A Low-Current and Analog Memristor with Ru as Mobile Species

The switching parameters and device performance of memristors are predominately determined by their mobile species and matrix materials. Devices with oxygen or oxygen vacancies as the mobile species usually exhibit a great retention but also need a relatively high switching current (e.g., >30 µA), while devices with Ag or Cu as cation mobile species do not require a high switching current but usually show a poor retention. Here, Ru is studied as a new type of mobile species for memristors to achieve low switching current, fast speed, good reliability, scalability, and analog switching property simultaneously. An electrochemical metallization-like memristor with a stack of Pt/Ta₂O₅/Ru is developed. Migration of Ru ions is revealed by energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy mapping and in situ transmission electron microscopy within a sub-10 nm active device area before and after switching. The results open up a new avenue to engineer memristors for desired properties.     

Investigation of Spontaneous Polarization and Phase Transition Phenomena in KH2PO4-Type Crystals by Green’s Function Approach

Journal of Low Temperature Physics - In this paper, the spontaneous polarization and the phase transition of order–disorder type H-bonded KH2PO4-type crystals are theoretically investigated....     

A Probabilistic Model of Clock Offset Estimator (PMCOE) for Clock Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Personal Communications - Synchronization of clock within a wireless sensor network epitomizes crucial problems in the efficient and reliable operation of the sensors. This paper discusses...     

Supervised learning and frequency domain averaging-based adaptive channel estimation scheme for filterbank multicarrier with offset quadrature amplitude modulation

Filterbank multicarrier with offset quadrature amplitude modulation (FBMC-OQAM) is an attractive alternative to the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation technique. In comparison with OFDM, the FBMC-OQAM signal has better spectral confinement and higher spectral efficiency and tolerance to synchronization errors, primarily due to per-subcarrier filtering using a frequency-time localized prototype filter. However, the filtering process introduces intrinsic interference among the symbols and complicates channel estimation (CE). An efficient way to improve the CE in FBMC-OQAM is using a technique known as windowed frequency domain averaging (FDA); however, it requires a priori knowledge of the window length parameter which is set based on the channel's frequency selectivity (FS). As the channel's FS is not fixed and not a priori known, we propose a k-nearest neighbor-based machine learning algorithm to classify the FS and decide on the FDA's window length. A comparative theoretical analysis of the mean-squared error (MSE) is performed to prove the proposed CE scheme's effectiveness, validated through extensive simulations. The adaptive CE scheme is shown to yield a reduction in CE-MSE and improved bit error rates compared with the popular preamble-based CE schemes for FBMC-OQAM, without a priori knowledge of channel's frequency selectivity.     

Adaptive enhancement of compressed SAR images

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery is an important global all-weather surveillance and mapping satellite imagery system. As space-borne systems have a limited storage capacity, it is imperative to heavily compress SAR images, possible with lossy compression schemes. As a result, SAR images need to be enhanced in earth stations. The work reported in this paper aims to address the issue of compression artefact removal of SAR images in an adaptive manner. The SAR images, compressed using the JPEG utility at significantly low bit rates, are enhanced by adaptively removing coding artefacts and speckle noise. As edges carry significant information in satellite imagery, a significant edge image is used for edge enhancement with selective removal of noisy edges. Further, an image sharpness metric is proposed in this work to serve as an objective no-reference metric for measuring the sharpness of SAR images.     

Vibrational properties of single-wall carbon nanotubes: a first-principles study

We present first-principles pseudopotential-based density functional theory (DFT) calculation of structures, full phonon dispersions and thermal properties of armchair single wall armchair carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in the isolated and bundle forms. Comparison between the properties of isolated and bundled nanotubes is used to estimate the intertube interaction. We determine correlation between vibrational modes of a graphene sheet and of the nanotube to understand how rolling of the sheet results in mixing between modes and changes in vibrational spectrum. The radial breathing mode hardens with increasing diameter (or decreasing curvature). We estimate thermal expansion coefficient of nanotubes within a quasiharmonic approximation and identify the modes that dominate thermal expansion of some of these SWCNTs both at low and high temperatures.     

A new glucose sensor based on encapsulated glucose oxidase within organically modified sol–gel glass

A non-mediated glucose biosensor is reported based on encapsulated glucose oxidase (GOD) within the composite sol–gel glass, which is prepared using optimum concentrations of 3-aminopropyltriethoxy silane, 2-(3, 4-epoxycyclohexyl)-ethyltrimethoxy silane, GOD dissolved in double distilled water and HCl. A white, smooth film of sol–gel glass with controlled thickness is also prepared at the surface of a Pt disk electrode without GOD to study the electrochemistry of ferrocene monocarboxylic acid at the surface of the modified electrode. The electrochemistry of ferrocene monocarboxylic acid at composite sol–gel glass electrode with varying thickness is reported. The GOD-immobilized film over the Pt disk surface shows a yellow colour. The new sol–gel glass in the absence and the presence of GOD is characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The enzyme-immobilized film of different thickness is made using varying concentrations of soluble sol–gel components applied to the well of the Pt disk electrode. The enzyme is cross-lined with the 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane, one of the composite component of sol–gel glass using glyoxal at 4°C for 4 h. The response of non-mediated enzyme sensor is studied based on cyclic voltammetry and amperometric measurements. A typical amperometric response of the enzyme sensor having varying thickness of the modified sol–gel glass film is reported. The variation of the response time as a function of the film thickness is reported. The stability of cross-linked GOD to sol–gel glass is found to be more than a month without loss of enzymatic activity when the enzyme sensor is stored at 4°C.     

Calculation of solar radiation intercepted by nubian vault and dome shaped buildings

This paper is concerned with the geometrical analysis of a Nubian vault and a hemispherical dome shaped building. From a rigorous analysis, exact expressions have been established for the angle of incidence of solar radiation at these surfaces. These expressions are then used to calculate the total incident solar radiation at different times and at various latitudes. Finally a comparison is made between the solar radiation intercepted by a unit area of each of these building geometries and a flat geometry. For a reference block of 17·4 m² carpet area, it is found that for latitudes up to 40°N, a Nubian vault form building envelope with East–West orientation receives minimum solar radiation. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.