Investigating the Effects of the Household Budget Survey Redesign on Consumption and Inequality Estimates: the Italian Experience

In 2014, many innovations were introduced in the Italian Household Budget Survey (HBS) in response to changes in European recommendations and purchasing behaviours and to an increased demand for information in the context of social and economic research. New instruments and techniques have been introduced, together with more accurate methodologies, with the aim of improving the survey, by both reducing the bias and variance of survey estimates and supplying estimation for additional subpopulations and variables. Given the parallel conduction of the former and new HBS in 2013, it has been possible to evaluate the effects of the abovementioned changes on consumption expenditure and inequality estimates and to compare the sample representativeness of selected subpopulations in both surveys.

Contacts for Molybdenum Disulfide: Interface Chemistry and Thermal Stability

In this review on contacts with MoS2, we consider reports on both interface chemistry and device characteristics. We show that there is considerable disagreement between reported properties, at least some of which may be explained by variability in the properties of geological MoS2. Furthermore, we highlight that while early experiments using photoemission to study the interface behavior of metal-MoS2 showed a lack of Fermi-level pinning, device measurements repeatedly confirm that the interface is indeed pinned. Here we suggest that a parallel conduction mechanism enabled by metallic defects in the MoS2 materials may explain both results. We note that processing conditions during metal depositions on MoS2 can play a critical role in the interface chemistry, with differences between high vacuum and ultra-high vacuum being particularly important for low work function metals. This can be used to engineer the interfaces by using thin metal-oxide interlayers to protect the MoS2 from reactions with the metals. We also report on the changes in the interfaces that can occur at high temperature which include enhanced reactions between Ti or Cr and MoS2, diffusion of Ag into MoS2, and delamination of Fe. What is clear is that there is a dearth of experimental work that investigates both the interface chemistry and device properties in parallel.

Boosted thermoelectric properties of molybdenum oxide thin films deposited on Si substrates

[Formula: see text] has novel peculiarities and complexities due to multiple valence states of 4d molybdenum, but high carrier density impedes its thermoelectric (TE) application. Recent investigation has demonstrated that the TE performance of transition metal oxide films can be greatly enhanced by activating a parallel conduction channel in the perovskite substrates through reversible incorporation of oxygen. In this work, we report the TE properties of [Formula: see text] thin films deposited on single crystalline Si and quartz glass substrates by magnetron sputtering. The TE power factor (PF) in the former is above 40 times bigger than that in the latter. Such a large enhancement originates mainly from the significantly enhanced Seebeck coefficient, correlated with the contribution of the Si substrate. The highest PF value 1.78 mW/(m[Formula: see text]⋅[Formula: see text]K2) at 700 K in this [Formula: see text]/Si system is comparable to the state-of-the-art in other TE thin films. Based on the preceding research, our experimental results suggest a more economic and scalable route to explore high-performance TE thin films.