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We here show that, even in the absence of "regularizing" microscopic effects (viz. slip at the wall or the disjoining pressure/precursor films), no singularities in fact arise for a moving contact line surrounded by the pure vapor of the liquid considered. There are no evaporation-related singularities either even should the substrate be superheated. We consider, within the lubrication approximation and a classical one-sided model, a contact line advancing/receding at a constant velocity, or immobile, and starting abruptly at a (formally) bare solid surface with a zero or finite contact angle., Comment: To be submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett

The interface between a pure liquid and its vapor is usually close to saturation temperature, hence strongly hindering any thermocapillary flow. In contrast, when the gas phase contains an inert gas such as air, surface-tension-driven convection is easily observed. We here reconcile these two facts by studying the corresponding crossover experimentally, as a function of a new dimensionless number quantifying the degree of damping of interfacial temperature fluctuations. Critical conditions are in convincing agreement with a simple nonlocal one-sided model, in quite a range of evaporation rates., Comment: To be submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett

We present a study of the thermodynamic and physical properties of Ta5Si3 compounds by means of density functional theory based calculations. Among the three different structures (D8m, D8l, D88), the D8l structure (Cr5B3-prototype) is the low temperature phase with a high formation enthalpy of -449.20kJ/mol, the D8m structure (W5Si3-prototype) is the high temperature phase with a formation enthalpy of -419.36kJ/mol, and the D88 structure (Mn5Si3-prototype) is a metastable phase. The optimized lattice constants of the different Ta5Si3 compounds are also in good agreement with the experimental data. The electronic density of states (DOS) and the bonding charge density have also been calculated to elucidate the bonding mechanism in these compounds and the results indicate that bonding is mostly of covalent nature. The elastic constants of the D8m and D8l structures have been calculated together with the different moduli. Finally, by using a quasiharmonic Debye model, the Debye temperature, the heat capacity, the coefficient of thermal expansion and the Gr\"uneisen parameter have also been obtained in the present work. The transformation temperature (2303.7K) between the D8m and the D8l structures has been predicted by means of the Gibbs energy, and this predicted temperature (2303.7K) is close to the experimental value (2433.5K).

We report an ab-initio study of the stability and electronic properties of transition metal silicides in order to study their potential for high temperature thermoelectric applications. We focus on the family M5Si3 (M = Ta, W) which is stable up to about 2000 {\deg}C. We first investigate the structural stability of the two compounds and then determine the thermopower of the equilibrium structure using the electronic density of states and Mott's law. We find that W5Si3 has a relatively large thermopower but probably not sufficient enough for thermoelectric applications., Comment: TMS 2011 conference

The spontaneous convective patterns induced by evaporation of a pure liquid layer are studied experimentally. A volatile liquid layer placed in a cylindrical container is left free to evaporate into air at rest under ambient conditions. The liquid/gas interface of the evaporating liquid layer is visualized using an infrared (IR) camera. The phenomenology of the observed convective patterns is qualitatively analysed, showing in particular that the latter can be quite complex especially at moderate liquid thicknesses. Attention is also paid to the influence of the container diameter on the observed patterns sequence., Comment: videos included

In this fluid dynamics video, the vapour cloud generated near evaporating free liquid surfaces is visualised by Mach-Zehnder interferometry (MZI). More precisely, for evaporating HFE-7100 (from 3M) and ambient conditions, the vapour concentration field and its dynamical behaviour are observed in three simple experiments. Through these experiments, it is evidenced that the high density of the vapour cloud (compared to air) induces convective motions in the gas mixture, resulting in deviations of the concentration field from a purely diffusional behaviour., Comment: A high and a medium quality video are available in the ancillary files

In this note we explore the application of modular invariance in 2-dimensional CFT to derive universal bounds for quantities describing certain state degeneracies, such as the thermodynamic entropy, or the number of marginal operators. We show that the entropy at inverse temperature 2 pi satisfies a universal lower bound, and we enumerate the principal obstacles to deriving upper bounds on entropies or quantum mechanical degeneracies for fully general CFTs. We then restrict our attention to infrared stable CFT with moderately low central charge, in addition to the usual assumptions of modular invariance, unitarity and discrete operator spectrum. For CFT in the range c_left + c_right < 48 with no relevant operators, we are able to prove an upper bound on the thermodynamic entropy at inverse temperature 2 pi. Under the same conditions we also prove that a CFT can have a number of marginal deformations no greater than ((c_left + c_right) / (48 - c_left - c_right)) e^(4 Pi) - 2., Comment: 23 pages, LaTeX, minor changes

This article presents a comprehensive study and design methodology of co-integrated oscillators for nano mass sensing application based on resonant Nano-Electro-Mechanical-System (NEMS). In particular, it reports the capacitive with the piezoresistive transduction schemes in terms of the overall sensor performance. The developed model is clearly in accordance with the general experimental observations obtained for NEMS-based mass detection. The piezoresistive devices are much sensitive (up to 10 zg/?Hz) than capacitive ones (close to 100 zg/?Hz) since they can work at higher frequency. Moreover, the high doped silicon piezoresistive gauge, which is of a great interest for very large scale integration displays similar theoretical resolution than the metallic gauge already used experimentally.

We propose a simple analytical model of a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor with a lateral resonant gate based on the coupled electromechanical equations, which are self-consistently solved in time. All charge densities according to the mechanical oscillations are evaluated. The only input parameters are the physical characteristics of the device. No extra mathematical parameters are used to fit the experimental results. Theoretical results are in good agreement with the experimental data in static and dynamic operation. Our model is comprehensive and may be suitable for any electromechanical device based on the field-effect transduction.

We report an actuation/detection scheme with a top-down nano-electromechanical system for frequency shift-based sensing applications with outstanding performance. It relies on electrostatic actuation and piezoresistive nanowire gauges for in-plane motion transduction. The process fabrication is fully CMOS compatible. The results show a very large dynamic range (DR) of more than 100dB and an unprecedented signal to background ratio (SBR) of 69dB providing an improvement of two orders of magnitude in the detection efficiency presented in the state of the art in NEMS field. Such a dynamic range results from both negligible 1/f-noise and very low Johnson noise compared to the thermomechanical noise. This simple low-power detection scheme paves the way for new class of robust mass resonant sensor.

The behaviour of boundary conditions under relevant bulk perturbations is studied for the Virasoro minimal models. In particular, we consider the bulk deformation by the least relevant bulk field which interpolates between the mth and (m-1)st unitary minimal model. In the presence of a boundary this bulk flow induces an RG flow on the boundary, which ensures that the resulting boundary condition is conformal in the (m-1)st model. By combining perturbative RG techniques with insights from defects and results about non-perturbative boundary flows, we determine the endpoint of the flow, i.e. the boundary condition to which an arbitrary boundary condition of the mth theory flows to., Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures. v4: Typo in fig. 2 corrected

Higher order conformal perturbation theory is studied for theories with and without boundaries. We identify systematically the universal quantities in the beta function equations, and we give explicit formulae for the universal coefficients at next-to-leading order in terms of integrated correlation functions. As an example, we analyse the radius-dependence of the conformal dimension of some boundary operators for the case of a single Neumann brane on a circle, and for an intersecting brane configuration on a torus, reproducing in both cases the expected geometrical answer., Comment: 27 pages, 1 figure; v2: references added

This paper is devoted to the analysis of resonant MEMS sensors based on discrete relay feedback techniques. One drawback of such techniques is that some synchronization usually occurs between the discrete part and the continuous part of the system: this results in sensor responses that are very similar to the curves known as devil's staircases, i.e. the frequency does not vary smoothly with the sensor's input. The main contribution of this paper is a theoretical calculation of the resolution of such systems. The resolutions of two existing resonant MEMS architectures are then calculated and these results are discussed., Comment: Submitted on behalf of TIMA Editions (http://irevues.inist.fr/tima-editions)

This paper introduces a new feedback topology for the Pulsed Digital Oscillator (PDO) and compares it to the classical topology. The `classic' or single feedback topology, introduced in previous works, shows a strong behavior dependence on the damping losses in the MEMS resonator. A new double feedback topology is introduced here in order to help solving this problem. Comparative discrete-time simulations and preliminary experimental measurements have been carried out for both topologies, showing how the new double feedback topology may increase PDO performance for some frequency ranges., Comment: Submitted on behalf of TIMA Editions (http://irevues.inist.fr/tima-editions)

We consider B-type D-branes in the Gepner model consisting of two minimal models at k=2. This Gepner model is mirror to a torus theory. We establish the dictionary identifying the B-type D-branes of the Gepner model with A-type Neumann and Dirichlet branes on the torus., Comment: 26 pages