Study on the properties of piezoelectric materials and manganese-based oxide perovskites /

Perovskite type piezoelectric and manganese oxide materials have gained a lot of attention in the field of device engineering. Lead zirconium titananium oxide (PbZri.iTiiOa or PZT) is a piezoelectric material widely used as sensors and actuators. Miniaturization of PZTbased devices will not only perfect many existing products, but also opens doors to new applications. Lanthanum manganese oxides Lai-iAiMnOa (A-divalent alkaline earth such as Sr, Ca or Ba) have been intensively studied for their colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) properties that make them applicable in memory cells, magnetic and pressure sensors. In this study, we fabricate PZT and LSMO(LCMO) heterostructures on SrTiOa substrates and investigate their temperature dependency of resistivity and magnetization as a function of the thickness of LSMO(LCMO) layer. The microstructure of the samples is analysed through TEM. In another set of samples, we study the effect of application of an electric field across the PZT layer that acts as an external pressure on the manganite layer. This verifies the correlation of lattice distortion with transport and magnetic properties of the CMR materials.

Investigation of molecular polarizabilities and derivatives in halomethanes

The research undertaken was to obtain absolute Raman intensities for the symmetric stretching vibrations of the methyl halides, CH3X with (X=F, CI, Br), by experiment and theory. The intensities were experimentally measured using the Ar+ ion gas laser as excitation source, a Spex 14018 double monochromator and a RCA C-31034 photomultiplier tube as detector. These intensities arise from changes in the derivative of the polarizability (8 a'), with respect to vibration along a normal coordinate (8qi). It was intended that these derivatives obtained with respect to normal coordinates would be converted to derivatives with respect to internal coordinates, for a quantitative comparison with theory. Theoretical numerical polarizability derivatives for the stretching vibrations are obtained using the following procedure. A vibration was simulated in the molecule by increasi.ng and decreasing the respective bond by the amount ±o.oosA for the C-H bonds and ±o.oIA for the C-X (X=F, CI, Br) bond. The derivative was obtained by taking the difference in the polarizability for the equilibrium geometry and the geometry when a particular bond is changed. This difference, when divided by the amount of change in each bond and the number of bonds present results in the derivative of the polarizability with respect to internal coordinate i.e., !1u/!1r. These derivatives were obtained by two methods: I} ab initio molecular orbital calculation and 2} theory of atoms in molecules (AIM) analysis. Due to errors in the experimental setup only a qualitative analysis of the results was undertaken relative to the theory. Theoretically it is predicted that the symmetric carbonhalogen stretch vibrations are more intense than the respective carbon-hydrogen stretch, but only for the methyl chloride and bromide. The carbon fluorine stretch is less intense than the carbon-hydrogen stretch, a fact which is attributed to the small size and high electronegativity of the fluorine atom. The experimental observations are seen to agree qualitatively with the theory results. It is hoped that when the experiment is repeated, a quantitative comparison can be made. The analysis by the theory of atoms in molecules, along with providing polarizabilities and polarizability derivatives, gives additional information outlined below. The theory provides a pictorial description of the main factors contributing to the molecular polarizability and polarizability derivative. These contributions are from the charge transfer and atomic dipole terms i.e., transfer of charge from one atom to another and the reorganization of atomic electronic charge distribution due to presence of an electric field. The linear relationship between polarizability and molecular volume was also observed.

Quantum Monte Carlo study of electrostatic polarizabilities of H and He atoms /

The infinitesimal differential quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) technique is used to estimate electrostatic polarizabilities of the H and He atoms up to the sixth order in the electric field perturbation. All 542 different QMC estimators of the nonzero atomic polarizabilities are derived and used in order to decrease the statistical error and to obtain the maximum efficiency of the simulations. We are confident that the estimates are "exact" (free of systematic error): the two atoms are nodeless systems, hence no fixed-node error is introduced. Furthermore, we develope and use techniques which eliminate systematic error inherent when extrapolating our results to zero time-step and large stack-size. The QMC results are consistent with published accurate values obtained using perturbation methods. The precision is found to be related to the number of perturbations, varying from 2 to 4 significant digits.

Developing a numerical inverse-theory-based extraction of orientation-dependent relaxation rates from partially- relaxed spectra

Second-rank tensor interactions, such as quadrupolar interactions between the spin- 1 deuterium nuclei and the electric field gradients created by chemical bonds, are affected by rapid random molecular motions that modulate the orientation of the molecule with respect to the external magnetic field. In biological and model membrane systems, where a distribution of dynamically averaged anisotropies (quadrupolar splittings, chemical shift anisotropies, etc.) is present and where, in addition, various parts of the sample may undergo a partial magnetic alignment, the numerical analysis of the resulting Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectra is a mathematically ill-posed problem. However, numerical methods (de-Pakeing, Tikhonov regularization) exist that allow for a simultaneous determination of both the anisotropy and orientational distributions. An additional complication arises when relaxation is taken into account. This work presents a method of obtaining the orientation dependence of the relaxation rates that can be used for the analysis of the molecular motions on a broad range of time scales. An arbitrary set of exponential decay rates is described by a three-term truncated Legendre polynomial expansion in the orientation dependence, as appropriate for a second-rank tensor interaction, and a linear approximation to the individual decay rates is made. Thus a severe numerical instability caused by the presence of noise in the experimental data is avoided. At the same time, enough flexibility in the inversion algorithm is retained to achieve a meaningful mapping from raw experimental data to a set of intermediate, model-free

Optical Properties of Sb2Te3, and Dilute Magnetic Semiconductors Sb1.97 VO.03 Te3 and Sb1.94 CrO.06 Te3

This thesis reports on the optical properties of the dilute magnetic semiconductors, Sb1.97 V 0.03 Te3 and Sb1.94Cr0.06Te3, along with the parent compound Sb2Te3' These materials develop a ferromagnetic state at low temperature with Curie temperatures of 22 K and 16 K respectively. All three samples were oriented such that the electric field vector of the light was perpendicular to the c-axis. The reflectance profile of these samples in the mid-infrared (500 to 3000 cm-1) shows a pronounced plasma edge which retracts with decreasing temperature. The far-infrared region of these samples exhibits a phonon at ~ 60 cm-1 which softens as temperature decreases. Kramers-Kronig analysis and a Drude-Lorentz model were employed to determine the optical constants of the bulk samples. The real part of the optical conductivity is shown to consist of intraband contributions at frequencies below the energy gap (~0.26 eV) and interband contributions at frequencies above the energy gap. The temperature dependence of the scattering rate show that a mix of phonon and impurity scattering are present, while the signature of traditional spin disorder (magnetic) scattering was difficult to confirm.