High performance and gate-controlled GeSe/HfS2 negative differential resistance device

A novel and astonishing p-GeSe/n-HfS2 NDR device shows a high value for the peak-to-valley current ratio in the range of 5.8.

Morphological and optical investigation of 2D material-based ternary nanocomposite: Bi2O3/MgO/GO synthesized by a co-precipitation technique

A ternary oxide nanocomposite based on Bi2O3/MgO/GO was prepared using a co-precipitation method taking into consideration of preparing the material for photoconductive device applications.

Supercooled nano-droplets of water confined in hydrophobic rubber

Hydrophobic elastomers are capable of absorbing a small amount of water that forms droplets around hydrophilic sites. These systems allow the study of confinement effects by a hydrophobic environment on the dynamics and thermodynamic behaviour of water molecules. The freezing-melting properties and the dynamics of water inside nano-droplets in butyl rubber are affected, as revealed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and deuterium nuclear magnetic resonance (²H-NMR). Upon cooling down, all water crystalizes with a bimodal droplet population (d_a = 3.4 nm and d_b = 4.4 nm) in a temperature range associated with the droplet size distribution. However, the melting temperature is not shifted according to the Gibbs-Thomson equation. The relative decrease of the ²H-NMR longitudinal magnetization is not a single exponential and, by inverse Laplace transformation, it was deduced to be bimodal in agreement with the DSC measurements (T_1,a ∼ 10 ms and T_1,b ∼ 200 ms). The deduced correlation time of molecular reorientation is longer than that of bulk water and the behaviour with temperature follows the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann (VFT) equations with a changing fragility as the droplet size is reduced when reducing hydration.

Freezing, melting and dynamics of supercooled water confined in porous glass

The freezing, melting and dynamics of supercooled water at different hydration of controlled porous glass with mean pore sizes 10 nm, 30 nm, 50 nm and 70 nm are studied using differential scanning calorimetry and deuteruim nuclear magnetic resonance (2H-NMR). For saturated samples, the melting temperature follows the Gibbs-Thomson relation despite a clear linear decrease of the melting enthalpy when the transition is shifted due to confinement. For partially filled porous glasses the crystallization and melting temperatures as well as enthalpies are lower than for the saturated samples.2H-NMR confirms the existence of a non-crystallizable part of water adsorbed on the surface of pores. At room temperature, spin-lattice relaxation rate (1/T1) is proportional to the inverse of the mean pore size indicating that the relaxation is governed by a surface limited process. At low temperature relaxation rate follows the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann (VFT) relation.