Applied Physics A 

About: Applied Physics A is an academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Thin film & Laser. It has an ISSN identifier of 0947-8396. Over the lifetime, 19775 publications have been published receiving 370231 citations. The journal is also known as: Applied physics. A, Materials science & processing.

Femtosecond, picosecond and nanosecond laser ablation of solids

Abstract: Laser ablation of solid targets by 0.2–5000 ps Ti: Sapphire laser pulses is studied. Theoretical models and qualitative explanations of experimental results are presented. Advantages of femtosecond lasers for precise material processing are discussed and demonstrated.

Lithium niobate: Summary of physical properties and crystal structure

Abstract: Ferroelectric lithium niobate (LiNbO3) is widely used in integrated and guided-wave optics because of its favorable optical, piezoelectric, electro-optic, elastic, photoelastic, and photorefractive properties. However, detailed summaries of its pertinent physical properties and crystal structure are not readily available. In this tutorial paper, the important tensor physical properties and their mathematical descriptions are compiled and presented. The essential features of the structure of lithium niobate, including its hexagonal and rhombohedral unit cells, are illustrated and the principal (Cartesian) axes used in the description of the anisotropic properties are specified relative to the crystal structure. Errors in property coefficient values and structure information that have been propagated in the literature are corrected.

Large-scale purification of single-wall carbon nanotubes: process, product, and characterization

Abstract: We describe, in detail, a readily scalable purification process capable of handling single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT) material in large batches. Characterization of the resulting material by SEM, TEM, XRD, Raman scattering, and TGA shows it to be highly pure. Resistivity measurements on freestanding mats of the purified tubes are also reported. We also report progress in scaling up SWNT production by the dual pulsed laser vaporization process. These successes enable the production of gram per day quantities of highly pure SWNT, which should greatly facilitate investigation of material properties intrinsic to the nanotubes.

Mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes

Abstract: A variety of outstanding experimental results on the elucidation of the elastic properties of carbon nanotubes are fast appearing. These are based mainly on the techniques of high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) to determine the Young’s moduli of single-wall nanotube bundles and multi-walled nanotubes, prepared by a number of methods. These results are confirming the theoretical predictions that carbon nanotubes have high strength plus extraordinary flexibility and resilience. As well as summarising the most notable achievements of theory and experiment in the last few years, this paper explains the properties of nanotubes in the wider context of materials science and highlights the contribution of our research group in this rapidly expanding field. A deeper understanding of the relationship between the structural order of the nanotubes and their mechanical properties will be necessary for the development of carbon-nanotube-based composites. Our research to date illustrates a qualitative relationship between the Young’s modulus of a nanotube and the amount of disorder in the atomic structure of the walls. Other exciting results indicate that composites will benefit from the exceptional mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes, but that the major outstanding problem of load transfer efficiency must be overcome before suitable engineering materials can be produced.

Resistance Switching Memories Are Memristors

Abstract: All 2-terminal non-volatile memory devices based on resistance switching are memristors, regardless of the device material and physical operating mechanisms. They all exhibit a distinctive “fingerprint” characterized by a pinched hysteresis loop confined to the first and the third quadrants of the v–i plane whose contour shape in general changes with both the amplitude and frequency of any periodic “sine-wave-like” input voltage source, or current source. In particular, the pinched hysteresis loop shrinks and tends to a straight line as frequency increases. Though numerous examples of voltage vs. current pinched hysteresis loops have been published in many unrelated fields, such as biology, chemistry, physics, etc., and observed from many unrelated phenomena, such as gas discharge arcs, mercury lamps, power conversion devices, earthquake conductance variations, etc., we restrict our examples in this tutorial to solid-state and/or nano devices where copious examples of published pinched hysteresis loops abound. In particular, we sampled arbitrarily, one example from each year between the years 2000 and 2010, to demonstrate that the memristor is a device that does not depend on any particular material, or physical mechanism. For example, we have shown that spin-transfer magnetic tunnel junctions are examples of memristors. We have also demonstrated that both bipolar and unipolar resistance switching devices are memristors.