"Mono No Aware" di Ken Liu: proposta di traduzione

Il lavoro consiste della traduzione di "Mono No Aware", racconto breve fantascientifico scritto da Ken Liu, vincitore degli Hugo Awards 2013, e dell'analisi della stessa. Nelle prime due sezioni dell'elaborato ho presentato l'autore, parlando dei suoi studi e dei suoi lavori, e il testo, parlando dei suoi temi e delle sue particolarità. Ho poi proseguito presentando la traduzione, ovvero i criteri su cui mi sono basato affinché il lavoro fosse di buona qualità. In seguito ho inserito la traduzione già corretta e revisionata e dopo di essa il commento, in cui ho evidenziato i punti problematici e le soluzioni trovate, corredate di esempi. Nelle conclusioni ho scritto le mie riflessioni sul lavoro eseguito, e infine ho aggiunto la sitografia e la bibliografia, seguite dal testo originale in appendice.

Cadmium Telluride Magic-Sized Clusters and Superstructures

The aim of the present work is to gain new insights into the formation mechanism of CdTe magic-sized clusters (MSCs) at low temperatures, as well as on their evolution towards 1D and 2D nanostructures and assemblies thereof, under mild reaction conditions. The reaction system included toluene as solvent, octylamine as primary alkylamine, trioctylphosphine-Te as chalcogenide precursor and Cd(oleate)2 as metal precursor. UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to analyze samples containing concentrations of octylamine of 0.2, 0.8 and 2 M: well-defined, sharp absorption peaks were observed, with peaks maxima at 449, 417 and 373 nm respectively, and 1D structures with a string-like appearance were displayed in the TEM images. Investigating peaks growth, step-wise peaks shift to lower energies and reverse, step-wise peak shift to higher energies allowed to propose a model to describe the system, based on interconnected [CdTe]x cluster units originating an amine-capped, 1-dimensional, polymer-like structure, in which different degrees of electronic coupling between the clusters are held responsible for the different absorption transitions. The many parameters involved in the synthesis procedure were then investigated, starting from the Cd:Te ratio, the role of the amine, the use of different phosphine-Te and Cd precursors. The results allowed to gain important information of the reaction mechanism, as well as on the different behavior of the species featuring the sharp absorption peaks in each case. Using Cd(acetate)2 as metal precursor, 2D structures were found to evolve from the MSCs solutions over time, and their tendency to self-assemble was then analyzed employing two amines of different alkyl chain length, octylamine (C-8) and oleylamine (C-18). Their co-presence led to the formation of free-floating triangular nanosheets, which tend to readily aggregate if only octylamine is present in solution.