Combinatorial preparation and characterization of thin-film multilayer electro-optical devices

In this article we present a setup for the combinatorial vapor deposition of thin-film multilayer devices as well as methods for the fast and efficient analytic screening of the libraries obtained. The preparation setup is based on a commercially available evaporation chamber equipped with various evaporation sources for both organic and metallic materials. The combinatorial approach is realized by the combination of a rotation stage for the substrate, a five-mask sampler, and an additional mask whose position can be deliberately varied along one axis during the evaporation process. The latter is used to evaporate linear as well as step gradients by continuous or stepwise movement of a shutter mask. The mask sampler allows to define the sectors of the library and to evaporate more complex structures, e.g., an electrode layout. Finally, the simultaneous evaporation of two or more materials enables us to produce layers of varying composition ratio in general and doped materials, in particular. For the control of the evaporation process we have developed an automation software, which is particularly helpful for complex library designs and which grants excellent repeatability of experiments. Efficient and fast characterization of the obtained libraries is realized by (i) a purely optical setup and (ii) an electro-optical setup. (i) The UV/vis reader FLASHScan 530 permits to map out the UV/vis absorbance or fluorescence of the whole library. The UV/vis absorbance is primarily used to determine layer thicknesses and to confirm thickness uniformity across larger regions. The fluorescence measurements are used to determine the composition of layers containing fluorescent dyes. (ii) For a detailed short- and long-term electro-optical analysis we have developed an automated measurement system, which allows the characterization of 8x8 optoelectronic devices and to study their degradation behavior. Both solar cells and organic light-emitting diodes can be tested. Finally, we have developed a data analysis software to extract characteristic values from the huge amount of data and with this facilitate the finding of systematic dependencies.     

Bemessung von Stahlbauten für Anprall‐ und Explosionslasten

Die zunehmende Gefahr von Anschlägen und Industrieunfällen haben zu neuen Anforderungen an die Auslegung und Bemessung von Bauwerken geführt. Diesen neuen Anforderungen wird derzeit in Normen jedoch nur unzureichend Rechnung getragen. Insbesondere für Bauwerke in Stahl‐ und Verbundbauweise führen die gegenwärtig üblichen Auslegungskonzepte nicht zu wirtschaftlichen Bemessungen. Das bauforumstahl hat daher in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Institut für Stahlbau der RWTH Aachen und HOCHTIEF Construction AG einen Bemessungsleitfaden für Anprall‐ und Explosionslasten erarbeitet, mit dem die Möglichkeiten des Werkstoffes Stahl wesentlich effizienter ausgenutzt werden können. In diesem Beitrag werden die wesentlichen Elemente dieses Leitfadens vorgestellt, der sowohl eine Bewertung von Entwurfsstrategien für robuste Bauwerke enthält, als auch ein Bemessungskonzept zur Auslegung von Stahlbauten gegen spezifische kurzzeit‐dynamische Einwirkungen bereitstellt. Design of steel structures against impact and blast loads. The increasing threat of terroristic attacks as well as industrial hazards have led to new demands for the conception and design of buildings. Current standards, however, do not provide sufficient guidance to cope with these new requirements. Particularly for steel and composite structures there is a lack of appropriate and therefore economic design concepts. Hence, bauforumstahl in cooperation with the Institute for Steel Structures at RWTH Aachen University and HOCHTIEF Construction AG has published a new design guide to exploit the capabilities of steel more efficiently. This paper presents the main aspects of this design guide. It includes the assessment of strategies for robust structures and a concept to design steel structures against specific high dynamic loads.     

Electro-conductive adhesives for high density package and flip-chip interconnections

Dispensable isotropic conductive adhesives (ICA) and snap-curing anisotropic conductive adhesives (ACA) are developed through the EC funded Brite EuRam project DACTEL #BE95-1503. They show very promising capabilities for high-density applications when compared to benchmark electro-conductive adhesives.As first high-density application, assemblies of ceramic and plastic ball grid array/land grid array (LGA) on FR4 with DAC3-102/14 ICA are realized. Mixed assemblies solder/ICA show poor results, especially during aging. Full polymer LGA assemblies are built successfully. Daisy chains with hundreds of transitions component/substrate present resistances as low as 4 Ω. After comparison with benchmark products, CLGAs show themselves to be particularly reliable under moisture conditioning.Secondly, flip-chip assemblies on board, of medium sized chips bumped with electroless NiAu and using DAC2-143/02 ACA, are performed. Contact resistances as low as 10 mΩ are produced. For this application, reliability results are succinct.Finally, flip-chip assemblies on glass of slim chips with NiAu bump pitch down to 80 μm, by means of the newly developed DAC2-143/02 ACA, are demonstrated. The material shows better performances than a benchmark anisotropic conductive film, where measurements reveal contact resistances lower than the sheet resistance of the transparent indium tin oxide metallization used in display applications. Thermal cycling and temperature storage reveal good behavior of the ACA paste.     

Semiquantitative method for the evaluation of grease barrier coatings

Many tests are known for testing the grease barrier performance of coatings in paper or paperboard. Some are manifested in standard procedures such as TAPPI, ASTM, or ISO, but as many procedures were developed and modified by companies and research groups. Mainly the test methods are based on visually detecting the amount of oil, which is in most cases dyed for better contrast, penetrating through the coating, meaning the procedures are based on a subjective visual evaluation and thus often not linked for instance to a statistical meaningful physical value. We found that by using a slightly modified ASTM D 722 test the L*a*b* color coordinates determined with a commercial handheld spectrophotometer are related to the grease barrier performance of an organic coating. By applying this new method the penetration time of an oil/dye mixture could be correlated to the lightness L* and chromaticity b* and fitted by an exponential function. Furthermore, the coating was slightly modified and an improvement or worsening of the grease barrier could be detected clearly outside of the statistical scatter of a control series. We call this method semiquantitative, since the level of grease barrier of a coating is not measured directly by a quantitative value, but color coordinates are correlated in a series to the effectiveness of the grease barrier.     

Characterization of the transition from ploughing to cutting in micro machining and evaluation of the minimum thickness of cut

When the machining process is miniaturized two process mechanisms, ploughing and chip formation, are essential and a critical cutting thickness needs to be exceeded so that not only ploughing will occur but chips will also be formed. The ploughing effect thereby influences the chip formation process, workpiece surface roughness, burr formation and residual stress state after processing and is therefore of great interest. In order to optimize the machining process a better understanding of the minimum thickness of cut is crucial.The changes in surface topography along the cutting track occurring during machining with a constant feed rate of the cutting tool were analyzed. The influence of the built-up edge phenomena on the micro machining process was investigated for normalized AISI 1045 using confocal white light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Furthermore the sin²ψ-method was applied in order to study the residual stress state in the workpiece surface induced by the machining process. Both surface layer properties investigated, surface roughness and residual stresses, show a characteristic transition indicating a change in the dominating process mechanisms. Based on these results a model is developed to determine the minimum thickness of cut. The minimum thickness of cut is found to significantly decrease with higher cutting velocities and to moderately increase with higher cutting edge radii. In addition a propagation of error for the values obtained with the model was performed, proving the quality of the model developed.     

A „Magic Mushroom“ Multi-Product Sesquiterpene Synthase

Psilocybe “magic mushrooms” are chemically well understood for their psychotropic tryptamines. However, the diversity of their other specialized metabolites, in particular terpenoids, has largely remained an open question. Yet, knowledge on the natural product background is critical to understand if other compounds modulate the psychotropic pharmacological effects. CubA, the single clade II sesquiterpene synthase of P. cubensis, was heterologously produced in Escherichia coli and characterized in vitro, complemented by in vivo product formation assays in Aspergillus niger as a heterologous host. Extensive GC-MS analyses proved a function as multi-product synthase and, depending on the reaction conditions, cubebol, β-copaene, δ-cadinene, and germacrene D were detected as the major products of CubA. In addition, mature P. cubensis carpophores were analysed chromatographically which led to the detection of β-copaene and δ-cadinene. Enzymes closely related to CubA are encoded in the genomes of various Psilocybe species. Therefore, our results provide insight into the metabolic capacity of the entire genus.     

A Concept for an Integrated Process Scheme for By-Products from Rice and Sugarcane Processing

The material use of agricultural by-products helps to not only reduce severe environmental problems, but also permits the production of value-added products at the same time. Extensive experiments produced and tested different erosion control blankets, adsorbents, and soil improvers from rice straw, rice husks, and bagasse. This led to the creation of an integrated process scheme, which permits side streams from one branch to be reused in other process branches. This integrated process scheme is presented that is demonstrated and supported by the material balance numbers based on the test results.     

Synthesis and characterization of ABA-triblock copolymers with poly(ethylene glycol) segments and LC-segments

This paper describes the synthesis of ABA-triblock copolymers with poly(ethylene glycol) A-blocks and a liquid crystalline polyester B-block. Three block copolymer series are presented with different block length of A- and B-blocks. The block copolymers show thermotropic liquid crystalline behavior up to a content of poly(ethylene glycol) segments of 50 wt%. Depending on their composition and chain length, the block copolymers are microphase separated or non-microphase separated. In the microphase separated block copolymers the poly(ethylene glycol) segments are able to crystallize. The degree of crystallinity and the spherulite diameter is strongly influenced by the length of the poly(ethylene glycol) segment itself as well as by the length of the incorporated polyester segment. Received: 19 December 1997/Revised version: 22 December 1997/Accepted: 22 December 1997     

Cell‐Free Protein Synthesis: Pros and Cons of Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Systems

From its start as a small‐scale in vitro system to study fundamental translation processes, cell‐free protein synthesis quickly rose to become a potent platform for the high‐yield production of proteins. In contrast to classical in vivo protein expression, cell‐free systems do not need time‐consuming cloning steps, and the open nature provides easy manipulation of reaction conditions as well as high‐throughput potential. Especially for the synthesis of difficult to express proteins, such as toxic and transmembrane proteins, cell‐free systems are of enormous interest. The modification of the genetic code to incorporate non‐canonical amino acids into the target protein in particular provides enormous potential in biotechnology and pharmaceutical research and is in the focus of many cell‐free projects. Many sophisticated cell‐free systems for manifold applications have been established. This review describes the recent advances in cell‐free protein synthesis and details the expanding applications in this field.     

Round-Trip Prototyping Based on Integrated Functional and User Interface Requirements Specifications

Requirements engineering in the new millennium is facing an increasing diversity of computerised devices comprising an increasing diversity of interaction styles for an increasing diversity of user groups. Thus the incorporation of user interface requirements into software requirements specifications becomes more and more mandatory. Validating these requirements specifications with hand-made, throw-away prototypes is not only expensive, but also bears the danger that validation results are not accurately fed back into the requirements specification. In this paper, we propose an enhancement of the requirements specification method SCORES for an explicit capturing of user interface requirements. The advantages of the approach are threefold. First, the user interface requirements specification is UML-compliant and integrated into the functional requirements specification. Second, prototypes for validation purposes can semi-automatically be generated. Third, the model-based generation of prototypes allows for ‘round-trip prototyping’ such that manual changes of the prototype during the validation process are automatically fed back into the requirements specification.