By Martijn Feron, Zhen Zhang and Zhigang Suo

The mobility of charge carriers in silicon can be significantly increased when silicon is subject to a field of strain.In a microelectronic device, however, the strain field may be intensified at a sharp feature, such as an edge or a corner, injecting dislocations into silicon and ultimately failing the device. The strain field at an edge is singular, and is often a linear superposition of two modes of different exponents. We characterize the relative contribution of the two modes by a mode angle, and determine the critical slip systems as the amplitude of the load increases. We calculate the critical residual stress in a thin-film stripe bonded on a silicon substrate.

J.R.BARBER: INTERMEDIATE MECHANICS OF MATERIALS

Many of you may know my book on Elasticity, but may not be aware that I also wrote an undergraduate book on Intermediate Mechanics of Materials (Published by McGraw-Hill - ISBN 0-07-232519-4). This picks up from the typical elementary Mechanics of Materials course and deals with the next range of topics such as energy methods, elastic-plastic bending, bending of axisymmetric cylindrical shells and axisymmetric thick-walled cylinders. A full Table of Contents and the Preface are given below.

If you are interested in nano-calorimetry or combinatorial analysis, you might also find the following paper interesting. It was published as part of the MRS spring ‘06 meeting proceedings (http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec_subscribe.asp?CID=6447&DID=175796&action=d…). This paper describes the parallel nano-differential scanning calorimeter (PnDSC), a new device for measuring the thermal properties of nano-scale material systems using a combinatorial approach.

The IUTAM Symposium "150 Years of Vortex Dynamics" will be held October 12-17, 2008, at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Lyngby, and in Copenhagen, Denmark. The rationale behind the title is that H. von Helmholtz published his seminal paper enunciating his three laws of vortex dynamics in 1858.

The Scientific Committee, consisting of Profs. Keith Moffatt (Cambridge), Paul Newton (Los Angeles), Slava Meleshko (Kiev), Morten Brøns (Copenhagen), GertJan van Heijst (Eindhoven), Shigeo Kida (Kyoto), and H. Aref (Copenhagen and Blacksburg) has been constituted.

By Michael H . Suo and Zhigang Suo

While browsers have improved greatly in recent years, we have noticed that many academics are still missing out on important functions. In this post, we will focus on Firefox, an open-source browser that has recently gained popularity. Note: this is not a Microsoft-bashing article. Internet Explorer 7 is a very functional modern browser, but for the reasons below, we like Firefox better.

I think that the note by Zhigang Suo puts forth a pressing issue. Coming from remotely related areas in physics (quantum mechanics and electromagnetic theory), my own interests and work have recently evolved to topics in both solid mechanics (crystal surfaces) and aspects of fluid mechanics (advection-diffusion and a most recent start on biomembranes). Hence, practically, I cannot see any boundaries between these disciplines.

The Department of Energy and Refrigerating Air-Conditioning Engineering at National Taipei University of Technology (NTUT) invites applications for one tenure-track faculty position in the area of ENERGY. Ph.D. in engineering is required. The position starts on August 1, 2007. Duties include teaching and research. The due day for application is on March 1, 2007.