Printing Reconfigurable Bundles of Dielectric Elastomer Fibers

Active soft materials that change shape on demand are of interest for a myriad of applications, including soft robotics, biomedical devices, and adaptive systems. Despite recent advances, the ability to rapidly design and fabricate active matter in complex, reconfigurable layouts remains challenging. Here, the 3D printing of core-sheath-shell dielectric elastomer fibers (DEF) and fiber bundles with programmable actuation is reported. Complex shape morphing responses are achieved by printing individually addressable fibers within 3D architectures, including vertical coils and fiber bundles. These DEF devices exhibit resonance frequencies up to 700 Hz and lifetimes exceeding 2.6 million cycles. The multimaterial, multicore-shell 3D printing method opens new avenues for creating active soft matter with fast programable actuation.     

Magnetic field spatial Fourier analysis: A new opportunity for high resolution current localization

Magnetic microscopy has proven its usefulness throughout the years. It allows current localization with a certain degree of precision by using an inversion algorithm to invert the Biot–Savart law. The goal is to obtain the current distribution once the magnetic field is given. However, in order to obtain a stable solution, the magnetic data is severely low-pass filtered in the spatial Fourier domain, and some important information is lost. In this paper, the contribution given by the different spatial frequencies was studied: it was demonstrated how this information can be used to obtain additional information regarding the position of the currents. A comparative study between the theoretical approach and the application to the measurements is also shown.     

Performance and Modeling of the MWIR HgCdTe Electron Avalanche Photodiode

The operation of the mid-wave infrared (MWIR) HgCdTe cylindrical electron injection avalanche photodiode (e-APD) is described. The measured gain and excess noise factor are related to the collection region fill factor. A two-dimensional diffusion model calculates the time-dependent response and steady-state pixel point spread function for cylindrical diodes, and predicts bandwidths near 1 GHz for small geometries. A 2 μm diameter spot scan system was developed for point spread function and crosstalk measurements at 80 K. An electron diffusion length of 13.4 μm was extracted from spot scan data. Bandwidth data are shown that indicate bandwidths in excess of 300 MHz for small unit cells geometries. Dark current data, at high gain levels, indicate an effective gain normalized dark density count as low as 1000 counts/μs/cm² at an APD gain of 444. A junction doping profile was determined from capacitance–voltage data. Spectral response data shows a gain-independent characteristic.     

Noise performance comparison for third and fourth order cascaded sigma-delta modulators having parameter tolerance errors

A parameter tolerance, signal to noise ratio comparison is made between the MASH third order sigma-delta modulator structure and a new fourth order cascaded structure. The fourth order structure meets the required performance specification with wider parameter tolerances, allowing easier integration using hybrid CMOS technology.<>     

Implementing policy in enterprise networks

There is a need for a general policy management architecture that can guide one in understanding and implementing policy in diverse management applications. The question of policy in network management has evolved since the early '70s concern with monitoring and controlling the access rights of multiple users and resources in large distributed systems. It is now generally acknowledged that policy also plays an important role in other areas of network management, including configuration, accounting, fault, and performance management. Furthermore, it is agreed that a general policy framework is needed for controlling the behavior of the agents the enterprise network comprises, including network users, administrators, troubleshooters, the applications running on the network, and the operational parameters of network hardware. The authors present a framework for understanding and implementing policy in the management of enterprise networks. We describe typical network scenarios in which policy plays a role, a general architecture for policy management and the components and operations of the architecture at a level of abstraction that renders it applicable to specific management tasks which require policy. We also provide an example of the architecture in configuration management. The article draws from work on policy management, including two ESPRIT projects     

Multiservice platforms for data services

The potential for broadband and data services is large and continues to expand for the foreseeable future. Consideration of the cost-effective delivery and support of both new, advanced services, as well as existing services, has led to the driver for multiservice platforms (MSPs). The cost effectiveness results from the MSP potential to share network bandwidth between services, offer a potential simplification of the operational support systems (OSS), and enable new service features and functions. A generic ATM-based MSP is described in this paper where issues of service support, service interworking, operations and maintenance, and network architecture are discussed. The paper is intended as a tutorial on the concepts.     

A digital background calibration technique for time-interleavedanalog-to-digital converters

A 10-bit 40-Msample/s two-channel parallel pipelined ADC with monolithic digital background calibration has been designed and fabricated in a 1 μm CMOS technology. Adaptive signal processing and extra resolution in each channel are used to carry out digital background calibration. Test results show that the ADC achieves a signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio of 55 dB for a 0.8-MHz sinusoidal input, a peak integral nonlinearity of 0.34 LSB, and a peak differential nonlinearity of 0.14 LSB, both at a 10-bit level. The active area is 42 mm², and the power dissipation is 565 mW from a 5 V supply     

Flux pattern and fouling of membranes during ultrafiltration of some dairy products

The flux pattern of milk (whole milk, skimmed milk and buttermilk) showed a distinct contrast to whey (sweet whey and acid casein whey) systems during ultrafiltration (UF) at constant composition. For milk systems, the initial flux was lower than for whey systems, but the flux stabilised within a few minutes of operation. However, for both acid and sweet whey, the flux continued to fall with time for nearly 1 h. The fouling coefficient (FC) for buttermilk was 0.6 after 5 min, rising to 0.68 after 60 min. During this time flux did not decline, suggesting that concentration polarisation (CP), rather than fouling, was controlling the flux rate. In contrast, the FC for whey was 0.5 after 5 min with a progressive rise over the next 55 min, but the flux also fell throughout this period suggesting that flux was controlled by fouling rather than CP. The higher concentration of protein in milk systems appeared to be responsible for CP, rather than fouling, being the controlling mechanism.     

Electronic and thermal transport in hot carrier solar cells with low-dimensional contacts

Hot carrier solar cells are a third generation solar cell device where electrons and holes, heated by solar radiation, are removed from the absorber via low-dimensional energy selective contacts before they can thermalise to the band edge. Here, a new model is presented for calculating the performance of these devices, which takes into account the energy spectrum of the contacts. It is shown that efficiency is maximised with a certain ideal number of contacts and that the energy spectra of these should be narrow.