Please cite this article in press as: Bari D et al. j.microrel.2011.07.061 Since the DSSCs gain heat during exposure to sunlight increasing its own temperature, we have studied the role of temperature on the degradation of DSSCs. We have performed pure thermal stresses keeping the devices at a constant temperature inside a climatic chamber and monitoring the electrical parameters during stress....

A phase-field approach for phase transformations (PTs) between three different phases at nonequilibrium temperatures is developed. It includes advanced mechanics, thermodynamically consistent interfacial stresses, and interface interactions. A thermodynamic Landau-Ginzburg potential developed in terms of polar order parameters satisfies the desired instability and equilibrium conditions for hom...

We propose a method to deduce the free energies ! and stresses " of plane surfaces and solid-liquid interfaces in elemental systems from atomistic simulations involving nonhydrostatically stressed solid phases. The method is applied to compute the temperature dependencies of ! and " for the !110" Cu surface using Monte Carlo simulations with an embedded-atom potential. Both quantities decrease ...

Freezing, dehydration, and supercooling cause microtubules in mesophyll cells of spinach (Spinacia oleracea L. cv Bloomsdale) to depolymerize (ME Bartolo, JV Carter [1991] Plant Physiol 97: 175-181). The objective of this study was to gain insight into the question of whether microtubules depolymerize as a direct response to environmental stresses or as an indirect response to cellular changes ...

This study investigated the possibility that sublethal food preservation stresses (high or low temperature and osmotic and pH stress) can lead to changes in the nature and scale of antibiotic resistance (ABR) expressed by three food-related pathogens (Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, and Staphylococcus aureus). The study found that some sublethal stresses significantly...

Partial dislocation nucleation and multiplication in III±V semiconductor compounds are usually ascribed to the difference in mobility between a and b partials. These differences in mobility increase when the temperature decreases, so that the contribution of twinning to the deformation mechanisms becomes important for high stresses and low temperatures. Starting from transmission electron micro...

Current methodologies used for the inference of thin film stress through curvature measurements are strictly restricted to stress and curvature states that are assumed to remain uniform over the entire film/substrate system. By considering a circular thin film/ substrate system subject to nonuniform and nonaxisymmetric temperature distributions, we derive relations between the film stresses and...

In the present paper a fully coupled three-dimensional thermo-hygro-mechanical model for concrete is discussed and used in the numerical studies. The model is formulated in the framework of continuum mechanics based on the principles of irreversible thermodynamics. Distribution of moisture, pore pressure, temperature, stresses and strains are calculated by employing a three-dimensional transien...