Hydroxyapatite Modified with Carbon‐Nanotube‐Reinforced Poly(methyl methacrylate): A Nanocomposite Material for Biomedical Applications

The paper reports on a freeze‐granulation technique to prepare a novel nanocomposite of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)‐modified hydroxyapatite (HA) with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) as reinforcement for a new generation biomedical bone cement and implant coatings. By using this technique it is possible to increase material homogeneity and also enhance the dispersion of MWCNTs in the composite matrix. The phase composition and the surface morphology of the nanocomposite material were studied using X‐ray diffraction, field‐emission scanning electron microscopy, and micro‐Raman spectroscopy. Additionally, nanomechanical properties of different concentrations of MWCNT‐reinforced nanocomposite were performed by a nanoindentation technique, which indicates that a concentration of 0.1 wt % MWCNTs in the PMMA/HA nanocomposite material gives the best mechanical properties.     

高k材料／金属栅电极迈向大规模量产

到了45纳米技术节点,高介电常数绝缘材料和金属栅电极将被用于射造逻辑电路器件。而采用高金属功函数和能隙工程电荷陷阱的闪存也能从这些项技术中获益。     

Temperature profile effects in accelerated thermal cycling of SnPb and Pb-free solder joints

Accelerated thermal cycling (ATC) has been widely used in the microelectronics industry for reliability assessment. ATC testing decreases life cycle test time by one or more of the following means: increasing the heating and cooling rate, decreasing the hold time, or increasing the range of the applied temperature. The relative effect of each of these cycle parameters and the failure mechanisms they induce has been the subject of many studies; however uncertainty remains, particularly regarding the role of the heating and cooling rate. In this research, three conditions with two ramp rates (14 °C/min and 95 °C/min) and two temperature ranges (ΔT = 0–100 °C and −40 to 125 °C) were applied to resistor 2512 and PBGA 256 test vehicles assembled with SnPb and Pb-free solders. The test results showed that the higher ramp rate reduced the testing time while retaining the same failure modes, and that the damage per cycle increased with the temperature difference. For the resistors, the Pb-free solder joints lasted longer than the SnPb joints at the smaller ΔT, but were inferior at the larger ΔT. In contrast, the Pb-free solder joints in the PBGA test vehicles lasted longer than the SnPb solder under both conditions.     

An Enhanced A-MSDU Frame Aggregation Scheme for 802.11n Wireless Networks

The main goal of the IEEE 802.11n standard is to achieve a minimum throughput of 100 Mbps at the MAC service access point. This high throughput has been achieved via many enhancements in both the physical and MAC layers. A key enhancement at the MAC layer is frame aggregation in which the timing and headers overheads of the legacy MAC are reduced by aggregating multiple frames into a single large frame before being transmitted. Two aggregation schemes have been defined by the 802.11n standard, aggregate MAC service data unit (A-MSDU) and aggregate MAC protocol data unit (A-MPDU). As a consequence of the aggregation, new aggregation headers are introduced and become parts of the transmitted frame. Even though these headers are small compared to the legacy headers they still have a negative impact on the network performance, especially when aggregating frames of small payload. Moreover, the A-MSDU is highly influenced by the channel condition due mainly to lack of subframes sequence control and retransmission. In this paper, we have proposed an aggregation scheme (mA-MSDU) that reduces the aggregation headers and implements a retransmission control over the individual subframes at the MSDU level. The analysis and simulations results show the significance of the proposed scheme, specifically for applications that have a small frame size such as VoIP.     

All-optical 6- and 8-channel demultiplexers based on photonic crystal multilayer ring resonators in Si/C rods

In this paper, we employed multilayer ring resonators in a silicon rod base structure to realize 6-channel and 8-channel demultiplexers based on two-dimensional photonic crystals. Both the main rings and basic structures are composed of silicon rods, and the interior rings of the multilayer rings are composed of carbon. Employing silicon and carbon rods of different radii in multilayer ring resonators enhanced the coupling efficiency between the rings and waveguides. The average quality factor and power transmission efficiency were 4320 and 93%, respectively. Crosstalk values from \(-11\) to ?46 dB in conjunction with the mentioned characteristics suggest the use of the device for optical communication applications. The compact size of the proposed structure and the materials used make the proposed demultiplexer suitable for optical integrated circuits.     

Incremental augmented complex adaptive IIR algorithm for training widely linear ARMA model

In this paper, we propose a distributed adaptive learning algorithm to train the coefficients of a widely linear autoregressive moving average model by measurements collected by the nodes of a network. We assume that each node uses the augmented complex adaptive infinite impulse response (ACA-IIR) filter as the learning rule, and nodes interact with each other under an incremental mode of cooperation. To derive the proposed algorithm, called the incremental ACAIIR (IACA-IIR), we firstly formulate the distributed adaptive learning problem as an unconstrained minimization problem. Then, we apply stochastic gradient optimization argument to solve it and derive the proposed algorithm. We further find the step size range where the stability of the proposed algorithm is guaranteed. We also introduce a reduced-complexity version of the IACA-IIR algorithm. Since the proposed algorithm relies on the augmented complex statistics, it can be used to model both types of complex-valued signals (proper and improper signals). To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, we use both synthetic and real-world complex signals in our simulations. The results exhibit superior performance of the proposed algorithm over the non-cooperative ACA-IIR algorithm.     

Theoretical Prediction of an Antimony-Silicon Monolayer $$(\hbox {penta-Sb}_{2}\hbox {Si})$$: Band Gap Engineering by Strain Effect

In this paper, using a first principles calculation, a two-dimensional structure of silicon-antimony named penta-Sb\(_{2}\)Si is predicted. The structural, kinetic, and thermal stabilities of the predicted monolayer are confirmed by the cohesive energy calculation, phonon dispersion analysis, and first principles molecular dynamic simulation, respectively. The electronic properties investigation shows that the pentagonal Sb\(_{2}\)Si monolayer is a semiconductor with an indirect band gap of about 1.53 eV (2.1 eV) from GGA-PBE (PBE0 hybrid functional) calculations which can be effectively engineered by employing external biaxial compressive and tensile strain. Furthermore, the optical characteristics calculation indicates that the predicted monolayer has considerable optical absorption and reflectivity in the ultraviolet region. The results suggest that a Sb\(_{2}\)Si monolayer has very good potential applications in new nano-optoelectronic devices.     

On the Performance of FFT/DWT/DCT-based OFDM Systems with Chaotic Interleaving and Channel Estimation Algorithms

The efficiency of data transmission over fading channels in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems depends on the employed interleaving method. In this study, we propose an improved chaotic interleaving scheme which aims to improve the performance of OFDM system under fading channel. In the proposed scheme, the binary data is interleaved with chaotic Baker map prior to the modulation process. In the sequel, significant degree of encryption is being added during data transmission. The performance of the proposed approach is tested on the conventional fast Fourier transform OFDM, discrete wavelet transform OFDM, and discrete cosine transform OFDM with and without chaotic interleaving. Furthermore, an expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm is proposed for improving channel impulse response (CIR) estimation based on a maximum likelihood principle. The proposed scheme makes use of EM algorithm to update the channel estimates until convergence is reached. The simulation results show the efficiency of the proposed algorithms under Rayleigh fading environments where the symbol error rate essentially coincides with that of the perfect channel case after the fifth EM iteration.     

Multicarrier constant envelope OFDM signal design for radar applications

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) radar signals have been introduced for high range resolution radars. These signals have prominent properties such as favorable ambiguity function, high bandwidth efficiency, and possibility of use in dual mode radar/communication systems. But the large amplitude fluctuations of the OFDM signal make it susceptible to system nonlinearities. To alleviate this problem, constant envelope OFDM (CE-OFDM) signal has been introduced which combines orthogonal frequency division multiplexing and phase modulation or frequency modulation. Although several works have been reported on OFDM radar signal design, there is no a systematic approach for designing CE-OFDM signals for radar applications. In this paper we will focus on CE-OFDM signal design for radar applications. Two different methods for designing a CE-OFDM signal with favorable ambiguity functions are introduced. The first one is based on modulating a complementary set of sequences on different sub-carriers while the second is based on using a proper single carrier coded signal and then extracting its most similar multicarrier OFDM or CE-OFDM coded signal.