntelange Erforschung des Siliziums und der nötigen technologischen Prozesse. Nichtsdestotrotz gibt es noch immer unverstandene Phänomene und Mechanismen, speziell im Bereich der Defekte und der Degradation. Ein besseres Verständnis ist notwendig, da Defekte zum einen notwendig für die Funktionsweise von Bauelementen sind, sich aber auch negativ auswirken können. Das Projekt untersuchte eine besondere Kategorie von Defekten, die einen Akzeptor und interstitielles Silizium involvieren, so genannte ASi-Sii-Defekte. Sie tragen vermutlich maßgeblich zur licht-induzierten Degradation von Solarzellen und Detektorbauelemente bei. Konkret wurden in diesem Projekt die Energiebarrieren zwischen verschiedenen Defektzuständen der ASi-Sii-Defekte, die teilweise erst identifiziert werden mussten, in enger Zusammenarbeit von Experiment und Theorie erforscht und bestimmt. Die Barrierenhöhen haben einen direkten Einfluss auf die Defektkinetik und -stabilität, weshalb ihre Kenntnis essentiell ist. Gelingt es, die Barrierenhöhen gezielt zu beeinflussen (z.B. durch Wahl des Akzeptors), so können Bauelementeigenschaften ggf. gezielt eingestellt werden, z.B. zur Effizienzsteigerung oder Lebenszeitverlängerung von Solarzellen. Zudem erscheint es reizvoll künftig zu untersuchen, inwieweit Defekte aus dieser Kategorie als Qubit Verwendung finden können und somit für die Silizium-basierte Quantentechnologie interessant sind. Das Projekt hat erfolgreich einen Beitrag zum grundlegenden Verständnis der ASi-Sii-Defekte geleistet und legt den Grundstein für die weitere Erforschung dieser interessanten Defektkategorie.
- ItemCold, Old, and Metal-poor: New Stellar Substructures in the Milky Way's Dwarf Spheroidals(London : Institute of Physics Publ., 2019) Lora, Veronica; Grebel, Eva K.; Schmeja, Stefan; Koch, AndreasDwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph) orbiting the Milky Way are complex objects often with complicated star formation histories and internal dynamics. In this work, we search for stellar substructures in four of the classical dSph satellites of the Milky Way: Sextans, Carina, Leo I, and Leo II. We apply two methods to search for stellar substructure: the minimum spanning tree method, which helps us find and quantify spatially connected structures, and the "brute-force" method, which is able to find elongated stellar substructures. We detected the previously known substructure in Sextans and also found a new stellar substructure within Sextans. Furthermore, we identified a new stellar substructure close to the core radius of the Carina dwarf galaxy. We report a detection of one substructure in Leo I and two in Leo II, but we note that we are dealing with a low number of stars in the samples used. Such old stellar substructures in dSphs could help us shed light on the nature of the dark matter halos, within which such structures form, evolve, and survive.
- ItemStructure and mass segregation in Galactic stellar clusters(Oxford : Oxford Univ. Press, 2017) Dib, Sami; Schmeja, Stefan; Parker, Richard J.We quantify the structure of a very large number of Galactic open clusters and look for evidence of mass segregation for themostmassive stars in the clusters.We characterize the structure and mass segregation ratios of 1276 clusters in the Milky Way Stellar Cluster (MWSC) catalogue containing each at least 40 stars and that are located at a distance of up to ≈2 kpc from the Sun. We use an approach based on the calculation of the minimum spanning tree of the clusters, and for each one of them, we calculate the structure parameter Q and the mass segregation ratio ΓMSR. Our findings indicate that most clusters possess a Q parameter that falls in the range 0.7-0.8 and are thus neither strongly concentrated nor do they show significant substructure. Only 27 per cent can be considered centrally concentrated with Q values > 0.8. Of the 1276 clusters, only 14 per cent show indication of significant mass segregation (ΓMSR > 1.5). Furthermore, no correlation is found between the structure of the clusters or the degree of mass segregation with their position in the Galaxy. A comparison of the measured Q values for the young open clusters in the MWSC to N-body numerical simulations that follow the evolution of the Q parameter over the first 10 Myr of the clusters life suggests that the young clusters found in the MWSC catalogue initially possessed local mean volume densities of ρ* ≈ 10-100 M⊙ pc-3.
- ItemMassive stars reveal variations of the stellar initial mass function in the Milky Way stellar clusters(Oxford : Oxford Univ. Press, 2016) Dib, Sami; Schmeja, Stefan; Hony, SachaWe investigate whether the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is universal, or whether it varies significantly among young stellar clusters in the MilkyWay.We propose a method to uncover the range of variation of the parameters that describe the shape of the IMF for the population of young Galactic clusters.These parameters are the slopes in the low and high stellar mass regimes, γ and Γ, respectively, and the characteristic mass, Mch. The method relies exclusively on the high-mass content of the clusters, but is able to yield information on the distributions of parameters that describe the IMF over the entire stellar mass range. This is achieved by comparing the fractions of single and lonely massive O stars in a recent catalogue of the Milky Way clusters with a library of simulated clusters built with various distribution functions of the IMF parameters. The synthetic clusters are corrected for the effects of the binary population, stellar evolution, sample incompleteness, and ejected O stars. Our findings indicate that broad distributions of the IMF parameters are required in order to reproduce the fractions of single and lonely O stars in Galactic clusters. They also do not lend support to the existence of a cluster mass-maximum stellar mass relation. We propose a probabilistic formulation of the IMF whereby the parameters of the IMF are described by Gaussian distribution functions centred around γ = 0.91, Γ = 1.37, and Mch = 0.41 M⊙, and with dispersions of σγ = 0.25, σΓ = 0.60, and σMch = 0.27 M⊙ around these values.
- ItemDevelopment of Photocatalytically Active Anodized Layers by a Modified Phosphoric Acid Anodizing Process for Air Purification(Basel : MDPI, 2023) Lederer, Stephan; Benfer, Sigrid; Bloh, Jonathan; Javed, Rezan; Pashkova, Aneta; Fuerbeth, WolframOne of the key urban air quality issues is pollution by nitrogen oxides (NOx). To reduce NOx, facade cladding could be provided with photocatalytic properties by incorporating titanium dioxide nanoparticles. For this purpose, a modified phosphoric acid anodizing process (MPAA) was developed for the facade alloy EN AW-5005, in which highly ordered anodized structures with a low degree of arborization and tortuosity were produced. Pore widths between 70 nm and 150 nm and layer thicknesses of about 2–3 μm were obtained. The subsequent impregnation was carried out by dip coating from water-based systems. Depending on the dip-coating parameters and the suspension used, the pores can be filled up to 60% with the TiO2 nanoparticles. Photocatalytic tests according to ISO 22197-1 certify a high photocatalytic activity was obtained with rPCE values > 8 and with rPCE > 2, achieving “photocatalytically active for air purification”. Tests on the corrosion resistance of the anodized coatings with a commercially available aluminum and facade cleaner confirm a protective effect of the anodized coatings when compared with nonanodized aluminum material, as well as with compacted anodized layers.
- ItemPlasma Electrolytic Oxidation on Magnesium AZ31 with Sepiolite as Inhibitor Carrier for Improved Corrosion Protection(Basel : MDPI, 2023) Sottor, Robert; Gruen, Ricarda; Kremmer, Kerstin; Lederer, Stephan; Schneider, Michael; Fuerbeth, WolframPlasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) in an alkaline silicate electrolyte containing nanosized sepiolite fibers was carried out on magnesium alloy AZ31. The mineral fibers were loaded with different corrosion inhibitors and incorporated in situ during the PEO treatment. The composition and microstructure of the PEO coatings were investigated by SEM. It was shown that the fibers are located on the surface as well as inside the “weak spots” of the coating, i.e., pores and discharge channels. The fixation of the particles is caused by sintering due to the heat developed during the PEO treatment. Investigations using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and linear sweep voltammetry in 0.01 M NaCl solution confirmed an improvement of the corrosion protection. The use of the inhibitors shifts the critical pitting potential in the anodic direction. Regarding efficiency, cerium-loaded sepiolite showed the best behavior by shifting the pitting potential by +0.9 V.
- ItemMechanisms of Secondary Spreading and Micro Droplet Formation on Steel(Bristol : IOP Publishing, 2024-12) Seeger, Lea; Lobnig, Renate; Schuch, Elmar; Guo, Surong; Fürbeth, WolframA new theory for secondary spreading based on the wetting theory of thin films is presented. It explains how micro droplets within the spreading zone and the primary droplet retain their shape, although connected by a thin electrolyte film and how humidity and salt concentration affect the growth rate of micro droplets. The trigger for secondary spreading, polarization or alkalization, is identified by using droplets of sodium hydroxide solution. Secondary spreading thus occurs on steel from pH 13.5 without corrosion or external polarization. The limiting pH value found explains why secondary spreading on steel only occurs when certain salts are used. The effect of the substrate is investigated by changing the microstructure of the steel. By comparing the sizes of micro droplets and micro structural phases and by scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive X-ray analysis measurements of the spreading zone, the existence of an electrolyte film connecting the micro droplets is supported. Ecorr potential profiles of secondary spreading droplets of sodium chloride solution on steel acquired by means of SKP are used to assess the contribution of secondary spreading to the total corrosion current, which is estimated to be low compared to that of the cathodic zone at the edge of the droplet.