A comparative study and performance characteristics of ion-implanted and heterojunction short-wave infrared HgCdTe focal-plane arrays

Short-wave infrared (SWIR) HgCdTe focal-plane arrays (FPAs) with a cutoff wavelength of 2.5 μm have been produced using both planar ion-implanted and heterojunction-mesa device structures. The two-dimesnional FPAs are comprised of a 320×256 format with 30-μm pixel pitch and are cooled by a multistage thermo-electric (TE) cooler. Measured R₀A values of the two types of device structures show similar results below about 130 K because of the performance-limiting effect of the surface passivation of the heterojunction. However, a substantial difference is seen above 130 K and up to 300 K between the two structures types, with the heterojunction-mesa p-on-n device having an order of magnitude higher R₀A value than the planar ion-implanted n-on-p configuration. The difference in the R₀A values is reflected in the FPA images of the two different device types, where at 200 K, both FPAs display a clear picture with the n-on-p implanted device having a somewhat lesser resolution. However, no image can be seen from the planar-implanted FPA at 300 K, whereas the heterojunction-mesa FPA still exhibits a notable image at this temperature. These differences are examined and are attributed largely to higher diffusion and generation-recombination (g-r) currents that are thought to be prevalent in the ion-implanted n-on-p device structure. Yet, baking studies carried out show the ion-implanted diodes to be slightly more robust, as experiments reveal that they tend to survive a 120°C heat treatment longer than the mesa devices, which tend to degrade after a certain period of time. The nature of n-type donors in ion-implanted diodes is discussed, and a new theory based on Te antisites is proposed to explain recent experimental findings.     

Performance analysis and comparison of optical signal processing beamforming networks: a survey

Photonic Network Communications - Forthcoming wireless systems are developed to support greater data rate and extra coverage area. This can be achieved with the help of multiple input multiple...     

In-situ cleaning and passivation of oxidized Cu surfaces by alkanethiols and its application to wire bonding

The treatment of oxidized Cu surfaces using an alkanethiol as a reducing agent has been investigated. Exposure to a dilute solution of 1-decanethiol resulted in the complete removal and/or conversion of CuO and subsequent formation of a passivating thiolate film, a so-called self-assembled monolayer (SAM), on the underlying Cu/Cu₂O surface as evidenced by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. Morphological changes, monitored by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), revealed transformation of the rough, porous CuO layer into a comparatively smooth Cu/Cu₂O surface. Experiments performed on integrated circuit back-end-of-line (BEOL) die structures, comprising Cu/SiO₂ bond pads used as substrates for Cu wire bonding, demonstrate the potential application of a thiol-based in-situ cleaning-passivation procedure in microelectronics.     

Compact SCSRR-based quad-band antenna for Bluetooth,WiMAX, WLAN,and fixed-satellite services

This research describes the detailed analysis and design of the compact complex-free structural metamaterial quad band radiating element applicable for Bluetooth, WiMAX, WLAN, and fixed-satellite service. The radiating element designed is composed of an inner angle-rotated circular Split Ring Resonator (SRR) placed within the outer square-shaped SRR interlinked by a strip to design the multiband operational characteristics and is fed by a coplanar waveguide. Suggested radiating element is imprinted over the FR4 substrate material with the electrical dimension of 28 × 31.26 × 0.8 mm³. The initial outer-closed square ring offers dual-band operation by resonating at 2.8 and 8.5 GHz frequencies, and the incorporation of a circular SRR offers quad-band operation. The unique negative permeability feature of the proposed Square and Circular Split Ring Resonator (SCSRR) structure is extracted, and its band characteristics are analyzed. Results obtained from the simulated radiating element are validated with the fabricated antenna. The measured E plane pattern resembles a numeric eight shape, and the H plane pattern is omnidirectional. Suggested SCSRR antenna offers a gain of above 3.2 dBi in all the operating bands.     

A Modular Vaccine Platform Combining Self‐Assembled Peptide Cages and Immunogenic Peptides

Subunit vaccines use delivery platforms to present minimal antigenic components for immunization. The benefits of such systems include multivalency, self‐adjuvanting properties, and more specific immune responses. Previously, the design, synthesis, and characterization of self‐assembling peptide cages (SAGEs) have been reported. In these, de novo peptides are combined to make hubs that assemble into nanoparticles when mixed in aqueous solution. Here it is shown that SAGEs are nontoxic particles with potential as accessible synthetic peptide scaffolds for the delivery of immunogenic components. To this end, SAGEs functionalized with the model antigenic peptides tetanus toxoid_632‐651 and ovalbumin_323‐339 drive antigen‐specific responses both in vitro and in vivo, eliciting both CD4⁺ T cell and B cell responses. Additionally, SAGEs functionalized with the antigenic peptide hemagglutinin_518‐526 from the influenza virus are also able to drive a CD8⁺ T cell response in vivo. This work demonstrates the potential of SAGEs to act as a modular scaffold for antigen delivery, capable of inducing and boosting specific and tailored immune responses.     

Self-assembled monolayers for electrode fabrication and efficient threshold voltage control of organic transistors with amorphous semiconductor layer

In this paper we show that thiolated self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) can be used to anchor source–drain gold electrodes on the substrate, leading to excellent electrical performances of the organic field-effect transistor (OFET) on a par with those using a standard electrode process. Using an amorphous semiconductor and a gate dielectric functionalized with SAMs bearing different dipole moments, we demonstrate that we can tune the threshold voltage alone, while keeping nearly unchanged the other electrical properties (hole carrier mobility, I_on/I_off ratio, subthreshold swing). This differs from previous studies for which SAMs functionalization induced significant changes in all the OFET electrical performances. This result opens doors to design organic circuits using reproducible amorphous semiconductor based OFETs for which only the threshold voltage can be tuned on demand.     

Gröbner Bases and Multidimensional FIR Multirate Systems

The polyphase representation with respect to sampling lattices in multidimensional (M-D) multirate signal processing allows us to identify perfect reconstruction (PR) filter banks with unimodular Laurent polynomial matrices, and various problems in the design and analysis of invertible MD multirate systems can be algebraically formulated with the aid of this representation. While the resulting algebraic problems can be solved in one dimension (1-D) by the Euclidean Division Algorithm, we show that Gröbner bases offers an effective solution to them in the M-D case.     

Adaptive encoding of zoomable video streams based on user access pattern

Zoomable video allows users to selectively zoom and pan into regions of interest within the video for viewing at higher resolutions. Such interaction requires dynamic cropping of RoIs on the source video. We have previously explored two different ways of encoding and transmitting video to support dynamic RoI cropping: (i) Monolithic streaming uses a standard video encoder to encode the video. When an RoI is requested, the bits belonging to the RoI along with other bits required to decode the RoIs (due to encoding dependencies) are transmitted. (ii) Tile streaming divides regions in the standard video into rectangular tiles that are encoded independently. The tiles that intersect with a requested RoI are transmitted. In this paper, we consider how the bandwidth needed to transmit the RoIs can be reduced by carefully encoding the source video for each of the two encoding schemes. The goal is to support bandwidth efficient compressed domain RoI cropping in the context of virtual zoom and pan by tuning encoder parameters. Our key idea is to exploit user access patterns to the RoIs, and encode different regions of the video with different encoding parameters based on the popularity of the region. We show that our encoding method can reduce the expected bandwidth by up to 43% in the test video sequence which we have used.     

Conjugated Polymer Based Nanoparticles as Dual‐Modal Probes for Targeted In Vivo Fluorescence and Magnetic Resonance Imaging

A facile strategy is developed to synthesize dual‐modal fluorescent‐magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) with surface folic acid by co‐encapsulation of a far‐red/near‐infrared (FR/NIR)‐emissive conjugated polymer (PFVBT) and lipid‐coated iron oxides (IOs) into a mixture of poly(lactic‐co‐glycolic‐acid)‐poly(ethylene glycol)‐folate (PLGA‐PEG‐FOL) and PLGA. The obtained NPs exhibit superparamagnetic properties and high fluorescence, which indicates that the lipid coated on IOs is effective at separating the conjugated polymer from IOs to minimize fluorescence quenching. These NPs are spherical in shape with an average diameter of ≈180 nm in water, as determined by laser light scattering. In vitro studies reveal that these dual‐modal NPs can serve as an effective fluorescent probe to achieve targeted imaging of MCF‐7 breast cancer cells without obvious cytotoxicity. In vivo fluorescence and magnetic resonance imaging results suggest that the NPs are able to preferentially accumulate in tumor tissues to allow dual‐modal detection of tumors in a living body. This demonstrates the potential of conjugated polymer based dual‐modal nanoprobes for versatile in vitro and in vivo applications in future.     

Improving satellite services with cooperative communications

This paper proposes new transmission schemes for the delivery of satellite services. In the proposed scenarios, mobile terminals are allowed to forward the signal received from the satellite. This scheme provides spatial diversity just like MIMO transmission schemes. Moreover, the coverage area is extended because masked terminals have an additional opportunity to get the service from neighboring terminals. We use the paradigm of cooperative communications to compare the advantages and limitations of several scenarios in hybrid terrestrial/satellite systems. In particular, we study the following basic transmission scheme: in a first time slot, the satellite sends its signal and, in a second time slot, mobile terrestrial terminals are relaying the satellite signal. An analysis framework is proposed and applied to this cooperation scenario at the destination terminal. The framework is modeling the cooperation process and clearly separates the control part from the data user part. The paper outlines the importance of the control part by evaluating the relay selection policy on a basic hybrid satellite/ad hoc system. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.