Kommunikationsoberfläche Membran‐ Vorbild für moderne Nanoanalytik

A central event in the life of a cellular system is the interaction between the exterior and the interior compartments. Biochemical signals arrive at the cellular surface, bind to their membrane bound receptor followed by a conformational change triggering the release of an internal chemical or electrical signal.This basic principle is followed by all our perceptive abilities like sense of smell or taste, but also by different signal transduction pathways involved in nerve conductivity, vision, sense of touch or hearing. To follow and mimic this principle of parallel registration is one of the aims of modern nanobiotechnology. If we are able to specifically biofunctionalize small arrays of a solid surface, which could be an electrode or a semiconductor, this approach will enable us to build up devices called “biochips” or “biosensors” that allow the determination of bioactive molecules with high specificity at lowest concentrations. Potential pharmacological active substrates might be screened as well as new receptors may be determined. Applications in genomics as well as proteomics are realistic. The major prerequisite for such a broad spectrum of applications is the fabrication of receptive surfaces. Biomolecules have to be surface‐adsorbed in a highly reproducible, oriented and well organised fashion, a task which in biology is taken by the cellular membranes as external or internal receptive surfaces. The physical principles like hydrogen bonds, electrostatic or hydrophobic interactions that lead to such an organized surface are well known. To synthesize molecular building blocks and to position them onto an otherwise unspecific surface is one of the challenges of nanobiotechnology combining biological knowledge and chemical skills with biophysical techniques that allow to handle or analyze even single molecules.     

Hydrogen annealing effect on DC and low-frequency noise characteristics in CMOS FinFETs

The hydrogen annealing process has been used to improve surface roughness of the Si-fin in CMOS FinFETs for the first time. Hydrogen annealing was performed after Si-fin etch and before gate oxidation. As a result, increased saturation current with a lowered threshold voltage and a decreased low-frequency noise level over the entire range of drain current have been attained. The low-frequency noise characteristics indicate that the oxide trap density is reduced by a factor of 3 due to annealing. These results suggest that hydrogen annealing is very effective for improving device performance and for attaining a high-quality surface of the etched Si-fin.     

An intelligent web-page classifier with fair feature-subset selection

The explosion of on-line information has given rise to many manually constructed topic hierarchies (such as Yahoo!!). But with the current growth rate in the amount of information, manual classification in topic hierarchies results in an immense information bottleneck. Therefore, developing an automatic classifier is an urgent need. However, classifiers suffer from enormous dimensionality, since the dimensionality is determined by the number of distinct keywords in a document corpus. More seriously, most classifiers are either working slowly or they are constructed subjectively without any learning ability. In this paper, we address these problems with a fair feature-subset selection (FFSS) algorithm and an adaptive fuzzy learning network (AFLN) for classification. The FFSS algorithm is used to reduce the enormous dimensionality. It not only gives fair treatment to each category but also has ability to identify useful features, including both positive and negative features. On the other hand, the AFLN provides extremely fast learning ability to model the uncertain behavior for classification so as to correct the fuzzy matrix automatically. Experimental results show that both FFSS algorithm and the AFLN lead to a significant improvement in document classification, compared to alternative approaches.     

Formation of a geometric pattern with a mobile wireless sensor network

Mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs) will enable information systems to gather detailed information about the environment on an unprecedented scale. These self‐organizing, distributed networks of sensors, processors, and actuators that are capable of movement have a broad range of potential applications, including military reconnaissance, surveillance, planetary exploration, and geophysical mapping. In many of the foreseen applications, the MWSN will need to form a geometric pattern without assistance from the user. In military reconnaissance, for example, the nodes will be dropped onto the battlefield from a plane and land at random positions. The nodes will be expected to arrange themselves into a predetermined formation in order to perform a specific task. Thus, we present algorithms for forming a line, circle, and regular polygon from a given set of random positions. The algorithms are distributed and use no communication between the nodes to minimize energy consumption. Unlike past studies of geometric problems where algorithms are either tested in simulations where each node has global knowledge of all the other nodes or implemented on a small number of robots, the robustness of our algorithms has been studied with simulations that model the sensor system in detail. The simulations demonstrate that the algorithms are robust against random errors in the sensors and actuators. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Phosphorus‐containing polyaryloxydiphenylsilanes with high flame retardance arising from a phosphorus–silicon synergistic effect

Polyaryloxydiphenylsilanes were prepared from phosphorus‐containing diols and diphenydichlorolsilane through solution polymerization. With a stoichiometric imbalance in feed monomers, the resulting polymers exhibited moderate melting points and good processing properties. The polymers prepared showed initial decomposition temperatures above 340 °C, excellent thermal stability, high char yields at 850 °C and very high limited oxygen index values of 56–59. The polymers' char yields and their (P + Si) contents showed linear relationships. © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry     

Development of a Continuous Segmented Flow Tubular Reactor and the “Scale‐out” Concept – In Search of Perfect Powders

The synthesis of powders with controlled shape and narrow particle size distributions is still a major challenge for many industries. A continuous Segmented Flow Tubular Reactor (SFTR) has been developed to overcome homogeneity and scale‐up problems encountered when using batch reactors. Supersaturation is created by mixing the co‐reactants in a micromixer inducing precipitation; the suspension is then segmented into identical micro‐volumes by a non‐miscible fluid and sent through a tube. These micro‐volumes are more homogeneous when compared to large batch reactors leading to narrower size distributions, better particle morphology, polymorph selectivity and stoichiometry. All these features have been demonstrated on single tube SFTR for different chemical systems. To increase productivity for commercial application the SFTR is being “scaled‐out” by multiplying the number of tubes running in parallel instead of scaling‐up by increasing their size. The versatility of the multi‐tube unit will allow changes in type of precipitate with a minimum of new investment as new chemistry can be researched, developed and optimised in a single tube SFTR and then transferred to the multi‐tube unit for powder production.     

Abnormal junction profile of silicided p+/n shallowjunctions: a leakage mechanism

The leakage mechanism in p⁺/n shallow junctions fabricated using Co silicidation and shallow trench isolation processes has been investigated using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) combined with selective chemical etching. TEM and TSUPREM-4 simulation results show that dopant profiles bend upward near the edge of the active region. The formation of the abnormal profile is attributed to transient enhanced diffusion induced by source/drain implantation. Based on the TEM and simulation results, it is suggested that the shallower junctions formed near the active edge can serve as a source for leakage current in the silicided p+ /n shallow junctions     

Low temperature wafer direct bonding

A pronounced increase of interface energy of room temperature bonded hydrophilic Si/Si, Si/SiO₂, and SiO₂/SiO ₂ wafers after storage in air at room temperature, 150°C for 10-400 h has been observed. The increased number of OH groups due to a reaction between water and the strained oxide and/or silicon at the interface at temperatures below 110°C and the formation of stronger siloxane bonds above 110°C appear to be the main mechanisms responsible for the increase in the interface energy. After prolonged storage, interface bubbles are detectable by an infrared camera at the Si/Si bonding seam. Desorbed hydrocarbons as well as hydrogen generated by a reaction of water with silicon appear to be the major contents in the bubbles. Design guidelines for low temperature wafer direct bonding technology are proposed     

Statistical synchronization among participants in real-time multimedia conferencing

In this paper, an algorithm to determine the set of packets generated continuously and periodically from different participants that are arriving at a node either for mixing at the master of a conference, or for simply playing back at a regular participant of a conference, is proposed. The essence of the algorithm is to estimate the expected packet arrival time (or reference time) for each participant. With the reference time at hand, the maximum jitter and the optimum waiting time for a mixer to wait packets from all participants can be determined. An enhancement to improve synchronization which deals with the estimation of the time offsets between the individual periods of the sources and the period of the receiver is also presented. The error of the proposed algorithm is enumerated by the Chernoff bound and demonstrated by simulation and is shown to be acceptable in practical application. The algorithm can also be employed when traffic sources operate with different periods.