A 68% PAE, GaAs power MESFET operating at 2.3 V drain bias for lowdistortion power applications

A high-efficient GaAs power metal semiconductor field effect transistor operating at a drain voltage of 2.3 V has been developed for low distortion power applications. The device has been fabricated on an epitaxial layer with a high-low doped structure grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The MESFET with a gate length of 0.8 μm and a total gate width of 21.16 mm showed a maximum drain current of 5.9 A at V_gs =0.5 V, a knee voltage of 1.0 V and a gate-to-drain breakdown voltage of 28 V. The MESFET tested at a 2.3 V drain bias and a 900 MHz operation frequency displayed the best power-added efficiency of 68% with an output power of 31.3 dBm. The associate power gain at 20 dBm input power and the linear gain were 11.3 dB and 16.0 dB, respectively. The power characteristics of the device operating under a bias of 2 V exhibit power-added efficiency of 67% and output power of 30.1 dBm at an input power of 20 dBm. Two tone test measured at 900.00 MHz and 900.03 MHz shows that 3rd-order intermodulation and power-added efficiency at an output power of 27 dBm were -30.6 dBc and 36%, respectively, which are good for CDMA digital applications. A third-order intercept point and a linearity figure-of-merit were measured to be 49.5 dBm and 53.8, respectively     

A Supervised Feature-Projection-Based Real-Time EMG Pattern Recognition for Multifunction Myoelectric Hand Control

Electromyographic (EMG) pattern recognition is essential for the control of a multifunction myoelectric hand. The main goal of this study was to develop an efficient feature- projection method for EMG pattern recognition. To this end, a linear supervised feature projection is proposed that utilizes a linear discriminant analysis (LDA). First, a wavelet packet transform (WPT) is performed to extract a feature vector from four-channel EMG signals. To dimensionally reduce and cluster the WPT features, an LDA, then, incorporates class information into the learning procedure, and identifies a linear matrix to maximize the class separability for the projected features. Finally, a multilayer perceptron classifies the LDA-reduced features into nine hand motions. To evaluate the performance of the LDA for WPT features, the LDA is compared with three other feature-projection methods. From a visualization and quantitative comparison, it is shown that the LDA produces a better performance for the class separability, plus the LDA-projected features improve the classification accuracy with a short processing time. A real-time pattern-recognition system is then implemented for a multifunction myoelectric hand. Experiments show that the proposed method achieves a 97.4% recognition accuracy, and all processes, including the generation of control commands for the myoelectric hand, are completed within 97 ms. Consequently, these results confirm that the proposed method is applicable to real-time EMG pattern recognition for multifunction myoelectric hand control.     

Synthesis, characterization and adsorption study of the uranyl ions by hydrogels based on polyethylene glycol and methacrylic acid copolymers

The water swelling polymeric hydrogels were obtained by γ-initiated radiation copolymerization of polyethylene glycol (PEG) with methacrylic acid (MAA) and three-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (TEGDMA) as cross-linking agent. The main regularities of PEG-MAA network formation, deformation properties, structure and thermal characteristics depending on copolymer composition, molecular weight of PEG have been studied. The sorption of uranyl ions by PEG-MAA hydrogels in comparison with homopolymer PMAA was investigated. The effect of uranyl ions concentration on sorption efficiency of hydrogels was shown. The ability to regeneration in desorption process was demonstrated for PEG-MAA hydrogels in comparison with PMAA gel.     

Growth and X-ray Diffraction Study of YCa4O(BO3)3:Ce,Er,Yb Crystals

YCa₄O(BO₃)₃crystals (sp. gr. Cm), nominally pure and activated with Yb, Er, and/or Ce, were grown by the Czochralski technique. The crystal structure of YCa₄O(BO₃)₃was refined by single-crystal x-ray diffraction, and the site compositions were determined: (Y_0.792Ca_0.208(6))(Ca_0.938Y_0.062(4))₂Ca₂O_0.96(2)[ ]_0.04(BO₃)₃([ ] = vacancy). The data set for YCa₄O(BO₃)₃was found to contain additional reflections which were inconsistent with space group Cmbut could be indexed in a cell with doubled a. No superlattice reflections were detected in the case of the activated crystals. Structural data for LnCa₄O(BO₃)₃were used to derive relations for the lattice parameters and average cation–anion distances as functions of r _Lnand weighted-average cation radii on the mixed-occupancy sites, which made it possible to assess the distributions of Y, Yb, Er, Ce, and Ca over the mixed-occupancy sites. Absolute structure determination showed that the pure and Yb³⁺-activated YCa₄O(BO₃)₃crystals differed in polarity.     

The Hypoxia–Long Noncoding RNA Interaction in Solid Cancers

Hypoxia is one of the representative microenvironment features in cancer and is considered to be associated with the dismal prognosis of patients. Hypoxia-driven cellular pathways are largely regulated by hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) and notably exert influence on the hallmarks of cancer, such as stemness, angiogenesis, invasion, metastasis, and the resistance towards apoptotic cell death and therapeutic resistance; therefore, hypoxia has been considered as a potential hurdle for cancer therapy. Growing evidence has demonstrated that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are dysregulated in cancer and take part in gene regulatory networks owing to their various modes of action through interacting with proteins and microRNAs. In this review, we focus attention on the relationship between hypoxia/HIFs and lncRNAs, in company with the possibility of lncRNAs as candidate molecules for controlling cancer.     

Air gasification of dried sewage sludge in a two-stage gasifier. Part 2: Calcined dolomite as a bed material and effect of moisture content of dried sewage sludge for the hydrogen production and tar removal

In order to produce a clean producer gas, the air gasification of dried sewage sludge was conducted in a two-stage gasifier that consisted of a bubbling fluidized bed and a tar-cracking zone. The kind and amount of bed materials, the kind of additives in the upper-reactor, and the moisture content in the sewage sludge were selected as operating variables in order to investigate their effects on the development of the producer gas characteristics. In our experiments, the gasification of a dried sewage sludge sample containing 30 wt.% of moisture with a combination of calcined dolomite as the bed material and activated carbon in the tar-cracking zone removed the most tar and produced the highest hydrogen concentration. The total tar removal efficiency and the H₂ content in the producer gas from the sample noted above reached 88.4% and 32.1 vol.%, respectively. The LHVs of all the producer gases were high with values above 7 MJ Nm⁻³.     

A wide-view twisted nematic liquid crystal cell with improved image quality obtained by decreasing γ-curve distortion

Wide-view (WV) film, which was introduced by Fuji Co., has been commercialized to block light leakage of twisted nematic (TN)-liquid crystal (LC) cells in a dark state when the viewing angles are in the off-axis direction. In this investigation, we designed an optical compensation structure of a TN-LC cell with an improved γ-curve, as well as a viewing angle property in the dark state. Basically, we used a pair of optical films consisting of a positive and a negative A-plate in order to avoid affecting the viewing angle property in the dark state. Then, we optimized the positive and negative A-plate to improve the viewing angle property in the gray levels by calculating polarization variations as a function of the optical axis and the retardation of the pair of the A-plates. From this calculation, we were able to show that the proposed normally white (NW) WV-TN cell exhibits wide viewing angle performance, including good γ-curve stability.     

Graphene gate electrode for MOS structure-based electronic devices

We demonstrate that the use of a monolayer graphene as a gate electrode on top of a high-κ gate dielectric eliminates mechanical-stress-induced-gate dielectric degradation, resulting in a quantum leap of gate dielectric reliability. The high work function of hole-doped graphene also helps reduce the quantum mechanical tunneling current from the gate electrode. This concept is applied to nonvolatile Flash memory devices, whose performance is critically affected by the quality of the gate dielectric. Charge-trap flash (CTF) memory with a graphene gate electrode shows superior data retention and program/erase performance that current CTF devices cannot achieve. The findings of this study can lead to new applications of graphene, not only for Flash memory devices but also for other high-performance and mass-producible electronic devices based on MOS structure which is the mainstream of the electronic device industry.     

Vertically aligned cadmium chalcogenide nanowire arrays on muscovite mica: a demonstration of epitaxial growth strategy

We report a strategy for achieving epitaxial, vertically aligned cadmium chalcogenide (CdS, CdSe, and CdTe) nanowire arrays utilizing van der Waals epitaxy with (001) muscovite mica substrate. The nanowires, grown from a vapor transport process, exhibited diameter uniformity throughout their length, sharp interface to the substrate, and positive correlation between diameter and length with preferential growth direction of [0001] for the monocrystalline wurtzite CdS and CdSe nanowires, but of [111] for zinc blende CdTe nanowires, which also featured abundant twinning boundaries. Self-catalytic vapor-liquid-solid mechanism with hydrogen-assisted thermal evaporation is proposed to intepret the observations. Optical absorption from the as-grown CdSe nanowire arrays on mica at 10 K revealed intense first-order exciton absorption and its longitudinal optical phonon replica. A small Stokes shift (～1.3 meV) was identified, suggesting the high quality of the nanowires. This study demonstrated the generality of van der Waals epitaxy for the growth of nanowire arrays and their potential applications in optical and energy related devices.