Impact of Surface States in Graphene/-Si Schottky Diodes.

Graphene-silicon Schottky diodes are intriguing devices that straddle the border between classical models and two-dimensional ones. Many papers have been published in recent years studying their operation based on the classical model developed for metal-silicon Schottky diodes. However, the results obtained for diode parameters vary widely in some cases showing very large deviations with respect to the expected range.

Complex Phase Behavior of GUVs Containing Different Sphingomyelins.

Understanding the lateral organization of biological membranes plays a key role on the road to fully appreciate the physiological functions of this fundamental barrier between the inside and outside regions of a cell. Ternary lipid bilayers composed of a high and a low melting temperature lipid and cholesterol represent a model system that mimics some of the important thermodynamical features of much more complex lipid mixtures such as those found in mammal membranes. The phase diagram of these ternary mixtures can be studied exploiting fluorescence microscopy in giant unilamellar vesicles, and it is typically expected to give rise, for specific combinations of composition and temperature, to regions of two-phase coexistence and a region with three-phase coexistence, namely, the liquid-ordered, liquid-disordered, and solid phases.

Interplay between structure and relaxation in polyurea networks: the point of view from a novel method of cooperativity analysis of dielectric response.

The influence of structural constraints on the relaxation dynamics of three polyurea networks with a varying degree of crosslinking, has been studied by means of a thorough analysis of broadband dielectric spectroscopy measurements. Two different relaxation processes are observed, namely, a fast process involving the soft poly(propylene oxide) chains, and a slower and much broader process associated with the immediate surroundings of the hard crosslinkers. Microphase separation in soft and hard domains characterizes the systems in the presence of hydrogen bonding.

Cooperativity in plastic crystals.

A statistical mechanical model previously adopted for the analysis of the α-relaxation in structural glass formers is rederived within a general theoretical framework originally developed for systems approaching the ideal glassy state. The interplay between nonexponentiality and cooperativity is reconsidered in the light of energy landscape concepts. The method is used to estimate the cooperativity in orientationally disordered crystals, either from the analysis of literature data on linear dielectric response or from the enthalpy relaxation function obtained by temperature-modulated calorimetry.

Cooperativity at the glass transition: A perspective from facilitation on the analysis of relaxation in modulated calorimetry.

The glass transition region in nonconfined polymeric and low-molecular-weight supercooled liquids is probed by temperature-modulated calorimetry at a frequency of 3.3 mHz. From the distribution of relaxation times derived by analyzing the complex heat capacity, the number N_{α} of cooperatively rearranging units is estimated.

Method for estimating the cooperativity length in polymers.

The problem of estimating the size of the cooperatively rearranging regions (CRRs) in supercooled polymeric melts from an analysis of the α-process in ordinary relaxation experiments is addressed. The mechanism whereby a CRR changes its configuration is viewed as consisting of two distinct steps: a reduced number of monomers reaches initially an activated state, allowing for some local rearrangement; then, the subsequent regression of the energy fluctuation may take place through the configurational degrees of freedom, thus allowing for further rearrangements on larger length scales. The latter are indeed those to which the well-known Donth's scheme refers.

Probing α-relaxation with nuclear magnetic resonance echo decay and relaxation: a study on nitrile butadiene rubber.

One dimensional (1)H NMR measurements have been performed to probe slow molecular motions in nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) around its calorimetric glass transition temperature Tg. The purpose is to show how software aided data analysis can extract meaningful dynamical data from these measurements. Spin-lattice relaxation time, free induction decay (FID) and magic sandwich echo (MSE) measurements have been carried out at different values of the static field, as a function of temperature.

An exact analytical solution for the evolution of a dipole-dipole interacting system under spherical diffusion in magnetic resonance experiments.

A model system consisting of an isotropic ensemble of spin pairs, where dipole-dipole interaction is assumed to be effective only within each pair, is considered. The ideal segment connecting the spins in a couple has a fixed length but is free to rotate following a diffusion dynamics. This allows the free induction decay (FID) to be derived non-perturbatively by solving the appropriate Dyson equation associated to the problem.

Restricted dynamics in oriented semicrystalline polymers: poly(vinilydene fluoride).

The effect of confinement by crystals on the α relaxation, observed by dielectric broadband spectroscopy, in isotropic as well as in oriented semicrystalline poly(vinilydene fluoride), is analyzed on the basis of a new thermodynamic model. In both samples, it has been found that the average free-energy barrier, ΔF, for conformational rearrangements is of the same order of the dispersion barrier heights, δ(ΔF), around ΔF, i.e.

Heterogeneous association in methanol-carbon tetrachloride mixtures.

A lattice model developed for the calculation of the equilibrium distribution of molecular clusters in methanol-carbon tetrachloride mixtures is modified in order to account for an entropy component associated to the binding of CCl(4) with the nondonating end of methanol clusters. This entropy contribution is shown to affect significantly the H-bonding energy estimates based on the use of the model for the analysis of both the static dielectric response and the Raman O-H stretching spectra of these mixtures. The agreement with some results from numerical simulations turns out to be improved.