The electrical breakdown characteristics of Na Cl-water mixtures are investigated over the concentration range from pure distilled water to a saturated salt solution at 20°C, The electrode material used is stainless steel and is arranged in a point-plane geometry. The electrode spacing is varced from 1-3 mm giving "average" electric fields as high as 5 MV/m. The voltage and current through the ...

We report on a novel method for local control of shell engineering in multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) using Joule-heating induced electric breakdown. By modulating the heat dissipation along a nanotube, we can confine its thinning and shell breakdown to occur within localized regions of peak temperatures, which are distributed over one-half of the NT length. The modulation is achieved by u...

It is shown that force-free electrodynamics (FFE) breaks down in regions where $B^2 -E^2 <0$ (electric zones) even if $\pmb{E}\cdot\pmb{B} =0$. Spontaneous creation of such will inevitably lead to plasma oscillations subsequently decay over a few periods via anomalous heating and, under certain conditions, emission high energy quanta, until the system relaxes state which $B^2-E^2 \sim 0$. For M...

We report two-dimensional 2D electron and hole gases induced at the surface of graphite by the electric field effect. The 2D gases reside within a few near-surface atomic layers and exhibit mobilities up to 15 000 and 60 000 cm2/V s at room and liquid-helium temperatures, respectively. The mobilities imply ballistic transport on m scale. Pronounced Shubnikov–de Haas oscillations reveal the exis...

We investigate pre-breakdown hydrodynamic flows and initial stages of the electric breakdown in dielectric liquids. Three models are considered. The first one represents the purely thermal mechanism. Here, the liquid is simulated by a single-phase lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) method. The temperature and the electric charge density are described by additional LBE components with zero mass. T...

In case of typical chemical gas sensors reacted by gas adsorption on surface of an active layer, it is difficult to detect some gases which have low chemical adsorption energy like inert gases. In this paper, we report a gas sensor using carbon nanotube(CNT) array as electron emitters for the purpose of detecting these gases. Specifically, sensors were fabricated with applications of glass patt...