Squeeze-film effects in MEMS devices with perforated plates for small amplitude vibration

Squeeze-film effects of perforated plates for small amplitude vibration are analyzed through modified Reynolds equation (MRE). The analytical analysis reckons in most important influential factors: compressibility of the air, border effects, and the resistance caused by vertical air flow passing through perforated holes. It is found that consideration of air compressibility is necessary for high operating frequency and small ratio of the plate width to the attenuation length. The analytical results presented in this paper agree with ANSYS simulation results better than that under the air incompressibility assumption. The analytical analysis can be used to estimate the squeeze-film effects causing damping and stiffness added to the system. Since the value of Reynolds number involved in this paper is low (< 1), inertial effects are neglected.     

Deposition and Properties of Superconducting MgB2 Thin Films

The recently discovered superconductor MgB₂ with T _c at 39 K has great potential in superconducting electronics. In this paper, we review the deposition techniques used for MgB₂ thin films in the light of a thermodynamic study of the Mg-B system with the calculation of phase diagrams (CALPHAD) modeling technique. This thermodynamic study identifies a growth window in the pressure–temperature phase diagram, in which the magnesium pressure is very high for likely in situ growth temperatures. A Hybrid Physical–Chemical Vapor Deposition (HPCVD) technique that successfully achieves such a high Mg pressure is shown to produce in situ epitaxial MgB₂ thin films with bulk superconducting properties.     

Chemical compositions and optical properties of HfOxNy thin films at different substrate temperatures

High-k HfO_xN_y thin films have been grown by radio frequency (rf) reactive sputtering of metal Hf target in N₂/Ar/O₂ ambient at different substrate temperatures. The chemical compositions of the films have been investigated as a function of substrate temperature by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). XPS measurements showed that nitrogen concentration increases with an increase in substrate temperature. Room-temperature spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) with photon energy 0.75–6.5 eV was used to investigate the optical properties of the films. SE results demonstrated that refractive index n increases with an increase in substrate temperature. Based on TL parameters which were obtained from the best fit results used in a simulation of the measured spectra, meanwhile, we conclude that the energy band gap (E_g) decreases with an increase in substrate temperature.     

Intermittent Phenomena in Switched Systems With High Coupling Strengths

In this paper, one kind of intermittency generated by a discontinuous system is studied. Although this system, which is composed of two switched subsystems coupled with a high strength, is nonsmooth, the mechanism of this kind of intermittency can be analyzed with several explicit relations between the intermittency characteristics and the system control parameters. In particular, estimates of "steady-state" values of the system (in the laminar phases) and a critical value for this intermittency can be derived, which are helpful in relevant control systems design. Moreover, some power laws for the observed intermittency are obtained and discussed     

Elastic solutions of a cylindrical rod containing periodically distributed inclusions with axisymmetric eigenstrains

Summary. In this paper, we give the elastic solution for a special type of microstructure – a circular cylindrical rod containing periodically distributed inclusions along its axial direction. Each inclusion has the same uniform axisymmetric transformation strain (eigenstrain). Analytical elastic solutions are obtained for the displacements, stresses and elastic strain energy of the rod. The effects of microstructure and its evolution (growth of inclusions) on the elastic stress and strain fields as well as the strain energy of the rod are quantitatively demonstrated. As a result of such microstructure evolution nominal stress-strain relation with strain softening is derived for a rod under uniaxial tension.     

Programmable group-delay module using binary polarization switching

We demonstrate the first programmable group-delay module based on polarization switching. With a unique binary tuning mechanism, the device can generate any differential group delay value from -45 to +45 ps with a resolution of 1.40 ps, or any true-time-delay value from 0 to 45 ps with a resolution of 0.7 ps. The delay varying speeds for both applications are under 1 ms and can be as fast as 0.1 ms. We evaluate both the dynamic and static performances of the device while paying special attention to its dynamic figures of merit for polarization-mode dispersion emulation and compensation applications. Our experiment shows that the device exhibits a negligible transient-effect induced power penalty (<0.2 dB) in a 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero system.     

Effect of heat treatments on tensile properties and microstructures of wrought Mg−Zn−Zr-RE alloys

The effect of heat treatments on the tensile properties and microstructures of wrought Mg–Zn–Zr-Rare earth alloys MB25 and MB26 have been studied in this paper. It was shown that the homogenization of the cast ingots decreased the strength of the extruded bars because some grain boundary phases were dissolved during the process of this treatment, while the ageing treatment of the extruded bars increased the strength due to the dispersive precipitation of MgZn₂ phase. The quenching + ageing treatments of the extruded bars decreases the strength and plasticity because of the growing up of the grains.Abbreviations ED electron diffraction - GB grain boundary - RE rare earth - TEM transmission electron microscope     

Large-scale quantum mechanical simulations of high- Z metals

High-Z metals constitute a particular challenge for large-scale ab initio electronic-structure calculations, as they require high resolution due to the presence of strongly localized states and require many eigenstates to be computed due to the large number of electrons and need to accurately resolve the Fermi surface. Here, we report recent findings on high-Z metals, using an efficient massively parallel planewave implementation on some of the largest computational architectures currently available. We discuss the particular architectures employed and methodological advances required to harness them effectively. We present a pair-correlation function for U, calculated using quantum molecular dynamics, and discuss relaxations of Pu atoms in the vicinity of defects in aged and alloyed Pu. We find that the self-irradiation associated with aging has a negligible effect on the compressibility of Pu relative to other factors such as alloying. The US Goverment’s right to retain a non-exclusive, royalty-free license in and to any copyright is acknowledged.