Design and simulation of a novel metallic microgripper using vibration to release nano objects actively

In this study, we investigate a novel metallic microgripper which is able to grasp and transport nano particles (nano tubes/wires) and release them on desirable substrate by vibrating the gripper arms. This microgripper consists of a chevron actuator to grip nano object electrothermally and interdigited comb drive systems to generate vibration at the gripper arms electrostatically. Metallic (nickel) properties enable the chevron actuator to close the gap and pick the nano particle at low voltage and temperature. In order to reduce the out of plane bending during operation and also increase the gripping force, thickness of the nickel layer must be increased, hence electroplating process is proposed for deposition of nickel layer. To generate vibration at the end effectors, comb drive systems are stimulated by applying two voltage signals at desired resonant frequency to the stators. Practically, by sweeping the frequency of these signals around the resonant frequency the end effectors start vibrating. The vibration results in overcoming the adhesion forces due to inertial effects.     

Comparison of the Effect of a Hydrocarbon Oil and a Terpene Tackifier on the Autohesion of Styrene-Butadiene Rubber

Blends of uncrosslinked styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) with a terpene tackifier resin or a naphthenic oil have been characterized, and their autohesion and cohesion determined using a T-peel geometry. SBR/oil blends are homogeneous at all proportions, while SBR/resin blends, based on DSC and DMA analysis, undergo bulk phase separation at about 50% resin. However, migration of tackifier to the surface region is proposed at much lower resin contents. Compositions diluted with oil have autohesion similar to the neat SBR. This is attributed to compensating effects; although oil hastens self-bond formation by increasing chain mobility, this is nearly equally balanced by more facile chain separation during bond rupture. In short, oil-diluted compositions are soft and weak. On the other hand, SBR compositions containing small amounts of resin have high autohesion. Resin-diluted specimens deform easily at low strain, just as those containing oil, but intertwined chains of the former have greater resistance to separation, due at least in part to higher glass transition temperatures. It is proposed that autohesion is further enhanced by migration of tackifier to the surface. This causes SBR/resin compositions to be both soft and strong-a necessary condition for high autohesion.     

A game attention model for efficient bit rate allocation in cloud gaming

The widespread availability of broadband internet access and the growth in server-based processing have provided an opportunity to run games away from the player into the cloud and offer a new promising service known as cloud gaming. The concept of cloud gaming is to render a game in the cloud and stream the resulting game scenes to the player as a video sequence over a broadband connection. To meet the stringent network bandwidth requirements of cloud gaming and support more players, efficient bit rate reduction techniques are needed. In this paper, we introduce the concept of game attention model (GAM), which is basically a game context-based visual attention model, as a means for reducing the bit rate of the streaming video more efficiently. GAM estimates the importance of each macro-block in a game frame from the player’s perspective and allows encoding the less important macro-blocks with lower bit rate. We have evaluated nine game video sequences, covering a wide range of game genre and a spectrum of scene content in terms of details, motion and brightness. Our subjective assessment shows that by integrating this model into the cloud gaming framework, it is possible to decrease the required bit rate by nearly 25 % on average, while maintaining a relatively high user quality of experience. This clearly enables players with limited communication resources to benefit from cloud gaming with acceptable quality.     

ADHESION OF ELASTOMERS: DWELL TIME EFFECTS

The strength of adhesion of elastomers to rigid substrates generally increases with time of contact. This effect has been studied for samples of butyl and chlorobutyl rubber adhering to some rigid substrates. The peel strength increased continuously over long periods of contact until in some cases failure became cohesive within the elastomer layer. At higher temperatures the strength increased more rapidly, consistent with the WLF relation governing molecular motions. It is postulated that slow molecular rearrangements occur at the interface and increase the bond strength. A criterion for the observed transition from interfacial to cohesive failure is suggested.     

Implementing a one-bit reversible full adder using quantum-dot cellular automata

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) technique is one of the emerging and promising nanotechnologies. It has considerable advantages versus CMOS technology in various aspects such as extremely low power dissipation, high operating frequency and small size. In this paper, designing of a one-bit full adder is investigated using a QCA implementation of Toffoli and Fredkin gates. Then, a full adder design with reversible QCA1 gates is proposed regarding to overhead and power savings. Our proposed full adder design is more preferable when considering both circuit area and speed. The proposed design uses only two QCA1 gates and maximizes the circuit density and focuses on a layout of the circuit which is minimal in using QCA cells.     

Dehydration of water/1-1-dimethylhydrazine mixtures by zeolite membranes

In this research, dehydration of water/1-1-dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) mixtures by zeolite NaA and hydroxy sodalite membranes has been investigated. Support of these membranes has been tubular mullites that have been made by extruding a mixture of about 67–75% kaolin clay and 33–25% distilled water using an extruder. Zeolite NaA and hydroxy sodalite membranes have been coated on the external surface of the porous supports by the hydrothermal synthesis.

UDMH/water mixtures have been separated at ambient temperature and pressure by pervaporation (PV) using these zeolite membranes. These membranes showed very high selectivity of water for all UDMH mixtures. For the UDMH/water mixtures, separation factor as high as 10 000 has been obtained for UDMH feed concentration of 2%. Total mass fluxes of 1.05–0.2 kg/(m² h) have been also obtained.     

Unveiling the presence of mixed oxidation states of Europium in Li7+δEuxLa3−δZr2−δO12−δ garnet and its impact on the Li-ion conductivity

Recently, lanthanides have been employed by researchers to examine their impact on the structure and properties of Li₇La₃Zr₂O₁₂ (LLZO) garnets. In this regard, we developed Europium oxide (Eu₂O₃) doped LLZO (Li_7+δEu_xLa_3−δZr_2−δO_12−δ) solid electrolyte which demonstrates a cubic phase with the symmetry of Iad (No.230) at room temperature. In this investigation, different concentrations of Eu ranging from 0.1 to 0.6 atoms per formula unit (pfu) were doped into Li₇La₃Zr₂O₁₂ to evaluate the impact of Eu on the stability of the cubic phase and thereby the ionic conductivity. The results unveiled that upon doping Eu³⁺ ions, the Eu²⁺ state is also formed and is then self-doped into the structure in which Rietveld refinement coupled with XPS, EPR, and solid-state NMR suggests that Eu³⁺ ions most probably partially occupy Zr⁴⁺ (16a) site, the Eu²⁺ ions occupy La³⁺ (24d) site, and the Li⁺ ions occupy two different sites (24d and 96h). It was further found that such a site preference induces distortion at LaO₈ polyhedrons opening up the neck for Li-ions diffusion, thereby enhancing the ionic conductivity. Moreover, it was revealed that Li-ions probably hop from 96h to 24d and then to 96h site to generate the Li-ion movement. Overall, by introducing Eu ions into the LLZO structure, an enhanced bulk ionic conductivity of 0.30 × 10⁻³ S/cm at 298 K with a minimum electronic conductivity of 2.547 × 10⁻⁹ S/cm at 298 K was achieved.     

Application of thermal ultrasound-assisted liquid–liquid micro-extraction coupled with HPLC-UV for rapid determination of synthetic phenolic antioxidants in edible oils

A simple, fast, and reliable liquid–liquid micro-extraction (LLME) method assisted by thermal ultrasound approach was developed for simultaneous determination of synthetic phenolic antioxidants (SPAs) in edible oils by high-performance liquid chromatography equipped with ultraviolet detector (HPLC-UV). The synthetic antioxidants were propyl gallate (PG), butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), tert-butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), and butylated hydroxyltoluene (BHT). The best extraction conditions were observed were methanol/acetonitrile (1:1, v/v) as the solvent, ultrasound at 4 min, and a temperature of 40°C. The linearity of the calibration curves for the optimum conditions were R² > 0.989 for all of the SPAs in a range from 1–200 μg ml⁻¹. Relative standard deviation (RSD %) for five analysis was in range of 2.83% to 4.21%. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were obtained in range of 0.012–0.06 and 0.04–0.2 μg g⁻¹, respectively. With regard to recovery, a range of 91%–116% was calculated for the spiked edible oils.     

Preparation and characterization of poly(vinyl alcohol)/gum tragacanth/cellulose nanocomposite film

The effects of gum tragacanth obtained from two species of Astragalus Gossypinus (GT-G) and A. Parrowianus (GT-P) at two levels of 10% and 30% combined with cellulose nanofibers (CNF; 5%) on the physico-mechanical and structural properties of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanocomposite film were investigated in this study. The water solubility and water vapor permeability of the films decreased with increasing the content of both gums, especially in the film containing 30% GT-P. The highest values of the tensile strength (39.3 MPa) and elongation at break (445%) belonged to the treatment containing 10% GT-P (90/10P/0). The FTIR and DSC analyses confirmed good interactions between GT and PVA in the 90/10P/0 treatment. SEM images indicated the dense structure of this film as the optimum treatment. Although the presence of CNF in the films containing GT-G improved some properties, especially the Young modulus, it impaired all the functional properties of nanocomposite GT-P film.     

Characterization of minocycline loaded chitosan/polyethylene glycol/glycerol blend films as antibacterial wound dressings

Wound care has been a challenging subject for medical teams and researchers. Bacterial infections are one of the most serious complications in injured skins that often affect healing process. Antibacterial wound dressings can be used to facilitate wound healing process. The purpose of this study is to fabricate chitosan (Chito)/polyethylene glycol (PEG) antibacterial wound dressing doped with minocycline, and to evaluate the influence of composition ratio on the blending properties of the films. To improve the mechanical properties of these films, we examined various amounts of glycerol as a plasticizer. Moreover, we investigated morphological and mechanical aspects, water uptake, degradation, water vapor transmission and wettability properties of the films prepared with various ratios of Chito/PEG/Gly. Assessment of mechanical properties revealed that film containing 80:20 ratio Chito/PEG with 40 PHR Gly content exhibits the highest ultimate tensile strength and elongation at break (9.74 MPa and 45.73% respectively). Furthermore, results demonstrated that upon increasing PEG and Gly contents, degradability and hydrophilicity of the films increased whereas water uptake decreased. Water vapor transmission rate of the films was close to the range of 530–1200 g/m²d, indicating that the as formed films are possible candidates for dressing low exudate wounds or burns. Minocycline loaded films exhibited a biphasic drug release profile and it was more effective on gram-positive bacteria than on gram-negative bacteria. The polymeric film with the highest amount of loaded drug (2%) exhibited insignificant cytotoxicity (88%) against normal fibroblast cell line.