A Path Beyond Metal and Silicon:Polymer/Nanomaterial Composites for Stretchable Strain Sensors

Conventional strain sensors based on metals and semiconductors are rigid and cannot measure soft and stretchable objects. Thus, new strain sensors based on polymer/nanomaterial composites are attracting more interest. Although much effort has been dedicated to achieve high values of both sensitivity and stretchability with linearity, this work endeavors to search and establish guidelines for the development of stretchable strain sensors, by critically reviewing conventional sensors and examining recent progress. It starts from introducing key parameters for conventional strain sensors; these parameters are further discussed for their potential impact on new polymer/nanomaterial strain sensors. The work concludes that there are no general benchmarks for conventional strain sensors utilized in industry. From the findings, the authors suggest that stretchable strain sensors should be custom designed and developed to meet particular measurement requirements, in comparison with a generic aim of yielding a sensor with high degrees of stretchability, sensitivity, and linearity. Challenges are discussed, including reliability, calibration to be used as proper gauges, and soft data acquisition systems.     

Phase-Sensitive Reflective Imaging Device in the mm-wave and Terahertz Regions

Two Free Electron Laser sources have been developed at ENEA-Frascati for a variety of applications: A Compact Free Electron Laser (C-FEL) that provides coherent radiation in the frequency range between 90 and 150 GHz Gallerano et al. (Infrared Phys. and Techn. 40:161, 1999), and a second source, FEL-CATS, which utilizes a peculiar radio-frequency structure to generate coherent emission in the range 0.4 to 0.7 THz Doria et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett 93:264801, 2004). The high peak power of several kW in 15 to 50 ps pulses, makes these sources particularly suitable for the assessment of exposure limits in biological systems and for long range detection. In this paper we present a phase-sensitive reflective imaging device in the mm-wave and THz regions, which has proven to be a valuable tool in the biological Ramundo-Orlando et al. (Bioelectromagnetics 28:587–598, 2007), environmental Doria et al. (2005) and art conservation fields Gallerano et al. (2008). Different setups have been tested at different levels of spatial resolution to image objects from a few centimeter square to larger sizes. Images have been compared to identify and characterize the contrast mechanism.     

Solution Processing Route to Multifunctional Titania Thin Films: Highly Conductive and Photcatalytically Active Nb:TiO2

This paper reports the synthesis of highly conductive niobium doped titanium dioxide (Nb:TiO₂) films from the decomposition of Ti(OEt)₄ with dopant quantities of Nb(OEt)₅ by aerosol‐assisted chemical vapor deposition (AACVD). Doping Nb into the Ti sites results in n‐type conductivity, as determined by Hall effect measurements. The doped films display significantly improved electrical properties compared to pristine TiO₂ films. For 5 at.% Nb in the films, the charge carrier concentration was 2 × 10²¹ cm^?3 with a mobility of 2 cm² V^–1 s^–1 . The corresponding sheet resistance is as low as 6.5 Ω sq^–1 making the films suitable candidates for transparent conducting oxide (TCO) materials. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the lowest reported sheet resistance for Nb:TiO₂ films synthesized by vapour deposition. The doped films are also blue in colour, with the intensity dependent on the Nb concentration in the films. A combination of synchrotron, laboratory and theoretical techniques confirmed niobium doping into the anatase TiO₂ lattice. Computational methods also confirmed experimental results of both delocalized (Ti⁴⁺) and localized polaronic states (Ti³⁺) states. Additionally, the doped films also functioned as photocatalysts. Thus, Nb:TiO₂ combines four functional properties (photocatalysis, electrical conductivity, optical transparency and blue colouration) within the same layer, making it a promising alternative to conventional TCO materials.     

BPC – A binary priority countdown protocol

In modern wireless ad hoc networks, with a high speed PHY, every collision means a significant loss of useful bandwidth. In the last few years different binary contention protocols have been introduced to address this problem. In this work we propose a novel binary contention protocol called binary priority countdown (BPC) protocol, whose goal is to reduce collisions as well as contention time. BPC uses a new priority countdown mechanism which exploits the efficiency of binary countdown, but the priority countdown process is not constrained to a single binary countdown round. This way, the priority space is not defined by the length of binary countdown round, like in other binary countdown protocols proposed in the literature, and arbitrary medium access priorities can be decremented through multiple binary countdown rounds if necessary. The ability of a new priority countdown mechanism to count down any priority number without changing the length of a binary countdown round, allows independent management of priority space. This “independence” of priority space introduces new optimization and adaptation possibilities. Collision memory effect is recognized and described. BPC protocol reveals connection between unary, binary and digit contention protocols. All three groups of protocols can now be seen as members of the same class of contention algorithms. Preliminary simulation results are shown.     

A Dendritic Nickel Cobalt Sulfide Nanostructure for Alkaline Battery Electrodes

A uniform dendritic NiCo₂S₄@NiCo₂S₄ hierarchical nanostructure of width ≈100 nm is successfully designed and synthesized. From kinetic analysis of the electrochemical reactions, those electrodes function in rechargeable alkaline batteries (RABs). The dendritic structure exhibited by the electrodes has a high discharge‐specific capacity of 4.43 mAh cm^?2 at a high current density of 240 mA cm^?2 with a good rate capability of 70.1% after increasing the current densities from 40 to 240 mA cm^?2. At low scan rate of 0.5 mV s^?1 in cyclic voltammetry test, the semidiffusion controlled electrochemical reaction contributes ≈92% of the total capacity, this value decreases to ≈43% at a high scan rate of 20 mV s^?1. These results enable a detailed analysis of the reaction mechanism for RABs and suggest design concepts for new electrode materials.     

Fast Symbol Detection for Massive G-STBC MIMO Systems

In this paper, a group-based fast symbol detection scheme is proposed for massive Group-wise Space–Time Block Code Multiple-Input Multiple-Output systems. The proposed scheme first chooses a number G, (e.g. \(G=4,6,8\)) as the size of each group and then conducts the Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) detectors to facilitate symbol detection group by group. In particular, instead of directly using huge computational complexity to compute the MMSE detectors, the proposed scheme recursively finds the corresponding assistant matrices to determine the groups and calculate the MMSE detectors. As a result, the transmitted symbols can be recursively estimated group by group. Finally, simulation results and complexity analysis show the proposed scheme performs very close to the existing methods, while using lower computational complexity.     

Engineering the Interlayer Spacing by Pre-Intercalation for High Performance Supercapacitor MXene Electrodes in Room Temperature Ionic Liquid

MXenes exhibit excellent capacitance at high scan rates in sulfuric acid aqueous electrolytes, but the narrow potential window of aqueous electrolytes limits the energy density. Organic electrolytes and room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) can provide higher potential windows, leading to higher energy density. The large cation size of RTIL hinders its intercalation in-between the layers of MXene limiting the specific capacitance in comparison to aqueous electrolytes. In this work, different chain lengths alkylammonium (AA) cations are intercalated into Ti₃C₂T_x, producing variation of MXene interlayer spacings (d-spacing). AA-cation-intercalated Ti₃C₂T_x (AA-Ti₃C₂), exhibits higher specific capacitances, and cycling stabilities than pristine Ti₃C₂T_x in 1 m 1-ethly-3-methylimidazolium bis-(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)-imide (EMIMTFSI) in acetonitrile and neat EMIMTFSI RTIL electrolytes. Pre-intercalated MXene with an interlayer spacing of ≈2.2 nm, can deliver a large specific capacitance of 257 F g⁻¹ (1428 mF cm⁻² and 492 F cm⁻³) in neat EMIMTFSI electrolyte leading to high energy density. Quasi elastic neutron scattering and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy are used to study the dynamics of confined RTIL in pre-intercalated MXene. Molecular dynamics simulations suggest significant differences in the structures of RTIL ions and AA cations inside the Ti₃C₂T_x interlayer, providing insights into the differences in the observed electrochemical behavior.     

Efficient parasitic substrate modeling for monolithic mixed-A/D circuit design and verification

Parasitic analog-digital noise coupling has been identified as a key issue facing designers of mixed-signal integrated circuits. In particular, signal crosstalk through the common chip substrate has become increasingly problematic. This paper demonstrates a methodology for developing simulation, synthesis, and verification models to analyze the global electrical behavior of the non-ideal semiconductor substrate. First, a triangular discretization method is employed to generate RC equivalent-circuit substrate models which are far less complex than those formulated by conventional techniques. The networks are then accurately approximated for subsequent analysis by an efficient reduction algorithm which uses a well-conditioned Lanczos moment-matching process. Through congruence transformations, the network admittance matrices are transformed to reduced equivalents which are easily post-processed to derive passive, SPICE-compatible netlist representations of the reduced models. The pure-RC properties of the extracted substrate networks are fully exploited to formulate an efficient overall algorithm. For validation, the strategy has been successfully applied to several mixed-signal circuit examples.     

Deconvoluting Energy Transport Mechanisms in Metal Halide Perovskites Using CsPbBr3 Nanowires as a Model System

Understanding energy transport in metal halide perovskites is essential to effectively guide further optimization of materials and device designs. However, difficulties to disentangle charge carrier diffusion, photon recycling, and photon transport have led to contradicting reports and uncertainty regarding which mechanism dominates. In this study, monocrystalline CsPbBr₃ nanowires serve as 1D model systems to help unravel the respective contribution of energy transport processes in metal-halide perovskites. Spatially, temporally, and spectrally resolved photoluminescence (PL) microscopy reveals characteristic signatures of each transport mechanism from which a robust model describing the PL signal accounting for carrier diffusion, photon propagation, and photon recycling is developed. For the investigated CsPbBr₃ nanowires, an ambipolar carrier mobility of μ = 35 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹ is determined, and is found that charge carrier diffusion dominates the energy transport process over photon recycling. Moreover, the general applicability of the developed model is demonstrated on different perovskite compounds by applying it to data provided in previous related reports, from which clarity is gained as to why conflicting reports exist. These findings, therefore, serve as a useful tool to assist future studies aimed at characterizing energy transport mechanisms in semiconductor nanowires using PL.