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In this study, the potential possibilities of the precision of the vibrating reed method for the evaluation of the .Tc of superconducting precursors in an HTSC Bi-Pb-Sr-Cu-O system were investigated. A special technology for obtaining these samples by using solar energy for melting and following superfast melt quenching was applied to increase their internal inhomogeneity, allowing to receive high-quality textural ceramic samples of Bi1,7Pb0,3Sr2Can-1CunOy (n=2-30) showing critical temperatures of superconducting precursor transitions above bulk .Tc. To determine critical temperatures of superconducting precursors above bulk .Tc for the first time, the original vibrating reed method of studying these multiphase samples in an applied magnetic field was used. It was shown that this method has sensitivity to superconducting diamagnetism making possible to reveal new superconducting precursor phases above bulk Tc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Al has unique intrinsic characteristics, which are of interest to scientists as well as engineers. Al and its alloys are slightly paramagnetic materials. Al has very low cross section for thermal neutrons of 0.23 barn, hence Al can be used in nuclear fields as a structural material which is virtually transparent to neutrons. We report VRT as a new technique to study material problems. We also discuss, the results of sound velocity and internal friction, and resonance frequency as a function of temperature range for a pure aluminum sample under investigation. By using VRT, we found that the annealing temperature (450°C) is sufficient to remove the type of defects introduced in the materials under study. The activation energy to remove point defect for Al samples was calculated and found to be about 0.0624 eV. Also, we could easily observe that Q-1 is a function of annealing time. From these measurements of sound velocity and internal friction we can conclude that VRT is a powerful tool for detecting and probing the physical properties of the material under study. Internal friction is a microscopic property for the indication of the purity of the sample. Sound velocity depends on the state of the materials (which depends on the process of treatment). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vibrating reed technique with electro“static” excitation and optical detection has been applied to investigate thin layers of poly-phenylene-vinylene, deposited by spin coating onto microfabricated Si cantilevers, during temperature cycling programs between 90 and 540 K at a rate of 1 K/min. From the vibration frequencies the Young’s modulus of the film can be estimated to be about 10 MPa at room temperature in the precursor phase (if prepared from a solution in toluene), which increases by conversion to the conjugate bonded polymer to about 50 MPa. The temperature dependence of internal friction reveals the processes of γ relaxations (crankshaft motion of side branches in the precursor) and β-relaxation (movements of a few monomer blocks in the polymer chain), as well as peaks indicating the structural transformations during conversion, and possibly a glass transition in the amorphous precursor phase. After conversion only the β-relaxation persists. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]