Sample geometry effects on mechanical strengths of gold micro-cantilevers are evaluated by a micro-bending test. Six micro-cantilevers with the same length of 50 μm are prepared, and the width and the thickness are varied to examine individual effects on the yield stress. The yield stress increases from 428 to 519 MPa when the thickness decreases from 11.1 to 6.0 μm. No obvious dependency is observed when varying the width. The results reveal that the thickness and the width each has a different influence on the yield stresses of micro-cantilevers evaluated by the bending test, which is the sample geometry effect.

This study applied compound-specific radiocarbon analysis (CSRA) to a 186-m-long sediment core (U1357A) taken from Adélie Basin located on the continental shelf off Wilkes Land, East Antarctica. The CSRA targeted C16 fatty acid as well as C16., fatty acid and cyclopheophorbide-a-enol isolated from the sediment. Due to their high degradation rate, these compounds are expected to occur in low abundances in relict organic matter deposited at this site. Twelve compound-specific (CS) 14C ages were obtained that are mostly consistent with their stratigraphic order. The CS 14C results of all samples are Holocene in age (9800 to 440 cal BP). These results suggest that significant sedimentation started ∼10,000 cal BP. Moreover, the data suggest that 14C measurements of C16:1 fatty acid and cyclopheophorbide-a-enol are useful for dating sediments from the Southern Ocean.

We investigated the electronic structure and the energy level alignment at the interfaces between perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA) and metals (Au, Cu and Co) by ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS). In the case of PTCDA/Au interface, the apparent interface states and charge transfer (CT) states were not observed in its UPS spectra. In the case of PTCDA/Cu and Co interfaces, however, we found that the CT from metal to PTCDA occurred, and that the apparent CT states were observed at PTCDA/Cu interface.