Volume 42, Nº 7 (2016)

The design of a new permanent-magnet trap for ultracold neutron storage in an experiment on determining the neutron lifetime is presented. Particular attention is paid in this new trap design to the neutron confinement system. Optimization of this system provides an opportunity to raise the strength of the confinement magnetic field and thus increase considerably the number of neutrons stored within the trap and the statistical accuracy of neutron lifetime measurements.

Proton (wet atmosphere) and electron (reduced graphene oxide) conductivities can be observed in graphene oxide films. The field effect in a graphene oxide transistor for different conductivity types has been discovered and investigated.

The possibility of emergency cooling of an overheated heat transfer surface using nanofluids in the case of a boiling crisis is explored by means of synchronous recording of changes of main heat transfer parameters of boiling water over time. Two nanofluids are tested, which are derived from a mixture of natural aluminosilicates (AlSi-7) and titanium dioxide (NF-8). It is found that the introduction of a small portions of nanofluid into a boiling coolant (distilled water) in a state of film boiling (t_heater > 500°C) can dramatically decrease the heat transfer surface temperature to 130–150°C, which corresponds to a transition to a safe nucleate boiling regime without affecting the specific heat flux. The fact that this regime is kept for a long time at a specific heat load exceeding the critical heat flux for water and t_heater = 125–130°C is particularly important. This makes it possible to prevent a potential accident emergency (heater burnout and failure of the heat exchanger) and to ensure the smooth operation of the equipment.

The spectra of turbulent jet temperature pulsations at 1–40 Hz frequencies have been experimentally studied based on high-speed thermography of the water boundary layer: the region where an impact jet interacts with a surface transparent to IR radiation, as well as the near-wall region where two submerged jets interact in a disc-shaped tee-joint. It has been indicated that the slopes of the spectra of impact submerged jet turbulent pulsations are close to–5/3 and a double inertial interval exists in a quasi-2D turbulent flow that is formed when two jets mix.

A new procedure for determining the sensitivity of running-fluid NMR magnetometers is considered. The procedure is based on mathematical processing of experimental data that are related to measuring the gradient of a nutation-line slope at the point at which an inverted NMR signal crosses zero. The procedure allows one to determine the sensitivity of running-fluid NMR magnetometers for resonance frequencies of magnetic-field measurements within a range of 0.5 Hz to 840 MHz.

The first experimental results demonstrating that the carrier mobility in the AlGaN/GaN 2D channel of transistor structures (AlGaN/GaN-HEMT) is correlated with the manner in which the nanomaterial is organized and also with the operation reliability of transistor parameters are presented. It is shown that improving the nature of organization of the nanomaterials in AlGaN/GaN-HEMT structures, evaluated by the multifractal parameter characterizing the extent to which a nanomaterial is disordered (local symmetry breaking) is accompanied by a significant, several-fold increase in the electron mobility in the 2D channel and in the reliability of parameters of transistors fabricated from these structures.

Iron magnetic circuit residual magnetization may contribute as much as several Gs to the magnetic field in charged-particle accelerators. This contribution depends on the magnetization “history.” It is not taken into account in most of the existing software that uses the main magnetization curve. Therefore, an error in field calculations usually exceeds 1%, which is unacceptable for accelerators. In this article, a simple phenomenological magnetic-hysteresis model that is suitable for numerical computations is suggested. Approximations based on the proposed model are compared to the results of measurements on partial hysteresis cycles in a steel ring.

A production technology of thin CuIn_0.95Ga_0.05Se₂ films has been developed based on the method of two-stage selenization of CuIn_0.95Ga_0.05 precursor by a reactive component (selenium) in a carrier gas (nitrogen) flow. The morphology and structure of obtained films were studied by electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction techniques. The spectral dependence of the optical absorption coefficient was measured.

A new approach to solving the problem of restoring the initial impurity concentration distribution from data of ion sputter depth profiling is proposed. The algorithm of impurity profile restoration is based on using an artificial neural network with the input signals representing surface concentrations of impurity determined at sequential moments of sputter depth profiling. The artificial neural network is trained for various depths and thicknesses of the impurity-containing layer and various values of parameters of the adopted model equation of diffusion-like ion mixing.

Results of developing and testing graphene-based sensors capable of detecting protein molecules are presented. The biosensor operation was checked using an immunochemical system comprising fluorescein dye and monoclonal antifluorescein antibodies. The sensor detects fluorescein concentration on a level of 1–10 ng/mL and bovine serum albumin–fluorescein conjugate on a level of 1–5 ng/mL. The proposed device has good prospects for use for early diagnostics of various diseases.

The phenomenon of noise-induced binary synchronization has been discovered in two independent dynamical systems generating aperiodic binary signals under the action of a common noise source. The presence of a synchronous regime was confirmed by the calculation of Lyapunov exponents for the two systems. The mechanism of development of the noise-induced binary synchronization regime has been found. A relation of the observed regime to binary generalized synchronization is established.

Emission spectra of glow-discharge plasma in Ar–He gas mixture have been measured. It is established that the introduction of Al₂O₃ dust particles into plasma significantly changes the relative intensities of spectral lines.

A molecular beam epitaxy technology of in situ passivated SiN/AlN/GaN heterostructures with an ultrathin AlN barrier has been developed. Based on these structures, normally off transistors with maximum current density of about 1 A/mm, saturation voltage of about 1 V, transconductance up to 350 mS/mm, and breakdown voltage above 60 V have been fabricated, in which the drain and gate current collapse phenomena are virtually absent.

A method of ion plasma deposition is proposed for obtaining thin multicomponent films with continuously graded composition in depth of the film. The desired composition–depth profile is obtained by varying the working gas pressure during deposition in the presence of an additional adsorbing screen in the drift space between a sputtered target and substrate. Efficiency of the proposed method is confirmed by Monte Carlo simulation of the deposition of thin films of Ba_xSr_1–xTiO₃ (BSTO) solid solution. It is demonstrated that, during sputtering of a Ba_0.3Sr_0.7TiO₃ target, the parameter of composition stoichiometry in the growing BSTO film varies in the interval of x = 0.3–0.65 when the gas pressure is changed within 2–60 Pa.

The transition from coherence to incoherence in an ensemble of nonlocally coupled logistic maps is considered. Chimera states of two types (amplitude and phase) are found. The mechanism and conditions of their appearance are determined.