Superconductivity Observed in Tantalum Polyhydride at High Pressure

We report experimental discovery of tantalum polyhydride superconductor.It was synthesized under highpressure and high-temperature conditions using diamond anvil cell combined with in situ high-pressure laser heating techniques.The superconductivity was investigated via resistance measurements at pressures.The highest superconducting transition temperature T_(c)was found to be~30 K at 197 GPa in the sample that was synthesized at the same pressure with~2000 K heating.The transitions are shifted to low temperature upon applying magnetic fields that support the superconductivity nature.The upper critical field at zero temperatureμ_0H_(c2)(0)of the superconducting phase is estimated to be~20 T that corresponds to Ginzburg-Landau coherent length~40 A.Our results suggest that the superconductivity may arise from 143d phase of TaH_(3).It is,for the first time to our best knowledge,experimental realization of superconducting hydrides for the VB group of transition metals.

Controlled buckling of thin film on elastomeric substrate in large deformation

Electronic systems with large stretchability have many applications.A precisely controlled buckling strategy to increase the stretchability has been demonstrated by combining lithographically patterned surface bonding chemistry and a buckling process.The buckled geometry was assumed to have a sinusoidal form,which may result in errors to determine the strains in the film.A theoretical model is presented in this letter to study the mechanics of this type of thin film/substrate system by discarding the assumption of sinusoidal buckling geometry.It is shown that the previous model overestimates the deflection and curvature in the thin film.The results from the model agree well with finite element simulations and therefore provide design guidelines in many applications ranging from stretchable electronics to micro/nano scale surface patterning and precision metrology.

Material and structural instabilities of single-wall carbon nanotubes

The nonlinear atomistic interactions usually involve softening behavior. Instability resulting directly from this softening are called the material instability, while those unrelated to this softening are called the structural instability. We use the finite-deformation shell theory based on the interatomic potential to show that the tension instability of single-wall carbon nanotubes is the material instability, while the compression and torsion instabilities are structural instability.

An effective approach for bonding of TZM and Nb-Zr system:Microstructure evolution,mechanical properties,and bonding mechanism

A novel method of liquid metallic film(LMF)bonding was developed to join titanium zirconium molybdenum alloy(TZM)and Nb-Zr alloy with a Ni interlayer.Using this method,a Ni-Zr liquid phase was formed by the eutectic reaction and then squeezed out from the gap due to a transient pressure,leaving an LMF.It not only achieved a reliable metallurgical bonding but also served as a transition layer between TZM and Nb-Zr alloy to reduce the mismatch between them thus further improving its performance.The bonding mechanism of the TZM and Nb-Zr system was discussed based on theoretical calculation and high-resolution microscopy analysis.The advantages of this method were established by comparing the microstructure and mechanical properties of LMF bonded joints with that of traditional contact-reaction brazing and direct diffusion bonding.Additionally,the feasibility of the LMF bonding method was also demonstrated by the reliable joining of other high-temperature and immiscible systems.

Research and development of the back-end electronics for the two-dimensional improved resistive plate chambers in CMS upgrade

Purpose To complement and ensure redundancy in the endcap muon system of the Compact Muon Solenoid(CMS)detector and to extend the Resistive Plate Chamber(RPC)system coverage,improved RPCs(iRPCs)with either orthogonal layer strips with one-end electronics or single layer strips with two-end electronics providing more precise time measurement will be installed in the very forward pseudorapidity region of|η|<2.4.The iRPC readout system needs to support twodimensional(2D)or two-end readout.In addition,it must combine detector data with Timing,Trigger and fast Control(TTC)and Slow Control(SC)into one data stream over a bi-directional optical link with a line rate of 4.8 Gb/s between the Front-End Electronics(FEE)and the Back-End Electronics(BEE).To fulfill these requirements,a prototype BEE for the iRPC 2D chamber has been researched and designed.Methods A Micro-Telecommunication and Computing Architecture(μTCA)-based processing card was designed in this study to establish a prototype system together with aμTCA crate.The Giga-Bit Transceiver(GBT)protocol is integrated to provide bi-directional communication between the FEE and BEE.A server is connected with the BEE by a Gigabit Ethernet(GbE)link for SC and a 10-GbE link for Data AcQuisition(DAQ).Results The Bit Error Rate(BER)test of the back-end board and a joint test with the iRPC 2D prototype chamber were performed.ABERof less than 1.331×10−16 was obtained.The timemeasurement with a resolution of 3.05 nswas successfully realized,and detector efficiencies of 97.7%for longitudinal strips and 96.0%for orthogonal strips were measured.Test results demonstrate the correctness and reliability of the prototype BEE.Conclusion The BEE prototype satisfies the requirements for the iRPC 2D chamber,and it worked stably and reliably during a long-term joint test run.

R&D of back-end electronics for improved resistive plate chambers for the phase 2 upgrade of the CMS end-capmuon system

Purpose The Large Hadron Collider(LHC)at European Organization for Nuclear Research is planned to be upgraded to the high luminosity LHC.Increasing the luminosity makes muon triggering reliable and offline reconstruction very challenging.To enhance the redundancy of the Compact Muon Solenoid(CMS)Muon system and resolve the ambiguity of track reconstruction in the forward region,an improved Resistive Plate Chamber(iRPC)with excellent time resolution will be installed in the Phase-2 CMS upgrade.The iRPC will be equipped with Front-End Electronics(FEE),which can perform high-precision time measurements of signals from both ends of the strip.New Back-End Electronics(BEE)need to be researched and developed to provide sophisticated functionalities such as interacting with FEE with shared links for fast,slow control(SC)and data,in addition to trigger primitives(TPs)generation and data acquisition(DAQ).Method The BEE prototype uses a homemade hardware board compatible with the MTCA standard,the back-end board(BEB).BEE interacts with FEE via a bidirectional 4.8 Gbps optical paired-link that integrates clock,data,and control information.The clock and fast/slow control commands are distributed from BEB to the FEE via the downlink.The uplink is used for BEB to receive the time information of the iRPC’sfired strips and the responses to the fast/slow control commands.To have a pipelined detector data for clusterfinding operation,recover(DeMux)the time relationship of which is changed due to the transmission protocol for the continuous incoming MUXed data from FEE.Then at each bunch crossing(BX),clusteringfired strips that satisfy time and spatial constraints to generate TPs.Both incoming raw MUXed detector data and TPs in a time window and latency based on the trigger signal are read out to the DAQ system.Gigabit Ethernet(GbE)of SiTCP and commercial 10-GbE are used as link standards for SC and DAQ,respectively,for the BEB to interact with the server.Results The joint test results of the BEB with iRPC and Front-End Board(FEB)show a Bit Error Rate of the transmission links less than 1×10-16,a time resolution of the FEB Time-to-Digital Converter of 16 ps,and the resolution of the time difference between both ends of 160 ps which corresponding a spatial resolution of the iRPC of approximately 1.5 cm.Conclusion Test results showed the correctness and stable running of the BEB prototype,of which the functionalities fulfill the iRPC requirements.