Measurement of oxygen concentration in atmospheric air using ultrasound time of flight with humidity compensation.

An absolute gas concentration can be measured from the variation in the speed of sound between two gases in principle. Owing to the small difference in the speed of sound between the atmospheric air and oxygen (O2) gas, measuring O2 concentration with high accuracy in the humid atmospheric air using ultrasound needs careful investigation. The authors show successfully a method to measure the absolute concentration of O2 gas in humid atmospheric air using ultrasound. It was possible to measure O2 concentration in the atmospheric air with accuracy by compensating for the influence of temperature and humidity by calculation. The O2 concentration was calculated from the conventional speed of sound equation by utilizing small mass variation for the change in moisture as well as temperature. This method using ultrasound enabled us to measure the O2 concentration in the atmospheric air as 21.0%, which is in agreement with the standard atmospheric dry air. The measurement error values after the humidity compensation are about 0.4% or less. Furthermore, this method takes only about a few ms for measuring O2 concentration and, thus, can be used as a high-speed portable O2 sensor for industrial, environmental, and biomedical instruments.

Enhanced Field Emission from Ultrananocrystalline Diamond-Decorated Carbon Nanowalls Prepared by a Self-Assembly Seeding Technique.

Vertically aligned nanographite structures, the so-called carbon nanowalls (CNWs), are decorated with ultrananocrystalline diamond particles by an electrostatic self-assembly seeding technique, followed by short-term growth in plasma chemical vapor deposition, to enhance field emission efficiency and stability. A nanodiamond suspension diluted with a dispersion medium with high wettability on CNWs enables seeding of diamond nanograins consisting of nanoparticles of 3-5 nm in diameter on CNWs with high uniformity and minimal aggregation and control of their number density. The field emission turn-on field depends upon the density of diamond nanograins and decreases from 3.0 V µm-1 for bare CNWs to 1.8 V µm-1 for diamond-decorated CNWs together with about an order of magnitude increase in current density. Finite element modeling indicates that only a part of decorating diamond located at the top of nanowalls actually contributes to field amplification and emission. The diamond-decorated CNWs show also higher emission stability with much larger time constants of current degradation than the bare CNWs for long-term duration. The enhanced emission efficiency is explained by larger field amplification rather than lowering of the tunneling barrier, while the enhanced emission stability is attributed to the higher robustness of diamond.

Control of electrostatic self-assembly seeding of diamond nanoparticles on carbon nanowalls.

Seeding of diamond nanoparticles on vertically-aligned multi-layer graphene, the so-called carbon nanowalls (CNWs), is studied by using deionized water, ethylene glycol, ethanol, and formamide as dispersion mediums. Detonation nanodiamond particles show the smallest mean size and size distribution with a high positive zeta potential when dispersed in ethanol. The contact angle of ethanol on CNWs is almost zero degree, confirming highly wetting behaviour. The diamond nanoparticles dispersed in ethanol are distributed the most uniformly with minimal aggregation on CNWs as opposed to those dispersed in other liquids. The resulting diamond nanoparticle-seeded CNWs, followed by short-term growth in microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition, show a marked decrease in field emission turn-on field down to 1.3 Vµm-1together with a large increase in current density, compared to bare CNWs without diamond seeding. The results provide a way to control the density, size, and uniformity (spacing) of diamond nanoparticles on CNWs and should be applied to fabricate hybrid materials and devices using nanodiamond and nanocarbons.

Rapid thermal annealing of Si paste film and pn-junction formation.

A Si nanoparticle paste has been studied to form a Si film on a substrate. Rapid thermal annealing (RTA) was conducted in order to recrystallize the Si paste which were prepared by a planetary ball milling grinding n-doped or p-doped Si chips. It was possible to minimize the oxidation during the melting process of Si nanoparticles with this RTA even at 1200 °C in 1 s. Lowering of the melting temperature appears to be due to the size effect and release of surface energy from the Si nanoparticles. RTA was conducted in an infrared furnace with temperatures varying from 1150 to 1300 °C. Si pn homo-junction structure was also fabricated by coating p-type followed by n-type Si pastes on a carbon substrate. Typical rectifying characteristics and slight photo-induced current was observed.

Field emission characteristics of metal nanoparticle-coated carbon nanowalls.

Metal nanoparticles are deposited on nitrogen-incorporated carbon nanowalls (CNWs) using Ag, Au, In, and Mg as metal species for enhancing field emission. Morphology, coverage, chemical composition, and crystallinity of the metal coatings on CNW surfaces are examined by varying nominal thickness of metals within 10 nm. The emission characteristics reveal that coating CNWs with any metal species lowers emission turn-on fields and thus increases emission efficiency. The inverse dependence of field enhancement factor and turn-on field upon nominal thickness of metals confirms that additional field amplification at metal nanoparticles governs emission efficiency regardless of work functions of the metals. The Ag-coated CNWs retain the highest current density for long-time emission at a constant applied field, while the non-coated CNWs have higher emission stability and a larger time constant of current degradation than the metal-coated ones.

Self-compensated standing wave probe for characterization of radio-frequency plasmas.

A simple self-compensated Langmuir probe using the character of a standing wave is developed for characterization of radio-frequency (RF) discharge plasmas. This probe is based on a concept that the interference of RF field is eliminated at the node of a standing wave which exists ideally at one-fourth of the RF wavelength (λ/4) away from the probe tip in the plasma. The fluctuation of plasma space potential is suppressed as confirmed by comparison with a non-compensated probe and a self-compensated probe using an inductor-capacitor (LC) resonant circuit. The plasma parameters obtained with the standing wave probe are in agreement with those with the LC resonant probe within discrepancy of 15% indicating high reliability of the results.

Origin of rectification in boron nitride heterojunctions to silicon.

Cubic and hexagonal boron nitride (cBN and hBN) heterojunctions to n-type Si are fabricated under low-energy ion bombardment by inductively coupled plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition using the chemistry of fluorine. The sp2-bonded BN/Si heterojunction shows no rectification, while the cBN/sp2BN/Si heterojunction has rectification properties analogue to typical p-n junction diodes despite a large thickness (∼130 nm) of the sp2BN interlayer. The current-voltage characteristics at temperatures up to 573 K are governed by thermal excitation of carriers, and mostly described with the ideal diode equation and the Frenkel-Poole emission model at low and high bias voltages, respectively. The rectification in the cBN/sp2BN/Si heterojunction is caused by a bias-dependent change in the barrier height for holes arising from stronger p-type conduction in the cBN layer and enhanced with the thick sp2BN interlayer for impeding the reverse current flow at defect levels mainly associated with grain boundaries.

Direct deposition of cubic boron nitride films on tungsten carbide-cobalt.

Thick cubic boron nitride (cBN) films in micrometer-scale are deposited on tungsten carbide-cobalt (WC-Co) substrates without adhesion interlayers by inductively coupled plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (ICP-CVD) using the chemistry of fluorine. The residual film stress is reduced because of very low ion-impact energies (a few eV to ∼25 eV) controlled by the plasma sheath potential. Two types of substrate pretreatment are used successively; the removal of surface Co binder using an acid solution suppresses the catalytic effect of Co and triggers cBN formation, and the surface roughening using mechanical scratching and hydrogen plasma etching increases both the in-depth cBN fraction and deposition rate. The substrate surface condition is evaluated by the wettability of the probe liquids with different polarities and quantified by the apparent surface free energy calculated from the contact angle. The surface roughening enhances the compatibility in energy between the cBN and substrate, which are bridged by the interfacial sp(2)-bonded hexagonal BN buffer layer, and then, the cBN overlayer is nucleated and evolved easier.