Inside Front Cover: The Elastic Properties and Plastic Behavior of Two‐Dimensional Polymer Structures Fabricated by Laser Interference Lithography (Adv. Funct. Mater. 10/2006)

The probing of the micromechanical properties within a two‐dimensional polymer structure with sixfold symmetry fabricated via interference lithography reveals a nonuniform spatial distribution in the elastic modulus “imprinted” with an interference pattern in work reported by Tsukruk, Thomas, and co‐workers on p. 1324. The image prepared by M. Lemieux and T. Gorishnyy shows how the interference pattern is formed by three laser beams and is transferred to the solid polymer structure. The elastic and plastic properties within a two‐dimensional polymer (SU8) structure with sixfold symmetry fabricated via interference lithography are presented. There is a nonuniform spatial distribution in the elastic modulus, with a higher elastic modulus obtained for nodes (brightest regions in the laser interference pattern) and a lower elastic modulus for beams (darkest regions in the laser interference pattern) of the photopatterned films. We suggest that such a nonuniformity and unusual plastic behavior are related to the variable material properties “imprinted” by the interference pattern.     

A Novel Lattice Reduction Precoding Method

In this work, a novel lattice reduction (LR) precoding method is proposed. The technique combines conventional LR precoding with a method of reducing the singular value coefficients of the LR-reduced basis matrix. The performance of the new technique was comparable to that of sphere encoding, while its complexity was lower than that of other sub-optimal methods.     

Bi-slotted tree based anti-collision protocols for fast tag identification in RFID systems

This paper is intended to present bi-slotted tree based RFID tag anti-collision protocols, bi-slotted query tree algorithm (BSQTA) and bi-slotted collision tracking tree algorithm (BSCTTA). Diminishing prefix overhead and iteration overhead is a significant issue to minimize the anti-collision cost. For fast tag identification, BSQTA and BSCTTA use time divided responses depending on whether the collided bit is `0' or `1' at each tag ID. According to the simulation results, BSQTA and BSCTTA require less time consumption for tag identification than the other tree based RFID tag anti-collision protocols     

Inorganic Drug‐Delivery Nanovehicle Conjugated with Cancer‐Cell‐Specific Ligand

The surface of layered double hydroxide nanoparticles, a potential drug‐delivery nanovehicle, is modified with the cancer‐cell‐specific ligand, folic acid. The surface modification is successfully accomplished through step‐by‐step coupling reactions with aminopropyltriethoxysilane and 1‐ethyl‐3‐(3‐dimethyl aminopropyl)‐carbodiimide. In order to evaluate the cancer‐cell targeting effect of folic‐acid‐grafted layered double hydroxide utilizing fluorescence‐related assay, both layered double hydroxide with and without folic acid moiety are labeled with fluorescein 5′‐isothiocyanate. The uptake of layered double hydroxide and folic acid conjugated into KB and A549 cells is visualized using fluorescence microscopy and measured by flow cytometry. Both chemical and biological assay results demonstrate that the folic acid molecules are indeed conjugated to the surface of layered double hydroxide and thus the selectivity of nanovehicles to cancer cells overexpressing folate receptors increases. In this study, it is suggested that layered double hydroxide nanoparticles can be used as drug‐delivery carriers with a targeting function due to the chemical conjugation with specific ligand.     

Data retention characteristics of MANOS-type flash memory device with different metal gates at various levels of charge injection

We investigated the impact of charge injection and metal gates (Al and Pt) on the data retention characteristics of metal–alumina–nitride–oxide–silicon (MANOS) devices for NAND flash memory application. Through the theoretical and experimental results, the highly injected charge (ΔV_TH) could cause the band bending of Al₂O₃, which reduced the tunneling distance across Al₂O₃. Thus, the dominant charge loss path is not only toward SiO₂ but also toward Al₂O₃ direction. Compared to low-metal work function (Ф_M), ONA stack with high-Ф_M showed better data retention characteristics, even if ΔV_TH is high. This could be explained by Fermi level alignment for different Ф_M, which results in the reduction of electric field across the Al₂O₃ compensated by the ΔФ_M (Ф_Pt ? Ф_Al).     

Two-level protection and guarantee for multimedia traffic in IEEE 802.11e distributed WLANs

In order to support multimedia applications such as voice and video over the wireless medium, a contention-based channel access function, called Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA), has been developed in the emerging standard IEEE 802.11e. In the EDCA, differentiated channel access is provided for different traffic classes. In this paper, we propose a two-level protection and guarantee mechanism for voice and video traffic in the EDCA-based distributed wireless LANs. In the first-level protection, the existing voice and video flows are protected from the new and other existing voice and video flows via a distributed admission control with tried-and-known and early-protection enhancements. In the second-level protection, the voice and video flows are protected from the best-effort data traffic by adopting frame-based and limit-based data control mechanisms. Performance evaluations are conducted in terms of throughput, delay, transmission limit, number of collisions, and throughput square relative difference. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed two-level protection and guarantee mechanism is very effective in terms of the protection and guarantee of existing voice and video flows as well as the utilization of the channel capacity. An early version of this paper was presented at IEEE INFOCOM 2004.     

A Structurable Gel‐Polymer Electrolyte for Sodium Ion Batteries

In this work, a structurable gel‐polymer electrolyte (SGPE) with a controllable pore structure that is not destroyed after immersion in an electrolyte is produced via a simple nonsolvent induced phase separation (NIPS) method. This study investigates how the regulation of the nonsolvent content affects the evolving nanomorphology of the composite separators and overcomes the drawbacks of conventional separators, such as glass fiber (GF), which has been widely used in sodium ion batteries (SIBs), through the regulation of pore size and gel‐polymer position. The interfacial resistance is reduced through selective positioning of a poly(vinylidene fluoride‐co‐hexa fluoropropylene) (PVdF‐HFP) gel‐polymer with the aid of NIPS, which in turn enhances the compatibility between the electrolyte and electrode. In addition, the highly porous morphology of the GF/SGPE obtained via NIPS allows for the absorption of more liquid electrolyte. Thus, a greatly improved cell performance of the SIBs is observed when a tailored SGPE is incorporated into the GF separator through charge/discharge testing compared with the performance observed with pristine GF and conventional GF coated with PVdF‐HFP gel‐polymer.     

Low‐Power Nonvolatile Charge Storage Memory Based on MoS2 and an Ultrathin Polymer Tunneling Dielectric

Low‐power, nonvolatile memory is an essential electronic component to store and process the unprecedented data flood arising from the oncoming Internet of Things era. Molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) is a 2D material that is increasingly regarded as a promising semiconductor material in electronic device applications because of its unique physical characteristics. However, dielectric formation of an ultrathin low‐k tunneling on the dangling bond‐free surface of MoS₂ is a challenging task. Here, MoS₂‐based low‐power nonvolatile charge storage memory devices are reported with a poly(1,3,5‐trimethyl‐1,3,5‐trivinyl cyclotrisiloxane) (pV3D3) tunneling dielectric layer formed via a solvent‐free initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD) process. The surface‐growing polymerization and low‐temperature nature of the iCVD process enable the conformal growing of low‐k (≈2.2) pV3D3 insulating films on MoS₂. The fabricated memory devices exhibit a tunable memory window with high on/off ratio (≈10⁶), excellent retention times of 10⁵ s with an extrapolated time of possibly years, and an excellent cycling endurance of more than 10³ cycles, which are much higher than those reported previously for MoS₂‐based memory devices. By leveraging the inherent flexibility of both MoS₂ and polymer dielectric films, this research presents an important milestone in the development of low‐power flexible nonvolatile memory devices.