Analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC) is a powerful method for the characterization of polymers, biopolymers, polyelectrolytes, nanoparticles, dispersions, and other colloidal systems. The method is able to determine the molar mass, the particle size, the particle density and interaction parameters like virial coefficients and association constants. Because AUC is also a fractionation method, the determination of the molar mass distribution, the particle size distribution, and the particle density distribution is possible. A special technique, the density gradient method, allows fractionating heterogeneous samples according to their chemical nature that means being able to detect chemical heterogeneity. The book is divided into chapters concerning instrumentation, sedimentation velocity runs, density gradient runs, application examples and future developments. In particular, the detailed application chapter demonstrates the versatility and power of AUC by means of many interesting and important industrial examples. Thus the book concentrates on practical aspects rather than details of centrifugation theory.

Both authors have many years of experience in an industrial AUC research laboratory of a world leading chemical company.

The aim of this book is to explore the detectable properties of a material to the parameters of bond and non-bond involved and to clarify the interdependence of various properties. This book is composed of four parts; Part I deals with the formation and relaxation dynamics of bond and non-bond during chemisorptions with uncovering of the correlation among the chemical bond, energy band and surface potential barrier (3B) during reactions; Part II is focused on the relaxation of bonds between atoms with fewer neighbors than the ideal in bulk with unraveling of the bond order-length-strength (BOLS) correlation mechanism, which clarifies the nature difference between nanostructures and bulk of the same substance; Part III deals with the relaxation dynamics of bond under heating and compressing with revealing of rules on the temperature-resolved elastic and plastic properties of low-dimensional materials; Part IV is focused on the asymmetric relaxation dynamics of the hydrogen bond (O: H-O) and the anomalous behavior of water and ice under cooling, compressing and clustering. The target audience for this book includes scientists, engineers and practitioners in the area of surface science and nanoscience

A serendipitous discovery in nuclear physics has led to a useful tool in materials science. In the late 1950s, scientists at General Electric (among them the author) discovered that when mica is exposed to energetic charged particles (such as are emitted in radioactive decay or occur in cosmic rays), the particles leave latent tracks in the material. When such a material is chemically etched, the tracks are revealed as narrow, deep pits, whose size and shape is determined both by the particle that made the track and by the technique used in etching. It soon turned out that glass, plastics, or certain other materials can be similarly treated. This discovery paved the way not only for a new and useful method of measuring radioactivity, it has also found widespread applications in other fields, ranging from geology and materials science to archaeology and art history. Thus, for example, naturally produced tracks can be used to estimate the age of a mineral deposit or an archaeological material; and deliberately produced tracks can be used to make extremely fine filters. Fleischer presents the history of these developments and discusses the applications of the technique in a way that will be interesting to anyone with a minimal knowledge of physics.

This thesis deals with the problem of ion confinement in thermonuclear fusion devices. It is a topic of general interest, as it helps to understand via numerical simulations the ion confinement properties in complex geometries, in order to predict their behavior and maximize the performance of future fusion reactors. The main work carried out in this thesis is the improvement and exploitation of an existing simulation code called ISDEP. This code solves the so-called ion collisional transport in arbitrary plasma geometry, improving in this sense other existing codes. Additionally, it presents outstanding portability and scalability in distributed computing architectures, such as Grid or Volunteer Computing. The main physical results can be divided into two blocks. First, the study of 3D ion transport in ITER is presented. ITER is the largest fusion reactor (under construction) and most of the simulations so far assume the axis-symmetry of the device. Unfortunately, this symmetry is only an approximation because of the discrete number of magnetic coils used. ISDEP has shown, using a simple model of the 3D magnetic field, how the ion confinement is affected by this symmetry breaking. Secondly, ISDEP has been applied successfully to the study of fast ion dynamics in fusion plasmas. The fast ions, with energies much larger than the thermal energy, are a product of the device's heating system. Thus, a numerical predictive tool can be used to improve the heating efficiency. ISDEP has been combined with the FAFNER2 code to study such ions in stellarator (TJ-II, LHD) and tokamak (ITER) geometries. It has also been validated by experimental results. In particular, comparisons with the CNPA diagnostic in the TJ-II stellarator are remarkable.

Porous media are ubiquitous throughout nature and in many modern technologies. Because of their omnipresent nature, porous media are studied to one degree or another in almost all branches of science and engineering. This text is an outgrowth of a two-semester graduate course on multiscale porous media offered to students in applied math, physics, chemistry, engineering (civil, chemical, mechanical, agricultural), and environmental and soil science. The text is largely based on Dr Cushmans' groups efforts to build a rational approach to studying porous media over a hierarchy of spatial and temporal scales. No other text covers porous media on scales ranging from angstroms to miles. Nor does any other text develop and use such a diversity of tools for their study. The text is designed to be self-contained, as it presents all relevant mathematical and physical constructs.

Group theoretical concepts elucidate fundamental physical phenomena, including excitation spectra of quantum systems and complex geometrical structures such as molecules and crystals. These concepts are extensively covered in numerous textbooks. The aim of the present monograph is to illuminate more subtle aspects featuring group theory for quantum mechanics, that is, the concept of dynamical symmetry. Dynamical symmetry groups complement the conventional groups: their elements induce transitions between states belonging to different representations of the symmetry group of the Hamiltonian. Dynamical symmetry appears as a hidden symmetry in the hydrogen atom and quantum rotator problem, but its main role is manifested in nano and meso systems. Such systems include atomic clusters, large molecules, quantum dots attached to metallic electrodes, etc. They are expected to be the building blocks of future quantum electronic devices and information transmitting algorithms. Elucidation of the electronic properties of such systems is greatly facilitated by applying concepts of dynamical group theory.

An innovative, unified, and comprehensive treatment of the geometric and electronic structure of surfaces. The book emphasizes fundamental aspects, such as the principles of surface crystallography and thermodynamics, the forces driving the rearrangement of the atoms, and the relationship between bonding and electronic structure. It especially illuminates the relationship between surface orientation, chemistry, energetics, and the resulting properties. Principles of Surface Physics develops general physical arguments and methods that enable readers to analyse novel surfaces and interfaces of new materials. This makes the book an indispensable reference to all those studying growth, surface-molecule interactions, self-assembled structures, and materials engineering.

A very comprehensive book, enabling the reader to understand the basic formalisms used in electronic structure determination and particularly the "Muffin Tin Orbitals" methods. The latest developments are presented, providing a very detailed description of the "Full Potential" schemes. This book will provide a real state of the art, since almost all of the contributions on formalism have not been, and will not be, published elsewhere. This book will become a standard reference volume. Moreover, applications in very active fields of today's research on magnetism are presented. A wide spectrum of such questions is covered by this book. For instance, the paper on interlayer exchange coupling should become a "classic," since there has been fantastic experimental activity for 10 years and this can be considered to be the "final" theoretical answer to this question. This work has never been presented in such a complete form.

The workshop on "Optical Properties of Low Dimensional Silicon sL Structures" was held in Meylan, France on March, I yd, 1993. The workshop took place inside the facilities of France Telecom- CNET. Around 45 leading scientists working on this rapidly moving field were in attendance. Principal support was provided by the Advanced Research Workshop Program of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). French Delegation a l'Armement and CNET gave also a small financial grant, the organisational part being undertaken by the SEE and CNET. There is currently intense research activity worldwide devoted to the optical properties of low dimensional silicon structures. This follow the recent discovery of efficient visible photoluminescence (PL) from highly porous silicon. This workshop was intended to bring together all the leading European scientists and laboratories in order to reveal the state of the art and to open new research fields on this subject. A large number of invited talks took place (12) together with regular contribution (20). The speakers were asked to leave nearly 1/3 of the time to the discussion with the audience, and that promoted both formal and informal discussions between the participants.

The present work offers a snapshot of the state-of-the-art of crystallographic, analytical, and computational methods used in modern drug design and development. Topics discussed include: drug design against complex systems (membrane proteins, cell surface receptors, epigenetic targets, and ribosomes); modulation of protein-protein interactions; the impact of small molecule structures in drug discovery and the application of concepts such as molecular geometry, conformation, and flexibility to drug design; methodologies for understanding and characterizing protein states and protein-ligand interactions during the drug design process; and monoclonal antibody therapies. These methods are illustrated through their application to problems of medical and biological significance, such as viral and bacterial infections, diabetes, autoimmune disease, and CNS diseases. As approaches to drug discovery have changed over time, so have the methodologies used to solve the varied, new, and difficult problems encountered in drug discovery. In recent years we have seen great progress in the fields of genetics, biology, chemistry, and medicine, but there are still many unmet medical needs, from bacterial infections to cancer to chronic maladies, that require novel, different, or better therapies. This work will be of interest to researchers and policy makers interested in the latest developments in drug design.

"Blurb & Contents" "Copies of Onnes's or Meissner's lab notebooks--this is the stuff of science. This book is truly a tour de force. I cannot think of a single person working in the area of superconductivity who would not be totally absorbed by it." Materials & Design The first truly comprehensive history of superconductivity, from the first studies in the late 19th century to the present. It delves deeply into a largely undocumented early history, marked by H. Kamerlingh Onnes's first successes with mercury in 1911 and extending to the onset of World War II. Also encompasses materials development of the fifties, the work that culminated in the BCS theory of the early sixties, and the important recent application of ceramic oxides.

This book brings together the many concepts and discoveries in liquid crystal colloids contributed over the last twenty years and scattered across numerous articles and book chapters. It provides both a historical overview of the development of the field and a clear perspective on the future applications in photonics. The book covers all phenomena observed in liquid crystal colloids with an emphasis on experimental tools and applications of topology in condensed matter, as well as practical micro-photonics applications. It includes a number of spectacular manifestations of new topological phenomena not found or difficult to observe in other systems. Starting from the early works on nematic colloids, it explains the basics of topological defects in ordered media, charge and winding, and the elastic forces between colloidal particles in nematics. Following a detailed description of experimental methods, such as optical tweezing and particle tracking, the book eases the reader into the theoretical part, which deals with elastic deformation of nematic liquid crystals due to inclusions and surface alignment. This is discussed in the context of basic mean field Landau-de Gennes Q-tensor theory, with a brief explanation of the free-energy minimization numerical methods. There then follows an excursion into the topology of complex nematic colloidal structures, colloidal entanglement, knotting and linking. Nematic droplets, shells, handlebodies and chiral topological structures are addressed in separate chapters. The book concludes with an extensive chapter on the photonic properties of nematic dispersions, presenting the concept of integrated soft matter photonics and discussing the concepts of nematic and chiral nematic microlasers, surface-sensitive photonic devices and smectic microfibers. The text is complemented by a large bibliography, explanatory sketches and beautiful micrographs.

This book provides an interdisciplinary overview of a new and broad class of materials under the unifying name Nanostructured Soft Matter. It covers materials ranging from short amphiphilic molecules to block copolymers, proteins, colloids and their composites, microemulsions and bio-inspired systems such as vesicles.

This book is about thin films; what they are, how they are prepared, how they are characterized, and what they are used for. The contents of this book not only showcase the diversity of thin films, but also reveals the commonality among the work performed in a variety of areas. The chapters in this volume are based on invited papers presented by prominent researchers in the field at a Symposium on "Thin Films: Preparation, Characterization, Applications" at the 221st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society held in San Diego, California. The coverage of the symposium was extensive; topics ranged from highly-ordered metal adlayers on well-defined electrode surfaces to bio-organic films on non-metallic nanoparticles. An objective of this book is for the readers to be able to draw from the experience and results of others in order to improve and expand the understanding of the science and technology of their own thin films systems.

In this revised and expanded edition, the authors provide a comprehensive overview of the tools, technologies, and physical models needed to understand, build, and analyze microdevices. Students, specialists within the field, and researchers in related fields will appreciate their unified presentation and extensive references.

Topological defects are generic in continuous media. In the relativistic quantum vacuum they are known as cosmic strings, in superconductors as quantized flux lines, and in superfluids, low-density atomic Bose-Einstein condensates and neutron stars as quantized vortex lines. This collection of articles by leading scientists presents a modern treatment of the physics of vortex matter, mainly applied to unconventional superconductors and superfluids but with extensions to other areas of physics.

Essentially, Orientations and Rotations treats the mathematical and computational foundations of texture analysis. It contains an extensive and thorough introduction to parameterizations and geometry of the rotation space. Since the notions of orientations and rotations are of primary importance for science and engineering, the book can be useful for a very broad audience using rotations in other fields.

Electronic structure and physical properties of strongly correlated materials containing elements with partially filled 3d, 4d, 4f and 5f electronic shells is analyzed by Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT). DMFT is the most universal and effective tool used for the theoretical investigation of electronic states with strong correlation effects. In the present book the basics of the method are given and its application to various material classes is shown. The book is aimed at a broad readership: theoretical physicists and experimentalists studying strongly correlated systems. It also serves as a handbook for students and all those who want to be acquainted with fast developing filed of condensed matter physics.

This work tries to provide an elementary introduction to the notions of continuum limit and universality in statistical systems with a large number of degrees of freedom. The existence of a continuum limit requires the appearance of correlations at large distance, a situation that is encountered in second order phase transitions, near the critical temperature. In this context, we will emphasize the role of gaussian distributions and their relations with the mean field approximation and Landau's theory of critical phenomena. We will show that quasi-gaussian or mean-field approximations cannot describe correctly phase transitions in three space dimensions. We will assign this difficulty to the coupling of very different physical length scales, even though the systems we will consider have only local, that is, short range interactions. To analyze the unusual situation, a new concept is required: the renormalization group, whose fixed points allow understanding the universality of physical properties at large distance beyond mean-field theory. In the continuum limit, critical phenomena can be described by quantum field theories. In this framework, the renormalization group is directly related to the renormalization process, that is, the necessity to cancel the infinities that arise in straightforward formulations of the theory. We thus discuss the renormalization group in the context of various relevant field theories. This leads to proofs of universality and to efficient tools for calculating universal quantities in a perturbative framework. Finally, we construct a general functional renormalization group, which can be used when perturbative methods are inadequate.

Few books exist that cover the hot field of second-generation spintronic devices, despite their potential to revolutionize the IT industry.Compiling the obstacles and progress of spin-controlled devices into one source, Spintronic Materials and Technology presents an in-depth examination of the most recent technological spintronic developments.

Featuring contributions from active researchers and leading experts, the book chronicles the main research challenges in spintronics. It first depicts the different classes of materials systems currently under investigation for use in spintronic devices. The contributors also address issues concerning the operation of spintronic devices, such as the new principle for future devices that use spin-polarized current. This promises to enable switching of individual spin components of the device while avoiding crosstalk at the nanoscale. The book concludes with descriptions of both Si and III-V semiconductor-based spin transistors and the integration of spin technology with photonics.

The second-generation spintronic devices discussed in Spintronic Materials and Technology will not only improve the existing capabilities of electronic transistors, but will enable future computers to run faster and consume less power.

"Light is a Messenger" is the first biography of William Lawrence Bragg, who was only 25 when he won the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics - the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize. It describes how Bragg discovered the use of X-rays to determine the arrangement of atoms in crystals and his pivotal role in developing this technique to the point that structures of the most complex molecules known to Man - the proteins and nucleic acids - could be solved. Although Bragg's Nobel Prize was for physics, his research profoundly affected chemistry and the new field of molecular biology, of which he became a founding figure. This book explains how these revolutionary scientific events occurred while Bragg struggled to emerge from the shadow of his father, Sir William Bragg, and amidst a career-long rivalry with the brilliant American chemist, Linus Pauling.

Experiment and Phenomenology: Experimental Determination of Phase Diagrams; G. Inden. Phenomenological Calculations of Phase-Equilibria; A.P. Miodownik. Diffuse Scattering Determination of Short Range Order in Alloys; W. Schweika. Electronic Approach to Stability and Transformations: The Energetics of Ordered Intermetallic Alloys; R.E. Watson, et al. Quantum Theory of Structure; J. Hafner. First Principles Theory of Disordered Alloys and Alloy Phase Stability; G.M. Stocks, et al. Statics of Alloy Transformations: Monte Carlo Simulations of Alloy Phase Transformations; K. Binder. The Cluster Variation Method and Some Applications; A. Finel. The Direct Monte Carlo Method for Calculating Alloy Phases; J.S. Faulkner, et al. Kinetics and Dynamics of Alloy Transformations: Morphology Transformations in Ordering and Phase Separating Materials; A.G. Khachaturyan, et al. Alloys Under External Forcing; G. Martin, P. Bellon. 43 additional articles. Index.

This book covers a broad range of important topics and recent developments in this field. First, the general language of quantum field theory is developed in a way appropriate for dealing with systems having a large number of degrees of freedom. This paves the way for a description of the basic processes in such systems, the emphasis being on phase transitions. Applications include various aspects of superfluidity and superconductivity, as well as a detailed description of the fractional quantum Hall liquid.This monograph addresses graduate students and researchers working in related disciplines looking for an approachable but thorough introduction to the field of condensed matter physics.

Advanced Gas Sensing focuses on the Electroadsorptive Effect: its theory, experimental measurement and applications in consumer gas sensors as well as in surface physics laboratory work. The Electroadsorptive Effect is invaluable when used in MEMS gas sensors.
The authors use a general approach that covers new insights into temperature modulation and the use of light. The emphasis is given to electrical fields in gas sensors, which cause the Electroadsorptive Effect. The effect has long been known by experts working in the field, but has been regarded as too difficult for use until recently because of increasing sensor miniaturization.
The book will serve as an introduction to sensitivity tuning of semiconductor gas sensors, introducing the underlying theory and experimental models before moving on to design considerations, applications and market considerations. A literature review and examples of experimental data are included.