The unstart phenomenon of supersonic inlets caused by backpressure is dangerous for aircraft during flights because it severely reduces the air mass flow rate through the engine. We used unsteady numerical simulations to evaluate the unstart and restart characteristics of a two-dimensional supersonic inlet during rapid backpressure changes. The effects of the depressurisation time and depressurisation value on the inlet flow characteristics and restart features are discussed. The results show that the depressurisation time affects the restart procedure when the back pressure drops from the inlet unstart value to the normal working state value. When the depressurisation time decreases, it becomes easier for the inlet to restart. However, the inlet cannot restart if the depressurisation time is too long. When the depressurisation time and value were large enough, a short buzz period occurred before the inlet restarted. Both the time and value of depressurisation affected the restart characteristics.

Examination of synthetic aperture radar data collected over the southeastern Antarctic Peninsula shows that features sometimes mapped as ice shelves are more likely composed of numerous ice tongues interspersed within a matrix of fast ice and icebergs. The tongues are formed by the seaward extension of numerous small mountain glaciers that drain from the Antarctic Peninsula. Once afloat, the tongues intermingle with a matrix of fast ice and brash. Examination of 1997 RADARSAT-1 image mosaics shows that southeastern Antarctic Peninsula composite-ice shelves covered an area of about 3500 km2. Like ice tongues around the rest of Antarctica, these features are highly fragmented and likely to be susceptible to mechanical failure. One such composite shelf, located between New Bedford and Wright Inlets, was observed to decrease in area by 1200 km2 between 1997 and 2000.

The performance of new type three dimensional buried-in electrode structure ultraviolet photodetector fabricated on single crystal diamond epitaxial layer was investigated. The epitaxial layer was grown on high-pressure-high-temperature Ib-type diamond substrate. Then the buried-in electrodes with different depths were formed by oxygen plasma reactive ion etching method and radio frequency magnetron sputtering technique on this diamond layer. Compared with that of traditional planar electrode photodetector, the responsivity of buried-in electrode photodetector shows higher value, which reaches the highest when the electrode depth is 100 nm.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, July 29 – August 2, 2012.

The influence of pressure on the MOCVD grown InAlN/AlN/GaN heterostructure has been investigated by high-resolution X-ray diffraction, Hall measurement and atomic force microscopy. High pressure is beneficial to increase indium incorporation efficiency. The electrical properties of InAlN/AlN/GaN heterostructure become better with the pressure decreasing from 100 Torr to 50 Torr. Indium droplets tend to form on the InAlN surface at high pressure. The edge of the indium droplet is the Al-rich region while the interior is the In-rich region, demonstrated by the phase-contrast mode. Phase contrast across the V-defect is strong on the surface of InAlN grown at low pressure (50 Torr) whereas it is not evident at high pressure (100 Torr), indicating that large stress in the InAlN film will enhance the compositional variation.

Alloying effects of iridium on the glass formability (GFA) of the Zr–Ir–Cu–Al system have been investigated, and several new bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) with high GFA have been successfully developed. Additions of Ir in the Zr–Cu–Al system can yield a beneficial distribution in atomic sizes, but the strong chemical interaction of the Zr–Ir atomic pair limits the maximum addable Ir contents and the resultant GFA. Our analyses indicate that the optimum composition for alloying elements is determined by not only topological but also chemical factors. Phase competition upon solidification, rather than effects from individual affecting factors, dictates the GFA of BMG systems.

In the last decade, new in-situ processing techniques, such as DIMOX™, XD™, VLS and SHS, for fabricating metal and intermetallic matrix composites have emerged. It is expected that the in-situ formed composites may reveal not only excellent dispersion of fine reinforcing particles, but high thermodynamical stability and high temperature performance. The fully dense Al2O3-Al3Ti-57Vol%Al composite was in-situ processed by combing combustion synthesis with squeeze casting utilizing the reaction between TiO2 powder (with average diameter of 0.6μm and volume fraction of 14%) and pure Al (99.5%). First, the 14Vol%TiO2/Al bulk materials were fabricated via squeeze casting method, subsequently, the TiO2/Al materials were heat treated to form final in-situ composites. Using XRD, SEM, TEM and HRTEM techniques, the microstructure and its evolution were investigated.

The X-ray diffraction pattern of the composite is shown in Fig.1 which indicates that the composite is composed of A12O3, Al3Ti and Al. According to the reaction formula between TiO2 and Al the volume fraction of Al in the composite is about 57%. Fig.2 is a typical scanning electron micrograph of the composite.

We have performed photoluminescence (PL) measurements at liquid nitrogen temperature under high pressure up to 5.5 GPa and in the temperature range 10-300 K at atmospheric pressure on {(ZnSe)30(ZnSe0.92Te0.08)30(ZnSe)30[(CdSe)1(ZnSe)2]9}x5 multiple quantum wells. The PL peaks, EB, E1 and Ew corresponding to the band edge luminescence in ZnSe barrier layer, the transitions from the first conduction subband to the heavy-hole subband in ZnSe0.92Te0.08 layers and [(CdSe)1(ZnSe)2]9 ultra short period superlattice quantum well (SPSLQW) layers have been observed. Experimental results show that ZnSe0.92Te0.08/ZnSe forms a type-I superlattice (SL) in contrast to the type-II ZnSe/ZnTe SL. The pressure coefficients of the EB, E1 and Ew exciton peaks have been determined as 67, 63 and 56 meV/GPa, respectively. With increasing temperature (or pressure), the E1 peak-intensity drastically decreases which is attributed to the thermal effect (or the appearance of many defects in ZnSe0.92Te0.08 under higher pressure).

Raman scattering from a (CdSe)m(ZnSe)n-ZnSe strained quantum well structure, composed of (CdSe)m(ZnSe)n as well layers and thick ZnSe as barrier layers, is presented in this report. Two kinds of ZnSe-like LO phonon confined modes were observed by Raman scattering at 10-300 K. Resonance Raman scattering was accomplished by changing sample temperature and incident photon energy and as a results, up to 7 orders of ZnSe-like LO multi-phonon modes were observed. In the discussion, we suggest that anti-Stokes Raman scattering measurements can provide a meaningful way to distinguish the multi-phonon Raman scattering from hot luminescence.