Thermal conductivity measurements using 1ω and 3ω methods revisited for voltage-driven setups.

1ω and 3ω methods are widely established transient measurement techniques for the characterization of thermal transport in bulk-materials, thin films, and 1D nano-objects. These methods are based on resistance oscillations of a heater caused by Joule-heating from a sinusoidal current at frequency 1ω which lead to changes in the 1ω voltage and produce a voltage component at 3ω. Although the usual formalism for analyzing the measurement data assumes an ideal current source, voltage-driven measurement setups are employed in many cases. In this context, we find that there has been lack of clarity if a correction generally has to be considered when analyzing the measurement data from voltage driven setups. In this work, Fourier-analysis is employed to show that a correction is not required for 1ω methods and for 3ω measurements that use common-mode-subtraction. Experimental results are presented for a line heater on a fused silica substrate with known thermal properties, and for an individual nickel wire with diameter of 150 nm.

Nonadiabatic spin transfer torque in high anisotropy magnetic nanowires with narrow domain walls.

Current induced domain wall (DW) depinning of a narrow DW in out-of-plane magnetized (Pt/Co)_{3}/Pt multilayer elements is studied by magnetotransport. We find that for conventional measurements Joule heating effects conceal the real spin torque efficiency and so we use a measurement scheme at a constant sample temperature to unambiguously extract the spin torque contribution. From the variation of the depinning magnetic field with the current pulse amplitude we directly deduce the large nonadiabaticity factor in this material and we find that its amplitude is consistent with a momentum transfer mechanism.

Turkevich method for gold nanoparticle synthesis revisited.

The growth of gold nanoparticles by reduction by citrate and ascorbic acid has been examined in detail to explore the parameter space of reaction conditions. It is found that gold particles can be produced in a wide range of sizes, from 9 to 120 nm, with defined size distribution, following the earlier work of Turkevich and Frens. The reaction is initiated thermally or in comparison by UV irradiation, which results in similar final products. The kinetics of the extinction spectra show the multiple steps of primary and secondary clustering leading to polycrystallites.