Earticle

This paper addresses technical problems of thermal contact conductance or resistance which inevitably occurs in most cryogenic engineering systems. The main focus of this paper is to examine what kind of physical factors primarily influences the thermal contact resistance and to suggest how it can be minimized. It is a good practical rule that the contact surface must have sub-micron roughness level with no oxide layer and be thinly covered by indium, gold, or Apiezon-N grease for securing sufficient direct contact area. The higher contact pressure, the lower the thermal contact resistance. The general description of this technique has been widely perceived and reasonable engineering results have been achieved in most applications. However, the detailed view of employing these techniques and their relative efficacies to reduce thermal contact resistances need to be thoroughly reviewed. We should consider specific thermal contact conditions, examine the engineering requirements, and execute each method with precautions to fulfil their maximum potentials.

We studied on the visible emission of Cu-ion-doped perovskite hafnate SrHfO3 (SHO:Cu) with the photo-excitation energy dependence. The polycrystalline SHO:Cu samples were newly synthesized in the solid state reaction method. From the X-ray diffraction measurement it was found that the crystalline structure of SHO:Cu is nearly identical to that of undoped SrHfO3. Interestingly, the photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectra change significantly with the emission energy, which is linked to the strong dependence of the visible emission on the photo-excitation energy. This unusual emission behavior is likely to be associated with the mixed valence states of the doped Cu ions, which were revealed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. We compared our finding of tunable visible emission in the SHO:Cu compounds with the cases of similar materials, SrTiO3 and SrZrO3 with Cu-ion-doping.

We report on the infrared spectroscopic studies of the normal-state electronic response of rare-earth ternary platinum germanide superconductor La2Pt3Ge5. We analyzed the temperature-dependent optical conductivity spectra using the Drude-Lorentz oscillator model. We found that the two Drude responses with distinct scattering rates are required to explain the charge dynamics at 10 K while a single Drude mode could reproduce the far-infrared conductivity at higher temperatures. Our results indicated the two-band character of the electronic structure and highlighted the disparate temperature evolution of the electrodynamics of the two electronic states.

We investigated optical properties of an electron-doped copper oxide high temperature superconductor, Pr0.85LaCe0.15CuO4 (PLCCO) single crystal. We obtained the optical conductivity from measured reflectance at various temperatures. We found our data contained c-axis longitudinal optical (LO) phonon modes due to miscut and intrinsic lattice distortion. We applied an extended Drude model to study the correlations between charge carriers in the system. The LO phonons appear as strong sharp peaks in the optical scattering rate. We tried to remove the LO phonon modes by using the energy loss function, which also shows the LO phonons as peaks, and could not remove them completely. We extracted the electron-boson spectral density function using a generalized Allen's formula. We observed that the resulting electron-boson density show similar temperature dependence as hole-doped cuprates.

We report optical spectra of underdoped BaFe1.89Co0.11As2 that hosts both of magnetic and superconducting orders. The temperature dependent evolution of optical conductivity shows finger prints of the magnetic order and the s-wave nature of the superconducting gaps. Careful inspection on the superconducting state reveals that the two orders compete but coexist in the ground state.

In 1987, M. K. Wu and Paul Chu discovered Y1.2Ba0.8CuO4 (YBCO) with critical temperature (Tc) of 93 K. It has significantly lowered the cost of cooling of a material up to the point where superconductivity set in. Utilizing the cost reduction of attaining superconductivity and the vast amount of research to understand characteristics of high temperature oxide superconducting materials, there has been effort to use a high temperature superconductor as a coated conductor. It is important to characterize the materials precisely for stable performance before commercializing. We used polarized Raman scattering spectroscopy to study structural and stoichiometric information regarding YBa2Cu3O7-x, GdYBa2Cu3O7-x, and GdBa2Cu3O7-x produced by three leading groups of producing commercial grade high temperature superconductor coated conductors American Superconductor Corporation, Superpower, and SuNAM.

We report the synthesis of Ni-doped BaFe2Se3 single crystals by using a flux method. X-ray diffraction (XRD) of Ba(Fe1- xNix)2Se3 shows a gradual peak shift with an increase in the nominal Ni- doping rate, x = 0, 0.05, and 0.10, due to a decrease in unit-cell volume. All samples show a spin glass transition, and temperature dependence of magnetic susceptibility shows a negligible change in the spin-glass transition temperature (Tg) with Ni concentration x. The temperature dependence of electrical resistivity for BaFe2Se3 shows an insulating behavior, and the resistivity value at 295 K and the activation energy (Ea) obtained from the Arrhenius plot decrease with increasing x. These results suggest that the Ni doping can be effectively worked as a dopant for electron charge carriers, but is less efficient in controlling the magnetic property, such as spin glass transition, in the BaFe2Se3 compound.

Developing Magnetoencephalography (MEG) based on Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) facilitates to observe the human brain functions in non-invasively and high temporal and high spatial resolution. By using this MEG, we studied alpha rhythm (8-13 Hz) that is one of the most predominant spontaneous rhythm in human brain. The 8–13 Hz rhythm is observed in several sensory region in the brain. In visual related region of occipital, we call to alpha rhythm, and auditory related region of temporal call to tau rhythm, sensorimotor related region of parietal call to mu rhythm. These rhythms are decreased in task related region and increased in task irrelevant regions. This means that these rhythms play a pivotal role of inhibition in task irrelevant region. It may be helpful to attention to the task. In several literature about the alpha-band inhibition in multi-sensory modality experiment, they observed this effect in the occipital and somatosensory region. In this study, we hypothesized that we can also observe the alpha-band inhibition in the auditory cortex, mediated by the tau rhythm. Before that, we first investigated the existence of the alpha and tau rhythm in occipital and temporal region, respectively. To see these rhythms, we applied the visual and auditory stimulation, in turns, suppressed in task relevant regions, respectively.

In terms of food safety,mixture of contaminants in food is a serious problem for not only consumers but also manufacturers. In general, the target size of the metallic contaminant to be removed is 0.5 mm. However, it is a difficult task for manufacturers to achieve this target, because of lower system sensitivity. Therefore, we developed a food contaminant detection system based on high-Tc RF superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), which are highly sensitive magnetic sensors. This study aims to improve the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the system and detect a 0.5 mmdiameter steel ball. Using a real time digital signal processing technique along with analog band-pass filters, we improved the SNR of the system. Owing to the improved SNR, a steel ball with a diameter as small as 0.3 mm, with stand-off distance of 117 mm was successfully detected. These results suggest that the proposed system is a promising candidate for the detection of metallic contaminants in food products.

The heavy ion accelerator that will be built in Daejeon utilizes four types of superconducting cavities. Cryomodules holding the superconducting cavities in them supply thermal insulation for cavities operating in 4.3 K or 2.1 K. A Prototype of cryomodule which holds two HWR (Half Wave Resonator) cavities was fabricated and tested. Since the operating temperature of the HWR is 2.1 K, the superfluid helium was generated with warm vacuum pumping system. The cyromodule was successfully cooled down below lambda point temperature of helium and any detectable leak was not observed during the test. The static thermal load at 4.2 K was measured. The result and the experience for the cool-down below lambda point of helium are reported in this paper.