A Dual‐Functional Graphene‐Based Self‐Alarm Health‐Monitoring E‐Skin

Diseases such as cardiovascular problems and sleep apnea cause mass deaths annually due to a lack of timely and portable monitoring and alarm measures. Various wearable devices for health monitoring have been intensely researched to reduce mortality. However, these devices themselves can only detect physiological signals; they cannot sound an alarm. Therefore, they must rely on mobile phones or other peripheral devices such as speakers or vibration motors to sound an alarm, which may result in a patient missing the optimal treatment. It is valuable to develop a self‐alarm health monitoring device with the dual functions of physiological signal detection and sound alarm simultaneously. A one‐step laser‐induced graphene (LIG)‐based electronic skin (E‐skin) is fabricated to perform health monitoring and alarm at the same time, which benefit from its both excellent mechanical and acoustical performance. These customized shutter‐patterned E‐skins have an ultrahigh sensitivity of 316.3 and can detect various biosignals such as wrist pulse, respiratory, etc. They also have a self‐alarm function and can sound an alarm when detecting abnormal situations. This study addresses the multifunctional integration required for multisensors, which will open further applications in wearable sensors and health‐care devices.     

Low‐Power‐Photon Up‐Conversion in Dual‐Dye‐Loaded Polymer Nanoparticles

Sensitized triplet–triplet annihilation in multicomponent organic systems is already demonstrated to be suitable for obtaining efficient up‐conversion in solution with excitation power densities comparable to solar irradiance, but loses efficiency in the solid state. Here, it is demonstrated that it is possible to reduce this limitation by incorporating a standard bicomponent system in polymer nanoparticles. The confinement of all of the involved photophysical processes in a nanometer‐scale volume makes each nanoparticle a single and isolated high‐efficiency up‐converting unit. As a consequence, these dual‐dye‐loaded nanoparticles can be used to produce drop‐cast films, as well as dopants for polymeric matrices, preserving the performances of the starting moieties in solution.     

An improved t‐out‐of‐n e‐lottery protocol

In 2009, Lee and Chang proposed an electronic t‐out‐of‐n lottery protocol over the Internet based on the Chinese remainder theorem and blind signature. However, a security flaw exists in Lee–Chang's protocol that the lottery agent and the malicious purchaser can collude to control the winning result, which is unfair for the honest participants. On the basis of a verifiable random number generated by using the Lagrange interpolation formula over a finite field, an improved t‐out‐of‐n e‐lottery protocol is proposed, which guarantees that each participant can generate the winning result equally. The improved protocol achieves public verifiability and fairness without a trusted third party and a delaying function, which makes it more robust and more efficient. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Thin‐Film‐Based Integrated High‐Transition‐Temperature Superconductor Devices

Since the discovery of superconductivity at temperatures above the technologically promising liquid nitrogen temperatures, applications based on superconductors have expanded and are being put to commercial use. However, superconductivity at higher temperatures typically occurs in complex materials requiring stringent material and environmental constraints. Such restraints make the realization and integration of these materials with normal materials a nontrivial aspect. In this progress report, unique features of these superconductors in terms of their synthesis, physical properties determining interface electrical transport, and their applications are discussed. A detailed progress report on these applications with remarks on efforts taken to integrate these devices with traditional platforms and semiconducting materials is provided.     

Low‐complexity turbo detection for single‐carrier low‐density parity‐check‐coded multiple‐input multiple‐output underwater acoustic communications

A low‐complexity turbo detection scheme is proposed for single‐carrier multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) underwater acoustic (UWA) communications using low‐density parity‐check (LDPC) channel coding. The low complexity of the proposed detection algorithm is achieved in two aspects: first, the frequency‐domain equalization technique is adopted, and it maintains a low complexity irrespective of the highly dispersive UWA channels; second, the computation of the soft equalizer output, in the form of extrinsic log‐likelihood ratio, is performed with an approximating method, which further reduces the complexity. Moreover, attributed to the LDPC decoding, the turbo detection converges within only a few iterations. The proposed turbo detection scheme has been used for processing real‐world data collected in two different undersea trials: WHOI09 and ACOMM09. Experimental results show that it provides robust detection for MIMO UWA communications with different modulations and different symbol rates, at different transmission ranges. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance comparison of end‐to‐end and on‐the‐spot traffic‐aware techniques

Traffic‐aware routing protocols have recently received considerable attention. This has been motivated by the role that it could play in extending the network's lifetime (or operational time) as it target the reservation of node's power and better utilisation of channel bandwidth, which could lead to performance improvement in terms of important performance metrics including throughput and end‐to‐end delay. Traffic‐aware techniques can be classified into two categories, namely end‐to‐end and on‐the‐spot, based on the way of establishing and maintaining routes between any source and destination. Although there has been much work on both categories, there has been no comparative performance study of the two approaches. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that carries out such a performance comparison. To this end, we have adapted our traffic‐aware technique namely load density to suggest a new ‘on‐the‐spot’ traffic‐aware technique. The main reason for doing this adaptation is to ensure that the comparison between the two approaches is fair and realistic. The study will reveal the main performance characteristics of the two approaches under various traffic and network conditions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sub‐Millimeter‐Scale Monolayer p‐Type H‐Phase VS2

2D H‐phase vanadium disulfide (VS₂) is expected to exhibit tunable semiconductor properties as compared with its metallic T‐phase structure, and thus is of promise for future electronic applications. However, to date such 2D H‐phase VS₂ nanostructures have not been realized in experiment likely due to the polymorphs of vanadium sulfides and thermodynamic instability of H‐phase VS₂. Preparation of H‐phase VS₂ monolayer with lateral size up to 250 µm, as a new member in the 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) family, is reported. A unique growth environment is built by introducing the molten salt‐mediated precursor system as well as the epitaxial mica growth platform, which successfully overcomes the aforementioned growth challenges and enables the evolution of 2D H‐phase structure of VS₂. The honeycomb‐like structure of H‐phase VS₂ with broken inversion symmetry is confirmed by spherical aberration‐corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy and second harmonic generation characterization. The phase structure is found to be ultra‐stable up to 500 K. The field‐effect device study further demonstrates the p‐type semiconducting nature of the 2D H‐phase VS₂. The study introduces a new phase‐stable 2D TMDs materials with potential features for future electronic devices.     

iPTT: peer‐to‐peer push‐to‐talk for VoIP

This paper proposes iPTT, a peer‐to‐peer (P2P) Push‐to‐Talk (PTT) service for Voice over IP (VoIP). In iPTT, a distributed and mobile‐operator independent network architecture is presented to accelerate the deployment of the PTT service. Based on the serverless architecture, we develop two mechanisms, that is, flooding‐based floor control mechanism (FFC) and tree‐based floor control mechanism (TFC), for real‐time talk‐burst determination. The determination algorithms and the corresponding message flows for these two mechanisms are designed to show the feasibility of FFC and TFC. The performance of FFC and TFC is investigated through our analytical and simulation models in terms of the determination latency and the number of floor‐control message exchanges. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

High‐Mobility Air‐Stable Solution‐Shear‐Processed n‐Channel Organic Transistors Based on Core‐Chlorinated Naphthalene Diimides

High charge carrier mobility solution‐processed n‐channel organic thin‐film transistors (OTFTs) based on core‐chlorinated naphthalene tetracarboxylic diimides (NDIs) with fluoroalkyl chains are demonstrated. These OTFTs were prepared through a solution shearing method. Core‐chlorination of NDIs not only increases the electron mobilities of OTFTs, but also enhances their air stability, since the chlorination in the NDI core lowers the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) levels. The air‐stability of dichlorinated NDI was better than that of the tetrachlorinated NDIs, presumably due to the fact that dichlorinated NDIs have a denser packing of the fluoroalkyl chains and less grain boundaries on the surface, reducing the invasion pathway of ambient oxygen and moisture. The devices of dichlorinated NDIs exhibit good OTFT performance, even after storage in air for one and a half months. Charge transport anisotropy is observed from the dichlorinated NDI. A dichlorinated NDI with ?CH₂C₃F₇ side chains reveals high mobilities of up to 0.22 and 0.57 cm² V^?1 s^?1 in parallel and perpendicular direction, respectively, with regard to the shearing direction. This mobility anisotropy is related to the grain morphology. In addition, we find that the solution‐shearing deposition affects the molecular orientation in the crystalline thin films and lowers the d(001)‐spacing (the out‐of‐plane interlayer spacing), compared to the vapor‐deposited thin films. Core‐chlorinated NDI derivatives are found to be highly suitable for n‐channel active materials in low‐cost solution‐processed organic electronics.     

Energy‐aware virtual multi‐input‐multi‐output‐based routing for wireless ad hoc networks

Virtual multi‐input‐multi‐output (vMIMO) technology is becoming a promising way to improve the energy efficiency of wireless networks. Previous research always builds up the vMIMO‐based routing on the fixed structure such as clusters, and the MIMO mode is omitted in most cases. So, they cannot fully explore the advantage of vMIMO in routing. In this paper, we study a general routing scheme in which no fixed structure is required, and any communication mode of vMIMO is allowed for sake of the energy efficiency. We define two vMIMO‐based routing problems aiming to energy‐minimization and lifetime‐optimization. The first problem can be solved by our distributed energy‐minimum vMIMO‐based algorithm. The algorithm constructs the virtual cooperative graph, and applies the shortest path method on the virtual cooperative graph to solve this problem. The second problem is non‐deterministic polynomial‐time hard, and we design the distributed lifetime‐oriented vMIMO‐based algorithm, which is based on the modified Bellman‐Ford method. It can reach approximation ratio of four. The simulations show that our algorithms can work well in many situations. For example, distributed lifetime‐oriented vMIMO‐based algorithm can prolong the lifetime about 20.2% in dense topologies compared with the cooperative routing algorithm on average. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nanodot‐Enhanced High‐Efficiency Pure‐White Organic Light‐Emitting Diodes with Mixed‐Host Structures

A relatively high‐efficiency, fluorescent pure‐white organic light‐emitting diode was fabricated using a polysilicic acid (PSA) nanodot‐embedded polymeric hole‐transporting layer (HTL). The diode employed a mixed host in the single emissive layer, which comprised 0.5 wt % yellow 5,6,11,12‐tetra‐phenylnaphthacene doped in the mixed host of 50 % 2‐(N,N‐diphenyl‐amino)‐6‐[4‐(N,N‐diphenylamino)styryl]naphthalene and 50 % N,N′‐bis‐(1‐naphthyl)‐N,N′‐diphenyl‐1,10‐biphenyl‐4‐4′‐diamine. By incorporating 7 wt % 3 nm PSA nanodot into the HTL of poly(3,4‐ethylene‐dioxythiophene)‐poly‐(styrenesulfonate), the efficiency at 100 cd m^–2 was increased from 13.5 lm W^–1 (14.7 cd A^–1; EQE: 7.2 %) to 17.1 lm W^–1 (17.6 cd A^–1; EQE: 8.3 %). The marked efficiency improvement may be attributed to the introduction of the PSA nanodot, leading to a better carrier‐injection‐balance.     

Pure‐Silica‐Zeolite MFI and MEL Low‐Dielectric‐Constant Films with Fluoro‐Organic Functionalization

The synthesis of organic‐functionalized pure‐silica‐zeolites (PSZs) with MFI‐ and MEL‐type structures for low‐k applications prepared through a direct‐synthesis method by adding a fluorinated silane to the synthesis solution is reported. The added fluorine functionality increases the hydrophobicity of the zeolites, which are characterized by scanning electron microscopy, X‐ray diffraction, ²⁹Si and ¹⁹F solid‐state NMR spectroscopy, nitrogen adsorption, and thermogravimetric analysis. The functionalized zeolite powders have low water content and calcined spin‐on films prepared from the functionalized nanoparticle suspensions exhibit higher water contact angles and lower k values (2.1 and 1.8 for the functionalized MFI‐ and MEL‐type zeolites, respectively) than PSZ films. The use of a direct‐synthesis method to decrease the moisture adsorption in the films eliminates the extra post‐spin‐on silylation steps that are traditionally used to render the zeolite films hydrophobic.     

Modality‐Based Sentence‐Final Intonation Prediction for Korean Conversational‐Style Text‐to‐Speech Systems

This letter presents a prediction model for sentence‐final intonations for Korean conversational‐style text‐to‐speech systems in which we introduce the linguistic feature of ‘modality’ as a new parameter. Based on their function and meaning, we classify tonal forms in speech data into tone types meaningful for speech synthesis and use the result of this classification to build our prediction model using a tree structured classification algorithm. In order to show that modality is more effective for the prediction model than features such as sentence type or speech act, an experiment is performed on a test set of 970 utterances with a training set of 3,883 utterances. The results show that modality makes a higher contribution to the determination of sentence‐final intonation than sentence type or speech act, and that prediction accuracy improves up to 25% when the feature of modality is introduced.     

All‐Cellulose‐Based Quasi‐Solid‐State Sodium‐Ion Hybrid Capacitors Enabled by Structural Hierarchy

Na‐ion hybrid capacitors consisting of battery‐type anodes and capacitor‐style cathodes are attracting increasing attention on account of the abundance of sodium‐based resources as well as the potential to bridge the gap between batteries (high energy) and supercapacitors (high power). Herein, hierarchically structured carbon materials inspired by multiscale building units of cellulose from nature are assembled with cellulose‐based gel electrolytes into Na‐ion capacitors. Nonporous hard carbon anodes are obtained through the direct thermal pyrolysis of cellulose nanocrystals. Nitrogen‐doped carbon cathodes with a coral‐like hierarchically porous architecture are prepared via hydrothermal carbonization and activation of cellulose microfibrils. The reversible charge capacity of the anode is 256.9 mAh g^?1 when operating at 0.1 A g^?1 from 0 to 1.5 V versus Na⁺/Na, and the discharge capacitance of cathodes tested within 1.5 to 4.2 V versus Na⁺/Na is 212.4 F g^?1 at 0.1 A g^?1. Utilizing Na⁺ and ClO₄^? as charge carriers, the energy density of the full Na‐ion capacitor with two asymmetric carbon electrodes can reach 181 Wh kg^?1 at 250 W kg^?1, which is one of the highest energy devices reported until now. Combined with macrocellulose‐based gel electrolytes, all‐cellulose‐based quasi‐solid‐state devices are demonstrated possessing additional advantages in terms of overall sustainability.     

Heterostructured Visible‐Light‐Active Photocatalyst of Chromia‐Nanoparticle‐Layered Titanate

An efficient visible‐light active photocatalyst of porous CrO_x–Ti_1.83O₄ nanohybrid with a 1:1 type ordered heterostructure is synthesized through a hybridization between a chromia cluster and exfoliated titanate nanosheets. The present nanohybrids are found to have a large surface area (ca. 250–310 m² g^–1) and an intense absorption of visible light, ascribable, respectively, to the formation of a porous structure and the hybridization of titanate with narrow‐bandgap chromium oxide. After the calcination at 400 °C, the nanohybrid shows an enhanced photocatalytic activity to effectively decompose organic compounds under the irradiation of visible light (λ > 420 nm). The present study highlights the exfoliation–restacking route as a very powerful way to develop efficient visible‐light‐harvesting photocatalysts with excellent thermal stability.     

Low‐Complexity Multi‐size Cyclic‐Shifter for QC‐LDPC Codes

The decoding process of a quasi‐cyclic low‐density parity check code requires a unique type of rotator. These rotators, called multi‐size cyclic‐shifters (MSCSs), rotate input data with various sizes, where the size is the amount of data to be rotated. This paper proposes a low‐complexity MSCS structure for the case when the sizes have a nontrivial common divisor. By combining the strong points of two previous structures, the proposed structure achieves the smallest area. The experimental results show that the area reduction was more than 14.7% when the proposed structure was applied to IEEE 802.16e as an example.     

Wide‐Band T‐Shaped Microstrip‐Fed Twin‐Slot Array Antenna

A numerical simulation and an experimental implementation of T‐shaped microstrip‐fed printed slot array antenna are presented in this paper. The proposed antenna with relative permittivity 4.3 and thickness 1.0mm is analyzed by the finite‐difference time‐domain (FDTD) method. The dependence of design parameters on the bandwidth characteristics is investigated. The measured bandwidth of twin‐slot array antenna is from 1.37 GHz to 2.388 GHz, which is approximately 53.9 % for return loss less than or equal to ‐10 dB. The bandwidth of twin‐slot is about 1.06 % larger than that of single‐slot antenna. The measured results are in good agreement with the FDTD results.     

Low‐Power‐Adaptive MC‐CDMA Receiver Architecture

This paper proposes a novel concept of adjusting the hardware size in a multi‐carrier code division multiple access (MC‐CDMA) receiver in real time as per the channel parameters such as delay spread, signal‐to‐noise ratio, transmission rate, and Doppler frequency. The fast Fourier transform (FFT) or inverse FFT (IFFT) size in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)/MC‐CDMA transceivers varies from 1024 points to 16 points. Two low‐power reconfigurable radix‐4 256‐point FFT processor architectures are proposed that can also be dynamically configured as 64‐point and 16‐point as per the channel parameters to prove the concept. By tailoring the clock of the higher FFT stages for longer FFTs and switching to shorter FFTs from longer FFTs, significant power saving is achieved. In addition, two 256 sub‐carrier MC‐CDMA receiver architectures are proposed which can also be configured for 64 sub‐carriers in real time to prove the feasibility of the concept over the whole receiver.     

Binaphthyl‐Containing Green‐ and Red‐Emitting Molecules for Solution‐Processable Organic Light‐Emitting Diodes

Strong intermolecular interactions usually result in decreases in solubility and fluorescence efficiency of organic molecules. Therefore, amorphous materials are highly pursued when designing solution‐processable, electroluminescent organic molecules. In this paper, a non‐planar binaphthyl moiety is presented as a way of reducing intermolecular interactions and four binaphthyl‐containing molecules ( BNCM s): green‐emitting BBB and TBT as well as red‐emitting BTBTB and TBBBT , are designed and synthesized. The photophysical and electrochemical properties of the molecules are systematically investigated and it is found that TBT , TBBBT , and BTBTB solutions show high photoluminescence (PL) quantum efficiencies of 0.41, 0.54, and 0.48, respectively. Based on the good solubility and amorphous film‐forming ability of the synthesized BNCM s, double‐layer structured organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) with BNCM s as emitting layer and poly(N‐vinylcarbazole) (PVK) or a blend of poly[N,N′‐bis(4‐butylphenyl)‐N,N′‐bis(phenyl)benzidine] and PVK as hole‐transporting layer are fabricated by a simple solution spin‐coating procedure. Amongst those, the BTBTB based OLED, for example, reaches a high maximum luminance of 8315 cd · m⁻² and a maximum luminous efficiency of 1.95 cd · A⁻¹ at a low turn‐on voltage of 2.2 V. This is one of the best performances of a spin‐coated OLED reported so far. In addition, by doping the green and red BNCM s into a blue‐emitting host material poly(9,9‐dioctylfluorene‐2,7‐diyl) high performance white light‐emitting diodes with pure white light emission and a maximum luminance of 4000 cd · m⁻² are realized.     

Cell‐Instructive Multiphasic Gel‐in‐Gel Materials

Developing tissue is typically soft, highly hydrated, dynamic, and increasingly heterogeneous matter. Recapitulating such characteristics in engineered cell‐instructive materials holds the promise of maximizing the options to direct tissue formation. Accordingly, progress in the design of multiphasic hydrogel materials is expected to expand the therapeutic capabilities of tissue engineering approaches and the relevance of human 3D in vitro tissue and disease models. Recently pioneered methodologies allow for the creation of multiphasic hydrogel systems suitable to template and guide the dynamic formation of tissue‐ and organ‐specific structures across scales, in vitro and in vivo. The related approaches include the assembly of distinct gel phases, the embedding of gels in other gel materials and the patterning of preformed gel materials. Herein, the capabilities and limitations of the respective methods are summarized and discussed and their potential is highlighted with some selected examples of the recent literature. As the modularity of the related methodologies facilitates combinatorial and individualized solutions, it is envisioned that multiphasic gel‐in‐gel materials will become a versatile morphogenetic toolbox expanding the scope and the power of bioengineering technologies.