Search

Low-temperature plasmas are partially ionized gases, where ions and neutrals coexist in a highly reactive environment. This creates a rich chemistry, which is often difficult to understand in its full complexity. In this work, we develop a machine learning model to identify the most important reactions in a given chemical scheme. The training data are an initial distribution of species and a final distribution of species, which can be obtained from either experiments or simulations. The model is trained to provide a set of reaction weights, which become the basis for reducing the chemical scheme. The approach is applied to N$_2$-H$_2$ plasmas, created by an electric discharge at low pressure, where the main goal is to produce NH$_3$. The interplay of multiple species, as well as of volume and surface reactions, make this chemistry especially challenging to understand. Reducing the chemical scheme via the proposed model helps identify the main chemical pathways.

This work presents a reaction mechanism for oxygen plasmas, i.e. a set of reactions and corresponding rate coefficients that are validated against benchmark experiments. The kinetic scheme is validated in a DC glow discharge for gas pressures of 0.2-10 Torr and currents of 10-40 mA, using the 0D LisbOn KInetics (LoKI) simulation tool and available experimental data. The comparison comprises not only the densities of the main species in the discharge - $\mathrm{O_2(X^3\Sigma_g^-)}$, $\mathrm{O_2(a^1\Delta_g)}$, $\mathrm{O_2(b^1\Sigma_g^+)}$ and $\mathrm{O(^3P)}$ - but also the self-consistent calculation of the reduced electric field and the gas temperature. The main processes involved in the creation and destruction of these species are identified. Moreover, the results show that the oxygen atoms play a dominant role in gas heating, via recombination at the wall and quenching of $\mathrm{O_2(X^3\Sigma_g^-,v)}$ vibrations and $\mathrm{O_2}$ electronically-excited states. It is argued that the development and validation of kinetic schemes for plasma chemistry should adopt a paradigm based on the comparison against standard validation tests, as it is done in electron swarm validation of cross sections.

High power light emitting diodes (LEDs) suffer from heating effects that have a detrimental impact on the devices characteristics. The use LED carriers with high thermal conductivity promotes the extraction of heat away from the LED junction. Different materials can be used for this purpose, such as alumina, aluminium nitride, and silicon. Diamond has also been gaining momentum for demanding heat management applications. In order to evaluate the impact of the different carriers on the reliability of the devices, the junction temperature of Cree white Xamp XB-D LEDs was obtained with Ansys for various carrier at different LED current levels. The impact of the junction temperature on the LEDs lifetime, emission intensity, footprint and wavelength stability was then evaluated for each carrier based on the datasheet of the devices. The results provide additional knowledge regarding the impact of the carrier on the performance of the LED., Comment: Submitted

In this work, we present the results of simulations carried out for N2-H2 capacitively coupled radio-frequency discharges, running at low pressure (0.3-0.9 mbar), low power (5-20 W), and for amounts of H2 up to 5 pct. Simulations are performed using a hybrid code that couples a two-dimensional time-dependent fluid module, describing the dynamics of the charged particles in the discharge, to a zero-dimensional kinetic module, that solves the Boltzmann equation and describes the production and destruction of neutral species. The model accounts for the production of several vibrationally and electronic excited states, and contains a detailed surface chemistry that includes recombination processes and the production of NHx molecules. The results obtained highlight the relevance of the interactions between plasma and surface, given the role of the secondary electron emission in the electrical parameters of the discharge and the critical importance of the surface production of ammonia to the neutral and ionic chemistry of the discharge., Comment: 34 pages, 16 figures

The mixing of N2 with H2 leads to very different plasmas from pure N2 and H2 plasma discharges. Numerous issues are therefore raised involving the processes leading to ammonia (NH3) formation. The aim of this work is to better characterize capacitively-coupled radiofrequency plasma discharges in N2 with few percents of H2 (up to 5 pct), at low pressure (0.3 to 1 mbar) and low coupled power (3 to 13 W). Both experimental measurements and numerical simulations are performed. For clarity, we separated the results in two complementary parts. The actual one (first part), presents the details on the experimental measurements, while the second focuses on the simulation, a hybrid model combining a 2D fluid module and a 0D kinetic module. Electron density is measured by a resonant cavity method. It varies from 0.4 to 5e9 cm-3, corresponding to ionization degrees from 2e-8 to 4e-7. Ammonia density is quantified by combining IR absorption and mass spectrometry. It increases linearly with the amount of H2 (up to 3e13 cm-3 at 5 pct H2). On the contrary, it is constant with pressure, which suggests the dominance of surface processes on the formation of ammonia. Positive ions are measured by mass spectrometry. Nitrogen-bearing ions are hydrogenated by the injection of H2, N2H+ being the major ion as soon as the amount of H2 is larger than 1 pct. The increase of pressure leads to an increase of secondary ions formed by ion (or radical) - neutral collisions (ex: N2H+, NH4+, H3+), while an increase of the coupled power favours ions formed by direct ionization (ex: N2+, NH3+, H2+)., Comment: 32 pages, 13+10 figures

This paper describes the achievements of the H2020 project INDIGO-DataCloud. The project has provided e-infrastructures with tools, applications and cloud framework enhancements to manage the demanding requirements of scientific communities, either locally or through enhanced interfaces. The middleware developed allows to federate hybrid resources, to easily write, port and run scientific applications to the cloud. In particular, we have extended existing PaaS (Platform as a Service) solutions, allowing public and private e-infrastructures, including those provided by EGI, EUDAT, and Helix Nebula, to integrate their existing services and make them available through AAI services compliant with GEANT interfederation policies, thus guaranteeing transparency and trust in the provisioning of such services. Our middleware facilitates the execution of applications using containers on Cloud and Grid based infrastructures, as well as on HPC clusters. Our developments are freely downloadable as open source components, and are already being integrated into many scientific applications., Comment: 39 pages, 15 figures.Version accepted in Journal of Grid Computing

Containers are increasingly used as means to distribute and run Linux services and applications. In this paper we describe the architectural design and implementation of udocker, a tool which enables the user to execute Linux containers in user mode. We also present a few practical applications, using a range of scientific codes characterized by different requirements: from single core execution to MPI parallel execution and execution on GPGPUs., Comment: 30 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Computing Physics Communications

Warm forming processes have been successfully applied at laboratory level to overcome some important drawbacks of the Al-Mg alloys, such as poor formability and large springback. However, the numerical simulation of these processes requires the adoption of coupled thermo-mechanical finite element analysis, using temperature-dependent material models. The numerical description of the thermo-mechanical behaviour can require a large set of experimental tests. These experimental tests should be performed under conditions identical to the ones observed in the forming process. In this study, the warm deep drawing of a cylindrical cup is analysed, including the split-ring test to assess the temperature effect on the springback. Based on the analysis of the forming process conditions, the thermo-mechanical behaviour of the AA5086 aluminium alloy is described by a rate-independent thermo-elasto-plastic material model. The hardening law adopted is temperature-dependent while the yield function is temperature-independent. Nevertheless, the yield criterion parameters are selected based on the temperature of the heated tools. In fact, the model assumes that the temperature of the tools is uniform and constant, adopting a variable interfacial heat transfer coefficient. The accuracy of the proposed finite element model is assessed by comparing numerical and experimental results. The predicted punch force, thickness distribution and earing profile are in very good agreement with the experimental measurements, when the anisotropic behaviour of the blank is accurately described. However, this does not guarantee a correct springback prediction, which is strongly influenced by the elastic properties, namely the Young's modulus.