Monolayers of a functional pulmonary surfactant (PS) can reach very low surface tensions well below their equilibrium value. The mechanism by which PS monolayers reach such low surface tensions and maintain film stability remains unknown. As shown previously by fluorescence microscopy, phospholipid phase transition and separation seem to be important for the normal biophysical properties of PS....

At biological interfaces, flexible surface structures and mobile water interact with each other to present non-uniform three-dimensional (3D) distributions. In spite of their impact on biological functions, molecular-scale understanding of such phenomena has remained elusive. Here we show direct visualization of such interfacial structures with subnanometer-scale resolution by 3D scanning force...

In this study, we numerically and experimentally investigate application of birefringent filters (BRFs) as frequency selective elements in multicolor lasers. A BRF plate made out of crystalline quartz with an arbitrarily oriented optical axis has been explored. Simulation results have shown that compared to regular BRFs where the optical axis lies in the plane of the plates surface, a BRF with ...

The adsorption and hydrogenation of methyl iodide is studied on clean and hydrogen-covered Pd(1 1 1) using reflection–adsorption infrared spectroscopy (RAIRS) and temperature-programmed desorption. Molecular methyl iodide desorbs from clean Pd(1 1 1) at 229 K and hydrogen desorbs at 360 K. Methyl groups hydrogenate in two states at 191 and 304 K for large methyl iodide exposures where RAIRS dat...

The emission efficiency of novel surface conduction electron-emitters corresponding to tilted angles (u) of a nanogap-typed driving cathode is optimised. Among the parameters of the emitter profile, the apex angle is the most significant because the smaller angles induce a higher electric field. The higher electric field then attracts more particles into vacuum and then increases the emission c...

The structure and energetics of the ethylene-palladium adsorption system were investigated by means of first-principles DFT calculations. The calculations revealed that there exist two minimum energy configurations for the ethylene molecule -bonded on Pd(110), one with the C = C axis aligned parallely to the metal surface and the other, at very close energy, with the molecular axis tilted by ab...