Vol 45, No 9 (2018)

It is shown that low-temperature plasma initiated in liquid-phase media in the discharge gap between electrodes can efficiently decompose hydrogen-containing molecules of organic compounds with the formation of gaseous products in which the hydrogen fraction is more than 90% (according to gas chromatography data). Preliminary estimations of the energy efficiency calculated taking into account the hydrogen and source material combustion heat and electric power expenditures showed the efficiency of the order of 60–70% depending on the source mixture composition. The discharge voltage and current were theoretically calculated in the process simulation whose data are in agreement with experimental results.

Some principal aspects of silicate glass cutting by controlled laser through thermal cleavage are considered. In particular, it is shown that the cutting speed in the case of ytterbium fiber laser radiation with a wavelength of 1.065 μm lying in fact in the glass transmission range (more precisely, in the low absorption region) depends linearly on the laser power. It is shown that the glass end face takes various geometrical shapes under various conditions of bulk heating and cooling. Therefore, to obtain a homogeneous end face, it is required to stabilize both the laser radiation power and the laser beam speed at a corresponding laser beam geometry in the cut region. Methods for obtaining various cross section shapes of the glass end face and methods for obtaining blunt edges of end faces are presented.

It is shown that the effective Lande splitting factor or g-factor of electrons localized on heterostructures such as small quantum dots is always formed as a difference of two values. The first of themrelates to thematerial of the dot itself and critically depends on its sizes and shape; the second one relates to the barriermaterial (surrounding matrix); therewith, the dependence on the latter does not disappear at any dot sizes. The known (k, p) Kane theory defining the renormalization of electron mass and g-factor in bulk semiconductors, is modified for small quantum dots with “incomplete” band structure. Specific calculations of the electron ground state energy and g-factor are performed for the covariant InAs/AlSb heterostructure not localizing holes and, hence, capable of forming pure one-electron states (prototypes of solid-state qubits).