Mimic Drug Dosage Modulation for Neuroplasticity Based on Charge-Trap Layered Electronics

The human brain is often likened to an incredibly complex and intricate computer, rather than electrical devices, consisting of billions of neuronal cells connected by synapses. Different brain circuits are responsible for coordinating and performing specific functions. The reward pathway of the synaptic plasticity in the brain is strongly related to the features of both drug addiction and relief. In the current study, a synaptic device based on layered hafnium disulfide (HfS₂) is developed for the first time, to emulate the behavioral mechanisms of drug dosage modulation for neuroplasticity. A strong gate-dependent persistent photocurrent is observed, arising from the modulation of substrate-trapping events. By controlling the polarity of gate voltage, the basic functions of biological synapses are realized under a range of light spiking conditions. Furthermore, under the control of detrapping/trapping events at the HfS₂/SiO₂ interface, positive/negative correlations of the A_n/A₁ index, which significantly reflected the weight change of synaptic plasticity, are realized under the same stimulation conditions for the emulation of the drug-related addition/relief behaviors in the brain. The findings provide a new advance for mimicking human brain plasticity.     

Electromagnetic shielding of nylon-66 composites applied to laser modules

Electromagnetic shielding of nylon-66 composites applied to laser modules was studied experimentally and theoretically. The effects of conductive carbon fiber length and weight percentage upon the shielding effectiveness (SE) of nylon composites were investigated. The SE of long carbon fiber filled nylon-66 composites was found to be higher than short carbon fiber composites under the same weight percentage of carbon fibers. In addition, higher electromagnetic shielding was obtained for the composite with higher carbon fibers contents at the same length. The SE of conductive carbon fiber filled nylon-66 composites was measured to be 42 dB at a low frequency of 30 MHz and 50 dB at a high frequency of 1 GHz. The SE predicted by theoretical models and measured by experiments were in good agreement for filled nylon-66 composites with different length fiber.     

Electrode wear-compensation of electric discharge scanning process using a robust gap-control

Robust gap-control is applied to compensate for electrode wear in an electric discharge scanning (ED-Scanning) process. This control compensates for the wear without reference to the wear ratio of the electrodes. An auxiliary gap-control loop in the vertical direction can compensate for the wear of the electrode, according to the discharge voltage when the electrode is driven along the two horizontal axes. A proportional controller for a gap-control system with maximal robustness is designed and robustly analyzed to override the non-linear and time-varying feedback. The simulated and practical responses of such a robust gap-control system yield favorable performances. The controller can maintain the location of the discharge on the vertical axis and fix the depth of the removal to that of a particular layer. The practical scanning process reveals that the dimension of a hole can be guaranteed only if the data concerning the depth of removal under specific discharge conditions and electrode diameters are applied.     

Interfacial Reactions of Sn, Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu, and Sn-9Zn Lead-Free Solders with Fe-42Ni Substrates

Interfacial reactions between Sn, Sn-3.0 wt.%Ag-0.5 wt.%Cu (SAC), and Sn-9 wt.%Zn (SZ) lead-free solders and Fe-42 wt.%Ni (alloy 42) substrates at 240°C, 255°C, and 270°C were investigated in this study. FeSn₂, (Fe,Ni, Cu)Sn₂, and (Ni,Fe)₅Zn₂₁ phases were formed, respectively, at the interface in the Sn/alloy 42, SAC/alloy 42, and SZ/alloy 42 couples. As the reaction time and temperature were increased, the layered intermetallic compound (IMC) assumed two distinct structures, i.e., a thicker layer and a pillar-shaped IMC, in all couples. The IMC thickness of these couples increased with the increase of reaction time and temperature. The IMC thickness was also proportional to the square root of the reaction time. The interfacial reaction mechanism of these couples was diffusion controlled.     

Current balancing control for an interleaved boost power converter

The interleaved boost power converter has the advantages of ripple cancellation and better efficiency. The major problem of the interleaved boost power converter is the current balancing among different phases of the boost power converters. In this paper, a current balancing control method for equalizing the currents of two-phase interleaved boost power converter is proposed. The output current can effectively detect the mismatch between the boost power converters for the interleaved boost power converter. The output current is used to perform both the current balance and the current-mode control. The salient feature is that only one current sensor is used in the proposed current balancing control method. A hardware prototype is developed, and the experimental results verify the performance of the proposed current balancing control method is as expected.     

InGaP/InGaAs Pseudomorphic Heterodoped-Channel FETs With a Field Plate and a Reduced Gate Length by Splitting Gate Metal

Depositing gate metal across a step undercut between the Schottky barrier layer and the insulator-like layer is employed to obtain a reduced gate length of 0.4 mum with an additional 0.6-mum field plate from a 1-mum gate window. Most dc and ac characteristics including current density (I_DSS=451mA/mm), transconductance (g_m,max=225mS/mm), breakdown voltages (V_BD(DS)/V _BD(GD)=22/-25.5V), gate-voltage swing (GVS=2.24V), cutoff, and maximum oscillation frequencies (f_t/f_max=17.2/32GHz) are improved as compared to those of a 1-mum gate device without field plate. At a V_DS of 4.0 V, a maximum power added efficiency of 36% with an output power of 13.9 dBm and a power gain of 8.7 dB are obtained at a frequency of 1.8 GHz. The saturated output power and the linear power gain are 316 mW/mm and 13 dB, respectively     

A Multiple-Rate, Multicarrier Direct-Sequence CDMA System with 2-D OVSF Codes in Fading Channels

In this paper, a multiple-rate, multicarrier direct- sequence code-division multiple-access (MC/DS-CDMA) system with the use of two-dimensional orthogonal variable spreading factor (2-D OVSF) codes is studied. They are the first 2-D codes that can be generated by the tree structure commonly used by one-dimensional OVSF codes in wideband-CDMA. The 2-D OVSF codes also preserve orthogonality among code matrices with different spreading factors in the code tree. The performances of the proposed system with RAKE receivers employing equal-gain and maximal-ratio combining methods are analyzed and compared. Our results show that our multiple-rate MC/DS-CDMA system with the 2-D OVSF codes is more suitable for a non-fading additive white Gaussian noise channel or a Rician weak-fading channel. However, in a Rayleigh fading channel, the system performance gets worse because the orthogonality of the 2-D OVSF codes is destroyed by the strong fading effect.     

Comparison of self‐adaptive dynamic differential evolution and particle swarm optimization for smart antennas in wireless communication

In this paper, ultrawide band (UWB) communication systems with eight transmitting and receiving ring antenna arrays are implemented to test the bit error rate and capacity performance. By using the ray‐tracing technique to compute any given indoor wireless environment, the impulse response of the system can be calculated. The synthesized beamforming problem can be reformulated into a multiobjective optimization problem. Self‐adaptive dynamic differential evolution (SADDE) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) are used to find the excitation current and the feed line length of each antenna to form the appropriate beam pattern. This pattern can then reduce the bit error rate and increase the channel capacity and receiving energy. Numerical results show that the fitness value and the convergence speed by the SADDE are better than those by the PSO. Moreover, the SADDE had better results for both line‐of‐sight and nonline‐of‐sight cases. In other words, compared with PSO, SADDE has improved more effectively the main beam radiation energy and reduced the multipath interference.     

Electric fields in bone marrow substructures at power-line frequencies

Bone marrow is known to be responsible for leukemia. In order to study the hypothesis relating power-line frequencies electromagnetic fields and childhood leukemia from a subcellular perspective, two models of bone marrow substructures exposed to electric field are computed numerically. A set of cancellous bone data obtained from computed tomography scan is computed using both the finite element method (FEM) and scalar potential finite difference method. A maximum electric field enhancement of 50% is observed. Another model of bone marrow stroma cells is implemented only in FEM using thin film approximation. The transmembrane potential (TMP) change across the gap junctions is found to range from several to over 200 microV. The two results suggest that imperceptible contact currents can produce biologically significant TMP change at least in a limited number of bone marrow stroma cells.