2018, Althausen, Dietrich, Hofer, Julian, Abdullaev, Sabur, Makhmudov, Abduvosit, Baars, Holger, Engelmann, Ronny, Wadinga Fomba, Khanneh, Müller, Konrad, Schettler, Georg, Klüser, Lars, Kandler, Konrad, Nicolae, D., Makoto, A., Vassilis, A., Balis, D., Behrendt, A., Comeron, A., Gibert, F., Landulfo, E., McCormick, M.P., Senff, C., Veselovskii, I., Wandinger, U.

Mineral dust needs to be characterized comprehensively since it contributes to the climate change in Tajikistan / Central Asia. Lidar results from the measurements of mineral dust during CADEX are compared with results of sun photometer measurements, satellite-based measurements, and chemical analysis of ground samples. Although the dust is often advected from far-range sources, it impacts on the local conditions considerably.

2016, Scheffler, C., Wölfel, E., Förster, T., Poitzsch, C., Kotte, L., Mäder, G., Madsen, Bo, Biel, A., Kusano, Y., Lilholt, H., Mikkelsen, L.P., Mishnaevsky Jr., L., Sørensen, B.F.

A commercially available carbon fiber (CF) with an epoxy-based sizing (EP-sized CF) and an unsized CF have been plasma treated to study the effect on the fiber-matrix adhesion towards a polypropylene matrix. The EP-sized fiber was chosen because of its predictable low adhesion in a polypropylene (PP) matrix. The fibers have been modified using a microwave low-pressure O2/CO2/N2-gas plasma source (Cyrannus®) developed at IWS in a batch process. One aim of this study was the evaluation of parameters using high energies and short time periods in the plasma chamber to see the effect on mechanical performance of CF. These results will be the fundamental work for a planned continuous plasma modification line. The CF surface was characterized by determining the surface energies, single fiber tensile strength and XPS analysis. The adhesion behavior before and after plasma treatment was studied by single fiber pull-out test (SFPO) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It was shown that the CO2- and O2-plasma increases the number of functional groups on the fiber surface during short time plasma treatment of 30 s. Carboxylic groups on the unsized CF surface resulting from O2-plasma treatment lead to an enhanced fiber-matrix adhesion, whereas the fiber strength was merely reduced.

2017, Krause, Beate, Cohnen, A., Pötschke, Petra, Hickmann, T., Koppler, D., Proksch, B., Kersting, T., Hopmann, C.

In this study, composites based on polypropylene (PP) and different graphite fillers were melt mixed using small scale microcompounder Xplore DSM15 as well as lab-scale co-rotating twin screw extruder Coperion ZSK26Mc. The measurements of the electrical and thermal conductivity as well as mechanical properties of the composites were performed on pressed plates. It was found that the addition of graphite powders having different particle size distributions leads to different increases of the thermal conductivity. For synthetic graphite, the PP composites filled with TIMCAL Timrex® KS500 reached the highest value of thermal conductivity of 0.52 W/(m·K) at 10 vol% loading, whereas this composite was not electrical conductive. Furthermore, the influence of a styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene block copolymer (SEBS) based impact modifier on the mechanical properties of PP filled with 80 wt% of different synthetic graphites was investigated. For that the proportion of SEBS in the PP component was varied systematically. The conductivities were influenced by the type of graphite and the content of impact modifier. The results indicate that the impact strength of the composite containing TIMCAL Timrex® KS300-1250 can be increased by approx. 100 % when replacing 50 wt% of the PP component by SEBS.

2018, Baeva, M.

The work is concerned with the Transfer Matrix Method for solving the steady-state Schrödinger equation applied for a unified evaluation of the emission current density from non-refractory cathodes. The method is applicable to arbitrary shapes of the potential barrier and its transmission probability is obtained without any analytical approximations. The Fermi-Dirac distribution for the free electrons in the metal is considered as a supply function. The results, obtained for a work function of the cathode material of 4.5 eV over a wide range of values of the surface temperature and the electric field strength, clearly show a growing deviation from those obtained by the classical Jeffreys-Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation with the increase of the electric field strength. Preliminary results are obtained to demonstrate the applicability of the Transfer Matrix method to the evaluation of the ion-assisted electron emission. A significant local enhancement of the emission current density is obtained as a result of the presence of an ion at a fixed position near the metal surface. The effect becomes very strongly pronounced at an appropriate value of the electric field strength, for which a resonant ion contribution appears.

2017, Wang, Tao, Li, Peining, Chigrin, Dmitry N., Giles, Alexander J., Bezares, Francisco J., Glembocki, Orest J., Caldwell, Joshua D., Taubner, Thomas

A conventional thermal emitter exhibits a broad emission spectrum with a peak wavelength depending upon the operation temperature. Recently, narrowband thermal emission was realized with periodic gratings or single microstructures of polar crystals supporting distinct optical modes. Here, we exploit the coupling of adjacent phonon-polaritonic nanostructures, demonstrating experimentally that the nanometer-scale gaps can control the thermal emission frequency while retaining emission line widths as narrow as 10 cm-1. This was achieved by using deeply subdiffractional bowtie-shaped silicon carbide nanoantennas. Infrared far-field reflectance spectroscopy, near-field optical nanoimaging, and full-wave electromagnetic simulations were employed to prove that the thermal emission originates from strongly localized surface phonon-polariton resonances of nanoantenna structures. The observed narrow emission line widths and exceptionally small modal volumes provide new opportunities for the user-design of near- and far-field radiation patterns for advancements in infrared spectroscopy, sensing, signaling, communications, coherent thermal emission, and infrared photodetection. © 2017 American Chemical Society.

2017, Socher, Robert, Krause, Beate, Pötschke, Petra

The aim of this study was to decrease the electrical percolation threshold of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) in a polyamide 12 matrix by the use of additives. Different kinds of additives were selected which either interact with the π-system of the MWCNTs (imidazolium based ionic liquid (IL) and perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA)) or improve the MWCNT wettability (cyclic butylene terephthalate, CBT). The composites were melt mixed using a DACA microcompounder. The electrical percolation threshold for PA12/MWCNT without additives, measured on compression molded plates, was found between 2.0 and 2.25 wt%. With all used additives, a significant reduction of the electrical percolation threshold could be achieved. Whereas the addition of IL and CBT resulted in MWCNT percolation at around 1.0 wt%, a slightly higher percolation threshold between 1.0 and 1.5 wt% was found for PTCDA as an additive. Interestingly, the electrical resistivity at higher loadings was decreased by nearly two decades when using CBT and one decade after application of PTCDA, whereas IL did not contribute to lower values in this range. In all cases macrodispersion as assessed by light microscopy was not improved and even worse as compared to non-modified composites. In summary, the results illustrate that these kinds of additives are able to improve the performance of PA12 based MWCNT nanocomposites.

2016, Röben, B., Wienold, M., Schrottke, L., Grahn, H.T.

The far-field distribution of the emission intensity of terahertz (THz) quantumcascade lasers (QCLs) frequently exhibits multiple lobes instead of a single-lobed Gaussian distribution. We show that such multiple lobes can result from selfinterference related to the typically large beam divergence of THz QCLs and the presence of an inevitable cryogenic operation environment including optical windows. We develop a quantitative model to reproduce the multiple lobes. We also demonstrate how a single-lobed far-field distribution can be achieved.

2016, Kessler, Monty, Godemann, Christian, Spannenberg, Anke, Beweries, Torsten

The crystal structures of two ansa-titanocene tri-fluoro-methane-sulfonate complexes bearing the Me2Si(C5Me4)2 ligand are reported, namely [di-methylbis-(η5-tetra-methyl-cyclo-penta-dien-yl)silane](tri-fluoro-methane-sulfonato-κ2O,O')titanium(III) toluene monosolvate, [Ti(CF3O3S)(C20H30Si)]·C7H8, 1, and chlorido-[di-methyl-bis-(η5-tetra-methyl-cyclo-penta-dien-yl)silane](tri-fluoro-methane-sulfonato-κO)titanium(IV), [Ti(CF3O3S)(C20H30Si)Cl], 2. Both complexes display a bent metallocene unit, the metal atom being coordinated in a distorted tetra-hedral geometry, with the tri-fluoro-methane-sulfonate anion acting as a bidentate or monodentate ligand in 1 and 2, respectively. In 1, weak π-π stacking inter-actions involving the toluene solvent mol-ecules [centroid-to-centroid distance = 3.9491 (11) Å] are observed.

2017, Michel, Eric, Belkacem, Kevin, Samadi, Reza, de Assis Peralta, Raphael, Renié, Christian, Abed, Mahfoudh, Lin, Guangyuan, Christensen-Dalsgaard, Jørgen, Houdek, Günter, Handberg, Rasmus, Gizon, Laurent, Burston, Raymond, Nagashima, Kaori, Pallé, Pere, Poretti, Ennio, Rainer, Monica, Mistò, Angelo, Panzera, Maria Rosa, Roth, Markus, Monteiro, Mário J. P. F. G., Cunha, Margarida S., Ferreira, João Miguel T. S.

The growing amount of seismic data available from space missions (SOHO, CoRoT, Kepler, SDO,…) but also from ground-based facilities (GONG, BiSON, ground-based large programmes…), stellar modelling and numerical simulations, creates new scientific perspectives such as characterizing stellar populations in our Galaxy or planetary systems by providing model-independent global properties of stars such as mass, radius, and surface gravity within several percent accuracy, as well as constraints on the age. These applications address a broad scientific community beyond the solar and stellar one and require combining indices elaborated with data from different databases (e.g. seismic archives and ground-based spectroscopic surveys). It is thus a basic requirement to develop a simple and effcient access to these various data resources and dedicated tools. In the framework of the European project SpaceInn (FP7), several data sources have been developed or upgraded. The Seismic Plus Portal has been developed, where synthetic descriptions of the most relevant existing data sources can be found, as well as tools allowing to localize existing data for given objects or period and helping the data query. This project has been developed within the Virtual Observatory (VO) framework. In this paper, we give a review of the various facilities and tools developed within this programme. The SpaceInn project (Exploitation of Space Data for Innovative Helio- and Asteroseismology) has been initiated by the European Helio- and Asteroseismology Network (HELAS).

2016, Stiller, M., Barzola-Quiquia, J., Esquinazi, P., Spemann, D., Meijer, J., Lorenz, M., Grundmann, M.

The temperature and field dependence of the magnetization of epitaxial, undoped anatase TiO2 thin films on SrTiO3 substrates was investigated. Low-energy ion irradiation was used to modify the surface of the films within a few nanometers, yet with high enough energy to produce oxygen and titanium vacancies. The as-prepared thin film shows ferromagnetism which increases after irradiation with low-energy ions. An optimal and clear magnetic anisotropy was observed after the first irradiation, opposite to the expected form anisotropy. Taking into account the experimental parameters, titanium vacancies as di-Frenkel pairs appear to be responsible for the enhanced ferromagnetism and the strong anisotropy observed in our films. The magnetic impurities concentrations was measured by particle-induced X-ray emission with ppm resolution. They are ruled out as a source of the observed ferromagnetism before and after irradiation.