The sensitivity of many biological and chemical sensors is critically dependent on the stability of the potential of the reference electrode being used. The stability of a reference electrode's potential is highly influenced by the properties of its surface. In this paper, for the first time, the formation of nanosheets of silver chloride on silver wire is observed and controlled using high anodic constant potential (>0.5 V) and pulsed electrodeposition. The resulting nanostructured morphology substantially improves the electrode's potential stability in comparison with the conventional globular surface structure. The increased stability is attributed to the increase in the surface area of the silver chloride produced by the nanosheet formation.

Subject classification: 61.72.Lk; 68.35.Ct; S1.61; S5.11The elastic displacement and stress fields of a bicrystalline thin foil formed by two welded anisotropic crystals are calculated when a biperiodic misfit dislocation network lies along the interface separating the two anisotropic crystal components. The analysis is similar to that already presented by us in this journal [R. Bonnet, phys. stat. sol. (a) 180, 487 (2000)] for two isotropic crystals. From calculations applied to the (111)CoSi 2 /(111)Si interface, anisotropic effects are shown to be much stronger near the heterointerface.

Silver chloride that is commonly used as a reference electrode in many chemical sensors is stable when its dimensions are relatively large. However, its use in sensors, especially in nanosensors, requires that its size be reduced significantly. In this paper, we report that the stability of very small silver chloride electrodes could be obtained if a specific potential is applied. The AgCl wires produced by electrodeposition are investigated by the chronoamperometry technique. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is used to study the properties of the surface of the fabricated wires surface obtained. We found that the stability depends on the silver chloride surface morphology. Indeed, the Ag/AgCl wire provided a more stable potential when its surface morphology is like nanosheets. It seems that this surface morphology obtained for Ag/AgCl wire with a micrometric diameter is a promising element that could be used to measure a variety of biological parameters such as membrane potential, intracellular free ion concentrations and cell-to-cell communication.

In the present work, Fe-Cu based alloys with different compositions have been obtained by using Powder metallurgy (PM). These alloys were created with the purpose of increasing mechanical properties of the parts. Nevertheless, little have been published, once this is a matter of industrial interest. In this work, samples of Fe100-xCux(x=0.40, 0.55, 0.70, 0.85 and 1) alloys were processed by cold pressing at 10 MPa, followed by sintering at 1250 C°. Structures formed during sintering were studied by EDS. Microstructural aspects were observed by MEB. Densification and microhardness tests were also performed.

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