Precipitation Coating of Rare-Earth Orthophosphates on Woven Ceramic Fibers—Effect of Rare-Earth Cation on Coating Morphology and Coated Fiber Strength

Monazite (La, Ce, Nd, and GdPO₄) and xenotime (Tb, Dy, and YPO₄) coatings were deposited on woven Nextel^™ 610 and 720 fibers by heterogeneous precipitation from a rare-earth citrate/phosphoric acid precursor. Coating phases and microstructure were characterized by SEM and TEM, and coated fiber strength was measured after heat treatment at 1200°C for 2 h. Coated fiber strength increased with decreasing ionic radius of the rare-earth cation in the monazite and xenotime coatings, and correlates with the high-temperature weight loss and the densification rate of the coatings. Dense coatings with trapped porosity and high weight loss at a high temperature degrade fiber strength the most. The degradation is consistent with stress corrosion driven by thermal residual stress from coating precursor decomposition products trapped in the coating at a high temperature.     

Cross-Linking Organic and Polyoxometalate Chemistries

This paper is a choral personal account on a longstanding and fruitful collaboration of organic and inorganic chemists to develop new hybrid polyoxometallic systems. .We explain our motivation and the context of our work that led to polyoxometalates with highly functional and reactive organic groups. Our approach yielded catalytically, biologically, and photochemically active systems.     

SOLVENT EXTRACTION WITH ORGANOPHOSPHONIC MONO-ACIDIC ESTERS

Mono-acidic liquid ion exchangers (extractants) containing the phosphonyl functional group arc reviewed.     

THE THERMODYNAMICS OF EXTRACTION OF SOME LANTHANIDE AND OTHER IONS BY DINONYLNAPHTHALENESULPHONIC ACID

The thermodynamics of extraction of some lanthanide ions and bismuth, aluminium, calcium and zinc ions from perchloric acid into solutions of dinonylnaphthalenesulphonic acid have been studied. Extraction of the trivalent ions is dominated by the entropy of complexing. Electrostriction of large complex micelles by the complexed ion is postulated in order to account for the entropy effect. In the case of divalent ions, the enthalpy of dehydration of the ion is more important. A strategy for improving the separation factors is proposed.     

Corrosion of aluminium alloy A6061-T6 members embedded in alkaline materials

Owing to the corrosive conditions in coastal areas, aluminium alloy railings and similar structures are normally used on infrastructure works such as bridges and roads located in such areas because aluminium alloys are inherently corrosion resistant. However, to achieve rigid support, aluminium alloy members are often embedded in concrete. Consequently, the embedded parts undergo corrosion caused by the alkaline content of the cement used in the concrete. This research was carried out to study the corrosion behaviour on both the embedded and unembedded sides of aluminium alloy A6061-T6 members embedded in the concrete and also to investigate the ability of a combined coating of anodic oxide and organic film to inhibit corrosion. Additionally, the influence of scratch damage on the performance of this coating material was evaluated.     

New solutions to the 2D adaptive visual servoing problem with relaxed excitation requirements

In this paper, we present three new globally convergent vision‐based position controllers for a planar manipulator in a fixed‐camera configuration, where the camera orientation and scale factor are considered unknown. This is a basic adaptive visual servoing problem whose solution was hampered by the nonlinear dependence of the system dynamics on the unknown parameters. Proposing a suitable reparameterization of the systems mathematical model, and exploiting some structural properties of it, we propose three different solutions to the problem. The first one is the certainty equivalent version of the known parameter controller and requires some excitation conditions to ensure global asymptotic convergence. A second version of the controller, which is now slightly more complicated and, possibly, needs to inject some high gain but requires significantly weaker excitation conditions, is given. Finally, we propose a slight modification to the second scheme to achieve the trajectory tracking in finite time. The efficacy of the three adaptive controllers is shown through realistic simulations.     

A simulation study of high‐order CMOS hyperbolic‐sine filters

This paper advances the field of externally linear–internally nonlinear (ELIN) filters by introducing a synthesis method that enables the design of high‐order class‐AB sinh filters by means of complementary metal–oxide semiconductor (CMOS) weak‐inversion sinh integrators comprising only one type of devices in their translinear loops. The proposed transistor‐level synthesis approach is demonstrated through the examples of (1) a biquadratic and (2) a fifth‐order filter, and their simulated performance is studied. The biquadratic filter achieves a dynamic range of 94 dB and has a tunable quality factor Q up to the value of 8, whereas its natural frequency can be tuned for four orders of magnitude. Its static power consumption amounts to 6.2 μW for Q = 1 and f_o = 2 kHz. The fifth‐order Chebyshev sinh CMOS filter with a cut‐off frequency of 100 Hz, a pass band ripple of 1 dB, and a power consumption of ~300 nW is compared head‐to‐head with its pseudo‐differential class‐AB CMOS log domain counterpart. The sinh filter achieves similar or better signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) and signal‐to‐noise‐plus‐distortion ratio (SNDR) performances with half the capacitor area but at the expense of higher power consumption from the same power supply level. All three presented filter topologies are novel. Cadence design framework simulations have been performed using the commercially available 0.35 µm AMS (austriamicrosystems) process parameters. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Preliminary results from an analog implementation of first‐order TDCNN dynamics

This work falls into the category of linear cellular neural network (CNN) implementations. We detail the first investigative attempt on the CMOS analog VLSI implementation of a recently proposed network formalism, which introduces time‐derivative ‘diffusion’ between CNN cells for nonseparable spatiotemporal filtering applications—the temporal‐derivative CNNs (TDCNNs). The reported circuit consists of an array of Gm‐C filters arranged in a regular pattern across space. We show that the state–space coupling between the Gm‐C‐based array elements realizes stable and linear first‐order (temporal) TDCNN dynamics. The implementation is based on linearized operational transconductance amplifiers and Class‐AB current mirrors. Measured results from the investigative prototype chip that confirms the stability and linearity of the realized TDCNN are provided. The prototype chip has been built in the AMS 0.35 µm CMOS technology and occupies a total area of 12.6 mm sq, while consuming 1.2 µW per processing cell. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CMOS weak‐inversion log‐domain glycolytic oscillator: a cytomimetic circuit example

This paper presents a 3 V, 1.21μW subthreshold log‐domain circuit which mimics the oscillations observed during the biochemical process of glycolysis due to the phosphofructokinase enzyme. The proposed electronic circuit is able to simulate the dynamics of the glycolytic oscillator and represent the time‐dependent concentration changes of the reactants and the products of the chemical process based on nonlinear differential equations which describe the biological system. By modifying specific circuit parameters, which correspond to certain chemical parameters, good agreement between the biochemical and electrical model results has been reached. The paper details the similarities between the equations that describe the biochemical process and the equations derived from the circuit analysis of a transistor and a source‐connected linear capacitor, a topology also known as the Bernoulli Cell. With the use of the Bernoulli Cell formalism, the chemical equations which describe the biochemical system have been transformed into their electrical equivalents. The analog circuit, which implements the whole process, has been synthesised, and simulation results including Monte Carlo analysis are provided, in order to verify the robustness of the proposed circuit and to compare its dynamics with prototype biological behaviour. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.