A new technology to improve the light fastness of cyanine dye layers of a compact disk recordable (CD-R) or a digital video disk recordable (DVD-R) without using any singlet oxygen quenchers was discussed. The light fastness of dicarbocyanine dye layers of a CD-R was improved by doping with tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) derivatives of various reduction potentials (E 1/2 RED). The optimum potential was found to be around 0 V vs saturated calomel electrode (SCE). Doping with TCNQ derivatives was found to be effective also for the improvement of light fastness of the carbocyanine dye layers which have optical properties suitable for a DVD-R disk. Excessive electron demanding TCNQ derivatives (E 1/2 RED> 0), however, showed rather poor jitter and block-error rate (BLER) after exposure to a xenon lamp as compared to a TCNQ derivative (TCNQ1) with an optimal reduction potential (ca. 0 V vs SCE). Since TCNQ derivatives have no absorption band in a red to near infrared region, the CD-R or the DVD-R having cyanine dye layers doped with TCNQ derivatives exhibit higher reflectivity than those with such singlet oxygen quenchers as diimmonium salts.

Brane tilings are efficient mnemonics for Lagrangians of N = 2 Chern-Simonsmatter theories. Such theories are conjectured to arise on M2-branes probing singular toric Calabi-Yau fourfolds. In this paper, a simple modification of the Kasteleyn technique is described which is conjectured to compute the three dimensional toric diagram of the non-compact moduli space of a single probe. The Hilbert Series is used to compute the spectrum of non-trivial scaling dimensions for a selected set of examples.A Prescriptions for computing the Hilbert series 33 A.1 The cone over Q 1,1,1 36 B Three dimensional crystals and "dual ABJM theory" 39 4 The resulting variety is Calabi-Yau because the vectors of charges in C g−2 are traceless by construction.

To improve the stability of dye-based optical discs during long-term storage, we examined the effect of hydrogen bonding in the dye layer with the expectation that the strong networks of hydrogen bonds would suppress the migration of chemical species, thereby preventing changes in the properties of the amorphous dye films. Intermolecular hydrogen bonding was compared in six dyes, which were composed of a combination of an indodicarbocyanine-dye cation and six colorless naphthalenedisulphonate anions with zero to two hydroxyl groups. Accelerated temperature/humidity testing revealed that the introduction of hydroxyl groups on the colorless anions improved the stability of the cyanine-dye-based optical discs. The error rate was very low, particularly when a thermally stable network of hydrogen bonds involving the hydroxyl (-OH) groups was present, as confirmed by variable-temperature IR spectroscopy. This stabilization due to hydrogen bonding affords a new guideline for designing dyes for optical discs.

No abstract

The optical design of a time-compensated monochromator for high-order harmonic pulses in the extreme-UV (EUV) and soft x-ray regions is presented. The system consists of two grazing-incidence mirrors used as collimating and refocusing elements and two multilayer normal-incidence plane mirrors illuminated in parallel light that rotate along a vertical axis parallel to their planes to select the wavelength, and remain parallel to guarantee the constant direction of the exit beam: this is performed by rotating and translating, at the same time, one of the two mirrors along an axis parallel to the exit direction. The system has constant exit direction in the whole working spectral region. The pulse time duration is not altered up to few femtoseconds. A system operating in the 9-32 nm region is described.