Leakage current in a Si-based nanopore structure and its influence on noise characteristics

We have measured leakage current in a silicon substrate-based nanopore membrane device immersed in an aqueous environment which typically shows the current level of few nA. This current level is compared with the measured current density (400 nA/cm² at 1 V) from the pristine Si wafer (p-type, 10¹⁶/cm³ boron doping) indicating that the exposed Si surface in a nanopore membrane device acts as an electrochemical reaction site. The leakage current is drastically reduced from >10 nA to <100 pA at 1 V by the deposition of a dielectric layer to the Si-based nanopore membrane device. We also noted that the root-mean-square noise of the ionic current is also reduced from 38 to 28 pA in correlation with the reduction of leakage current, indicating that electrochemical reaction provides one of the major sources of noise.     

Image processing acceleration for intelligent unmanned aerial vehicle on mobile GPU

In this paper, we present an algorithm for providing visually-guided unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control using visual information that is processed on a mobile graphic processing unit (GPU). Most real-time machine vision applications for UAVs exploit low-resolution images because the shortage of computational resources comes from size, weight and power issue. This leads to the limitation that the data are insufficient to provide the UAV with intelligent behavior. However, GPUs have emerged as inexpensive parallel processors that are capable of providing high computational power in mobile environments. We present an approach for detecting and tracking lines that use a mobile GPU. Hough transform and clustering techniques were used for robust and fast tracking. We achieved accurate line detection and faster tracking performance using the mobile GPU as compared with an x86 i5 CPU. Moreover, the average results showed that the GPU provided approximately five times speedup as compared to an ARM quad-core Cortex-A15. We conducted a detailed analysis of the performance of proposed tracking and detection algorithm and obtained meaningful results that could be utilized in real flight.     

Influence of wall charge distribution on time lag of address discharge in AC plasma display panels

The influence of wall charge distribution on the time lag of address discharge in an AC plasma display panel is investigated using two different reset waveforms: one (typical reset) induces both face and surface discharges and the other (TR reset) induces face discharges only. The measured formative time lag and statistical time lag of address discharge for TR were 21–31 ns and 31–74 ns shorter than the one for the typical reset, respectively. The TR reset resulted in much less increase of statistical time lag than the typical reset when the reset-to-address time interval was increased, and 70 ns smaller deviation of the statistical time lag among different color cells. Calculations show that the TR reset forms a much smoother wall charge profile, which is less susceptible to cell parameter variations, than the typical reset. The observed differences in the time lags of address discharge between different scan lines and color cells are strongly correlated to the differences of the wall charge profile, indicating that a smooth wall charge profile formed by the reset using face discharges only reduces the time lag of address discharge and minimizes the susceptibility of address discharge to cell parameter variation.     

Spatial Micropatterning of Growth Factors in 3D Hydrogels for Location‐Specific Regulation of Cellular Behaviors

Growth factors are potent stimuli for regulating cell function in tissue engineering strategies, but spatially patterning their presentation in 3D in a facile manner using a single material is challenging. Micropatterning is an attractive tool to modulate the cellular microenvironment with various biochemical and physical cues and study their effects on stem cell behaviors. Implementing heparin's ability to immobilize growth factors, dual‐crosslinkable alginate hydrogels are micropatterned in 3D with photocrosslinkable heparin substrates with various geometries and micropattern sizes, and their capability to establish 3D micropatterns of growth factors within the hydrogels is confirmed. This 3D micropatterning method could be applied to various heparin binding growth factors, such as fibroblast growth factor‐2, vascular endothelial growth factor, transforming growth factor‐betas and bone morphogenetic proteins while retaining the hydrogel's natural degradability and cytocompability. Stem cells encapsulated within these micropatterned hydrogels have exhibited spatially localized growth and differentiation responses corresponding to various growth factor patterns, demonstrating the versatility of the approach in controlling stem cell behavior for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications.     

Study of polymer‐network structure on polymer‐stabilized blue phase

Abstract— To understand the mechanism of the disclination defect of the liquid‐crystal (LC) phase, this study was conducted to directly analyze the polymer‐network (PN) structure of polymer‐stabilized blue phase (PSBP), which is minutely formed on all LC layers. The PN was examined after first removing the glass decap and then the LC. Important to note is that the removal of the glass decap did not affect or damage the PN structure. The PN was determined to be a stable structure without any change to the thickness of the layer. When removing the LC, both hexane and acetone solutions were used. Moreover, there was no structural deformation to the PN when using the hexane solution. The results of the study show that the actual size of the polymer chain is in fact 50–60 nm, five times larger than previous theories which estimated the size to be only 10 nm. In addition, this study confirmed that the pores between the PN are 100–200 nm. The PN structure was shown to be susceptible to change based on different heating temperatures. In summation, now that defect lines of a LC display (LCD) could be directly measured, further progress and development in the theoretical interpretations of the Kerr effect on PSBP can be realized.     

Free energy perturbation approach for the rational engineering of the antibody for human hepatitis B virus

HzKR127 is the humanized monoclonal antibody effective for the neutralization of human hepatitis B virus. By means of the free energy perturbation (FEP) calculations based on molecular dynamic (MD) simulations, we examine the mutation-induced variations in the energetic and structural features associated with the interactions between HzKR127 and its antigen. N58A, Y96A, D97A, and D97A/Y102A mutants of HzKR127 are taken in account in this study for which the experimental data for relative efficacies with respect to the wild-type antibody are available. The results of the present MD-FEP simulation studies show that in order to enhance the affinity for the antigen, the engineering of HzKR127 should be made in such a way as to promote the dynamic stability of the overall protein conformation and that of the translational motion of the antigen in the antibody-antigen complex. The relative binding free energies of the four mutant antibodies obtained from MD-FEP calculations compare pretty well with the experimental mutagenesis data with the associated squared correlation coefficient of 0.96. This indicates that MD-FEP calculations may serve as a useful computational tool for rational antibody engineering. Discussed in detail are the differences in the structural features of antibody-antigen interactions between the wild-type and the mutant antibodies that are responsible for the change in binding affinities for the antigen.     

Organic wavelength‐converting‐film‐based hybrid planar white light‐emitting diodes

Abstract— In this study, organic wavelength‐converting films (WCFs) applied to InGaN blue LED‐based hybrid planar WLED has been fabricated. The organic dye layer in the WCF was formed between the upper and bottom polymer sheets by using a simple roll‐laminating technique. Subsequently, the hybrid planar WLEDs have been fabricated based upon these films. The luminous efficiency of green WCF‐based hybrid planar WLEDs with a single blue LED chip was 34.6 lm/W and that of red‐WCF‐assisted green WCF‐based hybrid planar WLEDs was 27.3 lm/W under 20 mA. The use of WCF to fabricate hybrid planar WLEDs showed better stability than that of directly coating organic color‐convergence materials (CCMs) on the LED chips. It only decreased to about 10% of the initial wavelength‐converting intensity after 1 hour of continual operation at 20 mA.     

Frictional properties of VA‐mode alignment‐film surfaces studied by frictional force microscopy

Abstract— The surface‐friction characteristics of the post‐bake temperature were compared to that of the rubbing condition on VA‐mode alignment films (AFs) using frictional force microscopy (FFM). The surface roughness and the surface frictional force increased when the temperature was elevated. However, the frictional asymmetry could not be detected by the frictional loop due to the instability of the side‐chain molecular arrangement. For the inter‐influences of the total friction and surface roughness, the density of the side chain was changed and it was intentionally rubbed for evaluation. The results showed that the total friction was higher when the rubbing was stronger and side‐chain density lower, and the surface roughness also increased in the same manner. This can be explained by the potential interaction due to the curved structure of the side‐chain surface that establishes the probe that is scanned and the top surface layer. In order to confirm the influence of the pre‐tilt angle on the tilt of the side chain, a test cell was produced under the same conditions and evaluated. The results showed that the pre‐tilt‐angle decreased according to the difference in density of the side chain and strength of rubbing after injecting liquid‐crystal (LC).     

Device reliability under electrical stress and photo response of oxide TFTs

Abstract— The stability of oxide TFTs has been the main focus of this research and is probably the most crucial requirement for the successful application to flat‐panel displays. Although the high Fermi level of oxide semiconductors makes TFTs basically stable under electrical stress, the device reliability under diverse variations of electrical stress is affected by materials such as active semiconductors and gate insulators, processes for the formation of back/front channels and passivation layers, and device configurations among other things. How these factors affect the device reliability have been investigated and a review of the stability is presented. In addition, several categories of the light instability of oxide TFTs is presented and the origin is discussed.     

Compressed tag architecture for low-power embedded cache systems

Processors in embedded systems mostly employ cache architectures in order to alleviate the access latency gap between processors and memory systems. Caches in embedded systems usually occupy a major fraction of the implemented chip area. The power dissipation of cache system thus constitutes a significant fraction of the power dissipated by the entire processor in embedded systems. In this paper, we propose the compressed tag architecture to reduce the power dissipation of the tag store in cache systems. We introduce a new tag-matching mechanism by using a locality buffer and a tag compression technique. The main power reduction feature of our proposal is the use of small tag space matching instead of full tag matching, with modest additional hardware costs. The simulation results show that the proposed model provides a power and energy-delay product reduction of up to 27.8% and 26.5%, respectively, while still providing a comparable level of system performance to regular cache systems.