We have used scanning tunneling microscopy to examine N-terminated Cu(111) surfaces. For substaturation N coverages, elongated rectangular islands are formed, the internal structures of which are in good agreement with a model proposed in a previous LEED study. These islands sufficiently perturb the surface so as to reflect surface state electrons in the adjacent clean surface regions. This results in the observation of electron standing wave patterns. We have simultaneously observed both the electron wave patterns and atomic resolution. We have also shown that under conditions of high electric fields, the N atoms at the surface can be forced down into the second layer with Cu atoms liberated from the first layer to form single layer high islands.

Plasma sputter deposition experiments and simple molecular dynamics calculations are performed for highlighting the effects of plasma ions and kinetic energy of palladium atoms on the morphology of thin films. A transition between cluster and continuous film growth is observed. It is attributed to the kinetic energy of the depositing sputtered palladium atoms and to high binding energy trapping sites resulting from the effects of ions incident on the surface during deposition. These high binding energy trapping sites act as additional nucleation centres that are allowed to be visited by the diffusing Pd atoms.

We have performed Monte-Carlo simulations of slow electrons impinging on semi-infinite aluminum and copper in the energy range 0.5–4 keV. We present results for the backscattering coefficients, mean penetration depths and stopping profiles. Our results for the backscattering coefficients agree well with the experimental data within the limits of the statistical accuracy. The slight discrepancy between simulated and experimental results regarding the mean penetration depth is discussed.

Simple formula for microscopical estimation of the Debye temperature for polyatomic crystals is reported. It is based on the calculation of the force constants for arbitrary pair of interacting atoms by means of the phenomenological spectroscopy data for oscillation frequencies of homonuclear molecules. For that purporse a special combinative rule is suggested. The table of necessary parameters for calculation of Debye temperatures of arbitrary crystals and solid solutions is included.

A one-dimensional radiation magneto-hydrodynamics code coupled to an atomic kinetics code was developed, whose simulation results were compared with the experimental observations. Based on the simulation results, the physical processes and physical scheme of Z-pinch implosions were studied. During the implosion phase, the plasmas are heated and ionized, and before the stagnation, the greatly ionized plasmas of high temperature and high density are created. Then the continuously rising density leads to the recombination of plasmas and the emission of an intense X-ray pulse. Our simulation shows that there are two necessary conditions for producing high yield of K-shell energy. Firstly, highly ionized plasmas must be prepared before the beginning of recombination. Secondly, the density of the plasmas which are in recombination phase should be high enough to make the plasmas recombine with a large rate so that more internal energy can be drawn before stagnation. As another result of our study, the atomic processes play a role in cooling free electrons during the recombination phase.

The tunable operation of an all solid-state diode pumped Raman laser on a Yb:KYW crystal is demonstrated. The possibility of a simultaneous tunable operation for laser generation in the 1029–1032 nm range and Stokes generation in the 1136–1139 nm range is shown. A slope efficiency of 12% and a maximum average power of 14.5 mW were achieved for the Stokes output.

Organic filed-effect transistor (OFETs) based on polycrystalline “octithiophene” has been realized. The current-voltage characteristics at low drain voltage has been used to derive the mobility of organic field effects transistors (OFETs). It appears that the data must be corrected for the substantial source and drain contact resistance. The carrier mobility is found to increase quasi linearly with gate voltage at room temperature. The temperature dependent measurements show that the mobility is thermally activated and becomes practically temperature independent at low temperatures. A model based on trapping mechanism, in which it is assumed that charge transport is limited by grain boundaries, has been used to describe the carrier mobility in polycrystalline “octithiophene” thin film transistors measured at temperatures ranging from 10 K to 300 K.

An iterative finite element technique is proposed as a numerical tool to solve Poisson's equation in coaxial system during the positive DC corona discharge. The physical - mathematical model developed by Hartmann which separates the interelectrode space in two distinct regions is adopted. The magnitude of the electric field at the ionisation-region/drift-region interface in air is now well known. It is equal to the value of the minimum ionisation field which is taken as a boundary condition or a convergence criterion of space charge at this border. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been tested through its application to the coaxial system where the electric field has been measured with the linear biased probe. The obtained results are in agreement with those obtained experimentally. The classical Kaptzov's assumption, largely used in the literature, is also discussed in this work in terms of the corona wire radius. The calculated electric field at the corona wire surface, with and without resorting to the Kaptzov's assumption, shows that, for large wire radius the assumption is valid. However, for very thin wires the disagreement with the measurements values is important.

Experiments were carried out to examine convection in a liquid fuel film subjected to flame spreading over the film. The flow in the liquid phase indicates the presence of vortices which are intimately associated to a pulsating regime of flame spread. Results bore out the close link between this regime and vortex structure generation in the liquid film. Thorough description of the core vortex structure shows how liquid motion controls the flame spread rate at a given temperature initially assigned to the liquid. Experiments were subsequently conducted over a wide range of initial liquid temperatures that directly controlled the characteristic size of liquid vortex structure. Such configurations contributed to both heat transfer evolution and a modification of the pulsating regime featuring an increase in the rate of spread.

This paper deals with the solution of inverse problems in magnetostatics. The cases the authors have broached are finding the current density or positions of air coils on the basis of magnetic field measurements. These problems are ill-posed, so regularization techniques are needed. The authors discuss the main iterative regularization principles, and the stability issues of these inverse problems. This method is applied to MRI magnets. Numerical results are presented.