Three designs for negative-ion plasma sources are described. Two sources utilize metal hexafluorides such as SF6 and WF6 to scavenge electrons from electron-ion plasmas and the third relies upon surface ionization of alkali halide salts on heated alumina and zirconia. SF6 introduced into electron-ion plasmas yielded negative-ion plasma densities of 1010 cm−3 with low residual electron densities, (ne/ni∼0.01–0.05). On alumina, plasma densities of 5×109 cm−3 were obtained for CsCl, CsI, and KI and 109 cm−3 for KCl. On zirconia 1010 cm−3 densities were obtained for CsCl. For alkali halide sources, electron densities of ne/ni≲10−4 have been achieved.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics (the law of "increasing disorder") is fundamental to all the sciences and is considered inviolable by the general scientific community. This volume represents the first book in an emerging renaissance of second law studies. It covers the first international conference in more than 100 years -and perhaps, ever -to explore challenges to the second law's absolute status and to many unresolved foundational issues surrounding it. These collected papers represent work by more than 100 researchers from over 25 countries, many of whom are prominent in the fields of classical and quantum statistical thermodynamics. Much of the research is original and, if verified by the scientific community, could lead to paradigm shifts in physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering.Chapter Contents are available at http://proceedings.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=APCPCS&Volume=643&Issue=1. The online accessible pdf files are also available here. *Editor's Note: The brief summary and the contents of the books are reported as provided by the author or the publishers. Authors and publishers are encouraged to send review copies of their recent books of potential interest to readers of Entropy to the Editor-in-Chief (Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, MDPI, Matthaeusstrasse 11, CH-4057 Basel, Switzerland. Tel. +41 79 322 3379, Fax +41 61 302 8918, Email: lin@mdpi.org). Some books will be offered to the scholarly community for the purpose of preparing full-length reviews.
Over the last decade two new classes of thermodynamic paradoxes have been investigated at University of San Diego involving the recently identified phenomena of {\em epicatalysis} and {\em supradegeneracy}. These paradoxes add to a growing list of challenges to the second law of thermodynamics begun in the early 1990s.
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