Low frequency noise in 0.12 μm partially and fully depleted SOI technology

Low frequency noise characterization of 0.12 μm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS technology is for the first time performed for partially and fully depleted N-MOSFETs. Static performances of the experimental devices are first presented, then we address the drain current fluctuations in both linear and saturation regimes. Taking into consideration the usually admitted 1/f noise models in MOS devices and their applicability in our case, we point out an enhancement of the extracted trap densities for both architectures compared to previously obtained results in 0.25 μm SOI CMOS technology. As regards drain current spectral densities in saturation mode, we notice some peculiarities occurring for the Kink-related excess noise.     

Qualitative simulation of urea extraction during dialysis

The methodologies of qualitative reasoning are applied to the urea extraction process. The information obtained by quantitative simulation is compared with that acquired by qualitative analysis. It is found that qualitative simulation can specify the response of the dialysis system, as it is usually described in the literature, with no substantial variations. The possibility of using a qualitative approach to establish the characteristics of the system and to provide a general framework for more detailed quantitative analysis is investigated     

New experimental findings on hot carrier effects in sub-0.1 μmMOSFET's

The behaviors of the substrate current and the impact ionization rate are investigated for deep submicron devices in a wide temperature range. New important features are shown for the variations of the maximum substrate current as a function of applied biases and temperature. It is found that the gate voltage V_gmax, corresponding to the maximum impact ionization current conditions, is quasi-constant as a Function of the drain bias for sub-0.1 μm MOSFET's in the room temperature range. At low temperature, a substantial increase of V_gmax is observed when the drain voltage is reduced. It is also shown that, although a significant enhancement of hot carrier effects is observed by scaling down the devices, a strong reduction of the impact ionization rate is obtained for sub-0.1 μm MOSFET's operated at liquid nitrogen temperature in the low drain voltage range     

Elastic incoherent neutron scattering operating by varying instrumental energy resolution: principle, simulations, and experiments of the resolution elastic neutron scattering (RENS)

The main aim of this paper is to present the scientific case of the resolution elastic neutron scattering (RENS) method that is based on the collection of elastic neutron scattering intensity as a function of the instrumental energy resolution and that is able to extract information on the system dynamical properties from an elastic signal. In this framework, it is shown that in the measured elastic scattering law, as a function of the instrumental energy resolution, an inflection point occurs when the instrumental energy resolution intersects the system relaxation time, and in an equivalent way, a transition in the temperature behavior of the measured elastic scattering law occurs when the characteristic system relaxation time crosses the instrumental energy resolution time. With regard to the latter, an operative protocol to determine the system characteristic time by different elastic incoherent neutron scattering (EINS) thermal scans at different instrumental energy resolutions is also proposed. The proposed method, hence, is not primarily addressed to collect the measured elastic scattering intensity with a great accuracy, but rather relies on determining an inflection point in the measured elastic scattering law versus instrumental energy resolution. The RENS method is tested both numerically and experimentally. As far as numerical simulations are concerned, a simple model system for which the temperature behavior of the relaxation time follows an Arrhenius law, while its scattering law follows a Gaussian behavior, is considered. It is shown that the system relaxation time used as an input for the simulations coincides with the one obtained by the RENS approach. Regarding the experimental findings, due to the fact that a neutron scattering spectrometer working following the RENS method has not been constructed yet, different EINS experiments with different instrumental energy resolutions were carried out on a complex model system, i.e., dry and D(2)O hydrated lysozyme, in an extended temperature range. The resulting temperature behavior of the system relaxation time, obtained with RENS method, agrees very well with the one obtained in literature, for the same system, following the quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS) approach. The proposed scientific case puts into evidence the challenges of an RENS spectrometer working by varying the instrumental energy resolution; in particular, in comparison with QENS, the proposed RENS method requires a smaller amount of sample, which is an important point in dealing with biological and exotic systems; it is not affected by the use of model functions for fitting spectra as in QENS, but furnishes a direct access to relevant information.     

Whiteness Constraints in a Unified Variational Framework for Image Restoration

We propose a robust variational model for the restoration of images corrupted by blur and the general class of additive white noises. The key idea behind our proposal relies on a novel hard constraint imposed on the residual of the restoration, namely we characterize a residual whiteness set to which the restored image must belong. As the feasible set is unbounded, solution existence results for the proposed variational model are given. Moreover, based on theoretical derivations as well as on Monte Carlo simulations, we provide well-founded guidelines for setting the whiteness constraint limits. The solution of the non-trivial optimization problem, due to the non-smooth non-convex proposed model, is efficiently obtained by an alternating directions method of multipliers, which in particular reduces the solution to a sequence of convex optimization subproblems. Numerical results show the potentiality of the proposed model for restoring blurred images corrupted by several kinds of additive white noises.     

Viscous Taylor droplets in axisymmetric and planar tubes: from Bretherton’s theory to empirical models

The aim of this study is to derive accurate models for quantities characterizing the dynamics of droplets of non-vanishing viscosity in capillaries. In particular, we propose models for the uniform-film thickness separating the droplet from the tube walls, for the droplet front and rear curvatures and pressure jumps, and for the droplet velocity in a range of capillary numbers, Ca, from \(10^{-4}\) to 1 and inner-to-outer viscosity ratios, \(\lambda\), from 0, i.e. a bubble, to high-viscosity droplets. Theoretical asymptotic results obtained in the limit of small capillary number are combined with accurate numerical simulations at larger Ca. With these models at hand, we can compute the pressure drop induced by the droplet. The film thickness at low capillary numbers (\(Ca<10^{-3}\)) agrees well with Bretherton’s scaling for bubbles as long as \(\lambda <1\). For larger viscosity ratios, the film thickness increases monotonically, before saturating for \(\lambda>10^3\) to a value \(2^{2/3}\) times larger than the film thickness of a bubble. At larger capillary numbers, the film thickness follows the rational function proposed by Aussillous and Quéré (Phys Fluids 12(10):2367–2371, 2000) for bubbles, with a fitting coefficient which is viscosity-ratio dependent. This coefficient modifies the value to which the film thickness saturates at large capillary numbers. The velocity of the droplet is found to be strongly dependent on the capillary number and viscosity ratio. We also show that the normal viscous stresses at the front and rear caps of the droplets cannot be neglected when calculating the pressure drop for \(Ca>10^{-3}\).     

Surface Reconstruction,Oxidation Mechanism,and Stability of Cd3As2

Cadmium arsenide (Cd₃As₂) has recently attracted considerable interest for the presence of 3D massless Dirac fermions with ultrahigh mobility and magnetoresistance. However, its surface properties are currently largely unexplored both theoretically and experimentally, due to the very large unit cell and the challenging growth of single‐crystal samples, respectively. Here, by combining ab initio calculations with surface‐science spectroscopic experiments, the presence of a surface reconstruction is unveiled in centimeter‐scale (112)‐oriented Cd₃As₂ single‐crystal foils produced by the self‐selecting vapor growth. Outermost Cd atoms descend into the As‐sublayer with a subsequent self‐passivation of the dangling bonds with As atoms, forming the triangle lattice previously imaged by scanning tunneling microscopy. Moreover, the oxidation mechanism of this reconstructed surface, dominated by the formation of As? O? Cd bonds, is revealed. Interestingly, it is found that the band structure of the reconstructed surface of Cd₃As₂ is quite robust against surface oxidation. Both computational and experimental findings point to a successful exploitation in technology of Cd₃As₂ single crystals.     

New Glass–Ceramic Inclusion Pigment

Recently, the traditional ceramic industry has demonstrated increased interest in obtaining inclusion pigments to stabilize unstable chromophores, such as hematite or cadmium sulfoselenide, at firing temperature and in studying the actions of molten glasses. This present work focuses on a new method for synthesizing hematite–zircon inclusion pigments from an unconventional mixture of precursors. For this purpose, a glassy composition that belongs to the LiO₂–ZrO₂–SiO₂ system and that crystallizes into zircon during the calcination step has been chosen.     

CrOx/SiO2 catalysts prepared using chromium recovered from tanning sewage

Catalysts at different Cr loading (x, in the range 0.18–3.8 wt% Cr) were prepared by (i) impregnation of SiO₂ Aerosil directly with the waste water (SCx(I) samples); or (ii) mixing Aerosil with chromium oxo-hydroxides, precipitated from the waste water to eliminate the sulphate and sodium ions (SCx(II) and SCx(III) samples). Preparations (II) and (III) only differ for the accuracy in sulphate and sodium ions elimination. Catalyst surface characterization was performed by FT-IR spectroscopy using CO, adsorbed at room temperature, as test molecule, and by UV-Vis-NIR DR spectroscopy. Their activity towards ethylene polymerization were tested by FT-IR spectroscopy, monitoring the time dependence of the CH₂ stretching modes intensity. The obtained results were compared with those obtained for simplified Phillips catalysts with comparable chromium contents, SCx(R). SCx(I) catalysts were not active in the ethylene polymerization, while the SCx(II) and SCx(III) ones showed lower activity (1/10 at maximum) compared to that of simplified Phillips catalysts with comparable chromium contents. SCx(II) and SCx(III) catalysts were active in the isobutane dehydrogenation reaction and showed activity in the range of those of standard catalysts, while SCx(I) ones showed activity at 873 K, but very low at the usual temperatures (773–823 K).     

Geometry-based 3D face morphology analysis: soft-tissue landmark formalization

The face is perhaps the most important human anatomical part, and its study is very important in many fields, such as the medical one and the identification one. Technical literature presents many works on this topic involving bi-dimensional solutions. Even if these solutions are able to provide interesting results, they are strongly subjected to images distortion. Thanks to the significant improvements obtained in the 3D scanner domain (photogrammetry for instance), today it is possible to replace the 2D images with more precise and complete 3D models (triangulated points clouds). Working on three-dimensional data, in fact, it is possible to obtain a more complete set of information about the face morphology. At present, even if it is possible to find interesting papers on this field, there is the lack of a complete protocol for converting the big amount of data coming from the three-dimensional point clouds in a reliable set of facial data, which could be employed for recognition and medical tasks. Starting from some anatomical human face concepts, it has been possible to understand that some soft-tissue landmarks could be the right data set for supporting many processes working on three-dimensional models. So, working in the Differential Geometry domain, through the Coefficients of the Fundamental Forms, the Principal Curvatures, Mean and Gaussian Curvatures and also with the derivatives and the Shape and Curvedness Indexes, the study has proposed a structured methodology for soft-tissue landmark formalization in order to provide a methodology for their automatic identification. The proposed methodology and its sensitivity have been tested with the involvement of a series of subjects acquired in different scenarios.