Design and development of a multichannel potentiometer for monitoring an electrode array and its application in flow analysis

A versatile potentiometer that works with electrode arrays in flow injection and/or monosegmented flow systems is described. The potentiometer is controlled by a microcomputer that allows individual, sequential multiplexed or random accesses to eight electrodes while employing only one reference electrode. The instrument was demonstrated by monitoring an array of seven flow-through ion-selective electrodes for Ag(+) and for three electrodes for Cl(-), Ca(2+) and K(+). The figures of merit of the individual and multiplexed (summed) readings of the electrode array were compared. The absolute standard deviation of the measurements made by summing the potential of two or more electrodes was maintained constant, thus improving the precision of the measurements. This result shows that an attempt to combine the signals of the electrodes to produce a more intense signal in the Hadamard strategy is feasible and accompanied by a proportional improvement in the precision of individual measurements. The preliminary tests suggest that the system can allow for 270 determinations per hour, with a linear range from 1.0 x 10(-2) to 1.0 x 10(-4) mol l(-1) for the three di inverted exclamation markerent analytes. Detection limits were estimated as 3.1 x 10(-5), 3.0 x 10(-6) and 1.0 x 10(-5) mol l(-1) for Cl(-), Ca(2+) and K(+), respectively.     

A frequency domain ultrasonic model for the pulse-echo transducer response of an arbitrary scatterer in a fluid

A very general model formulation is presented in the frequency domain for the pulse-echo ultrasonic response of an arbitrary scatterer in a fluid. The transducer is modeled as a piston source and the scatterer can be located anywhere in the transducer wavefield. The model is computationally efficient and is shown to agree well with initial experiments.     

Adhesion improvement of thermoplastic isotropically conductive adhesive

Generally, isotropically conductive adhesive formulations include epoxy resin as the polymeric matrix. Although epoxy has superior adhesion capability, its drawbacks include the tendency to absorb moisture and lack of reworkability (thermosetting polymer). In this study, a thermoplastic polymer with low moisture absorption (0.28 wt%), called polyarylene ether (PAE2), is used in isotropically conductive adhesive (ICA) formulation. Previous research work by Lu et al. showed that the moisture absorbed into epoxy caused galvanic corrosion, which result in the formation of metal oxide . By using a polymer with low moisture absorption, the amount of water present in ICA will be small, and the corrosion rate and formation of metal oxide can be reduced. However, previous measurements of contact resistance stability of PAE2-based ICA showed that they are not stable on all surface finishes. It was determined that for thermoplastic-based ICA, poor adhesion was the main mechanism for unstable contact resistance. Two methods of adhesion improvement will be evaluated in this work. The first is to use coupling agents and the second is to blend the thermoplastic with epoxy. Both methods showed promise in improving the contact resistance stability of polyarylene ether based ICA.     

Three-dimensional modeling of AC space charge for large-signal TWT simulation

We describe a new model for calculating the ac space charge in a linear-beam traveling wave tube (TWT) large-signal simulation code when the true three-dimensional (3-D) geometry of the interaction circuit is taken into account. We use the 3-D electromagnetic simulation code CTLSS to characterize the ac space charge fields generated by a set of test currents placed inside the periodic interaction structure. This information, expressed in matrix form, is used by the large-signal simulation codes CHRISTINE-1D and CHRISTINE-3D to compute self-consistently the additional space charge field terms due to the structure in response to the beam evolution during the simulation. We present the formulation, and describe the implementation in both CTLSS and the large-signal codes. We validate the model by comparison with the analytical sheath helix model, and evaluate the importance of including this correction for modeling a number of helix and coupled-cavity TWT devices.     

An overview of fault monitoring and diagnosis in mining equipment

Proper detection and diagnosis of failing system components is crucial to efficient mining operations. However, the harsh mining environment offers special challenges to these types of actions. The atmosphere is damp, dirty, and potentially explosive, and equipment is located in confined areas far from shop facilities. These conditions, coupled with the increasing cost of downtime and complexity of mining equipment, have forced researchers and operators to investigate alternatives for improving equipment maintainability. This paper surveys monitoring and diagnosis technologies that offer opportunities for improving equipment availability in mining. Expert systems, model-based approaches, and neural nets are each discussed in the context of fault detection and diagnosis. The paper concludes with a comparative discussion summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of each     

Controlled stochastic model of a communication system with multiplesources

A stochastic model of buffering in a data communication system is considered, with source and sink transmission parameters depending on the number of active sources. For models in this control setting the authors analyze an effective numerical method for evaluating the equilibrium distribution of buffer content. The theoretical basis of the method is established first. Then, it is shown that the method has the same complexity, in terms of the total number of sources, as known analytical methods for the model with constant parameters. Asymptotics for tail probabilities at high buffer levels and under heavy load are also derived, and the complexity of their computation is compared with that of evaluating explicit formulas. In comparison to earlier results this approach reduces the complexity of computing the probability of overflow and its asymptotic estimates. The speed-up stems from the application of interpolation schemes     

Best structures for deep submicrometer (0.1-0.3 μm) MOS devices

Summary form only given. The LDD-type structure has begun to encounter difficulties in satisfying transistor requirements in manufacturing due to a basic conflict between the need to have a graded drain profile for hot carrier suppression and the requirements for manufacturability and performance which place emphasis on a shallow, steeply profiled drain. One approach for overcoming this conflict and limitation is a MOS transistor structure called the hot-carrier suppressed (HCS) MOSFET. In this approach, a lower doped drain region is placed behind, or above, the shallow, heavier doped drain region rather than being placed adjacent to the channel region. This structure is described in detail, and its simulated performance compared with that of the LDD and conventional MOSFET structures     

Rainbow Net analysis of VAXcluster system availability

A system modeling technique, Rainbow Nets, is used to evaluate the availability and mean-time-to-interrupt of the VAXcluster. These results are compared to the exact analytic results showing that reasonable accuracy is achieved through simulation. The complexity of the Rainbow Net implemented for the VAXcluster does not increase as the number of processors increases, but remains constant. This is unlike a Markov model which increases in size exponentially. The constancy is achieved by using tokens with identity attributes (items) that can have additional attributes associated with them (features) which can exist in multiple states. The time to perform the simulation increases, but this is a polynomial increase rather than exponential. With Rainbow Nets, there is no restriction on distributions used for transition firing times. This freedom allows real situations to be modeled more accurately by choosing the distribution which best fits the system performance. This eliminates the need to make the many simplifying assumptions that are typically required to keep analytic calculations from becoming intractable     

Clock frequency and latency in synchronous digital systems

The tradeoffs in the design of synchronous digital systems between clock frequency and latency in terms of the circuit characteristics of a pipelined data path are described. A design paradigm relating latency and clock frequency as a function of the level of pipelining is developed for studying the performance of a synchronous system. This perspective permits the development of design equations for constrained and unconstrained design problems which describe these performance parameters in terms of the delays of the logic, interconnect, registers, clock skew, and the number of logic states. These results provide an approach to the design of those synchronous digital systems in which latency and clock frequency are of primary importance. From the behavioral specifications for the proposed system, the designer can use these results to select the best logic architecture and the best available device technology to determine if the performance specifications can be satisfied, and, if so, what design options are available for optimization of other system attributes, such as area     

The relationship between optical guiding and the relative phase infree-electron lasers

The relative phase in this case is defined as the shift in the wavenumber from the vacuum value integrated over the interaction length. The relative phase is studied from the standpoint of the linear stability analysis in both the high- and low-gain regimes, and the qualitative implications in each of these regimes of the relative phase on the refractive guiding of the signal are identical. Specifically, the relative phase is found to be negative at the low-frequency end of the gain band. The relative phase increases with increasing frequency over this band until it turns positive at a frequency approximately 10% below the frequency of peak gain. Thus optical guiding is indicated over a large portion, but not all, of the gain band. The specific example of interest involves the low-gain regime prior to saturation. In this case, it is shown that the analytic result is in substantial agreement with the calculation of the relative phase