Stabilized two-dimensional linewidth enhancement in direct laser lithography

In order to realize a small linewidth two-dimensional direct laser lithographic technique with enhanced resolution, we propose two apparatuses. The first one uses a polarizing beam splitter to separate a source beam into two output beams, and these two beams overlap on the focal point and make a narrow interferogram that sharpens the focused beam spot. The direction of the sharpened beam spot is controlled by a tilting mirror. This scheme is fast and easy to align. However, one serious problem, the interferogram shifting phenomenon, was observed during a long term fabrication. To obtain long term stability, we propose the second scheme that employs a calcite wave plate module attached to a motorized rotary motor. In this setup, the direction of the focused beam spot is controlled by the rotary motor.     

Modeling of solid-state electrotransport for purification of gadolinium

Modeling of solid state electrotransport (SSE) was formulated to understand the transport phenomena of the interstitial impurities in gadolinium, are of the rare earth metals. Through numerical analysis, the optimum conditions for SSE are theoretically predicted. The processing parameters such as pressure, temperature, and reaction time can be determined to attain maximum effectiveness. The concentration profiles of interstitial impurities such as oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon were calculated based on this model. The electromigration of oxygen is faster than nitrogen and carbon because of its greater diffusivity and mobility. When the reaction time was 10⁵ seconds, the oxygen and nitrogen were refined up to 92%–95% at 10⁻⁵Pa while carbon was refined to 98% at 10⁻⁶Pa. The increase in temperature gives rise to a shorter reaction time, but extremely low pressure is required.     

Effects of prestrain,rate of prestrain,and temperature on the stress-relaxation behavior of eutectic Sn-3.5Ag solder joints

Stress-relaxation studies on eutectic Sn-Ag solder (Sn-3.5Ag in wt.%) joints were carried out at various temperatures after imposing different amounts and rates of simple shear strain. Stress-relaxation parameters were evaluated by subjecting geometrically realistic solder joints with a nominal joint thickness of ∼100 μm and a 1 mm × 1 mm solder-joint area. The peak shear stress during preloading and residual shear stress resulting from stress relaxation were higher at the low-temperature extremes than those at high-temperature extremes. Also, those values increased with increasing simple shear strain and the rate of simple shear strain imposed prior to the stress-relaxation events. The relaxation stress is insensitive to simple shear strain at 150°C, but at lower temperatures, a faster rate of simple shear strain causes a higher relaxed-stress value. The resulting deformation structures observed from the solder-joint side surfaces were also strongly affected by these parameters. At high temperature, grain-boundary sliding effects were commonly observed. At low temperature, intense shear bands dominated, and no grain-boundary sliding effects were observed.     

Fast evaluation of an integral occurring in digital filteringapplications

A fast evaluation procedure for the integral I_m,n,p=1/2πj∯_|z|=1H_m,n(z)H _m,n(z^-1)z^p-1dz for arbitrary nonnegative integer-valued m, n, and p, is presented, where H_m,n (z)=Σ_k=0^mb_m,kz^-k /Σ_l=0ⁿa_n,lz^-1,a _n,0≠0 is the transfer function of an arbitrary digital filter. Evaluation of this integral frequently appears in control, communication, and digital filtering. A notable result is the one-term recursion on p, for arbitrary but fixed nonnegative integers m and n. The computational complexity is analyzed, and two illustrative examples demonstrate some of the advantages of this approach     

A study on the nonlinear normal mode vibration using adelphic integral

Nonlinear normal mode (NNM) vibration, in a nonlinear dual mass Hamiltonian system, which has 6^th order homogeneous polynomial as a nonlinear term, is studied in this paper. The existence, bifurcation, and the orbital stability of periodic motions are to be studied in the phase space. In order to find the analytic expression of the invariant curves in the Poincare Map, which is a mapping of a phase trajectory onto 2 dimensional surface in 4 dimensional phase space, Whittaker’s Adelphic Integral, instead of the direct integration of the equations of motion or the Birkhoff-Gustavson (B-G) canonical transformation, is derived for small value of energy. It is revealed that the integral of motion by Adelphic Integral is essentially consistent with the one obtained from the B-G transformation method. The resulting expression of the invariant curves can be used for analyzing the behavior of NNM vibration in the Poincare Map.     

Optical backplane system using waveguide-embedded PCBs and optical slots

As discussed in this paper, a practical optical backplane system was demonstrated, using a waveguide-embedded optical backplane board, processing boards, and optical slots for board-to-board interconnection. A metal optical bench was used as a packaging die for the optical devices and the integrated circuit chips in both the transmitter and the receiver processing boards. The polymer waveguide was produced by means of a hot-embossing technique and was then embedded following a conventional lamination processes. The average propagation loss of these waveguides was approximately 0.1 dB/cm at 850 nm. The dimension and optical properties of the waveguide in an optical backplane board were unchanged after lamination. As connection components between transmitter/receiver processing boards and an optical backplane board, optical slots were used for easy and repeatable insertion and extraction of the boards with a micrometer-scale precision. A 1/spl times/4 850-nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser array was used with 2 dBm of output power for the transmitter and a p-i-n photodiode array for the receiver. This paper successfully demonstrates 8 Gb/s of data transmission between the transmitter processing board and the optical backplane board.     

Spray effect on the behavior of hydrogen during severe accidents by a loss-of-coolant in the APR1400 containment

In order to analyze the effects of the spray activation on the behavior of steam and hydrogen which are produced in the reactor vessel and released into the containment of the APR1400 nuclear power plant during hypothetical severe loss-of-coolant accidents (LOCA), the 3-dimensional CFD code GASFLOW was used. For the two-phase flow with a gas mixture and spray droplets, GASFLOW solves a homogeneous two-phase model which was validated in this study by simulating one of the TOSQAN experiments. The results of the GASFLOW analyses for the LOCAs in the APR1400 show that the spray system can affect the hydrogen distributions in the containment by condensing the steam and it is important to control the spray system carefully during an accident from a hydrogen safety aspect.     

Evaluation of the control performance of hydronic radiant heating systems based on the emulation using hardware-in-the-loop simulation

This study presents an emulation method to evaluate the control performance of a hydronic radiant heating system. Since heat output in the system is dependent on the pressure loss and flow rate in the hydronic network, the interaction between thermal and hydronic models needs to be considered in the evaluation of the control performance. For this reason, many studies apply an integrated simulation to the evaluation; however, the analysis of the hydronic network sometimes leads to unreliable results due to the improper initial values for algebraic loops or the lack of modeling information on the hydronic components. In order to deal with this problem, this study suggests an emulation method, where the hydronic network is replaced by real hardware and the building physics is analyzed by a simulation. In the emulation, the pressure loss and flow rate in the hydronic network were represented by replacing the real pipe with equivalent hydraulic resistance. In addition, by using real control systems that connect the hydronic network and building simulation, the interaction between building physics and hydronic network could be considered in the evaluation. Based on the proposed emulation method, the performance of several control strategies was evaluated in terms of the accuracy and the rise time. The result shows that the individual control needs to be combined with hydronic balancing for more accurate control. Hydronic control devices such as a flow limit valve and a pressure differential control valve also proved to be helpful to the improvement of the control performance.     

Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia: pathophysiology

We have used computer modeling of insulin 3-D structure and experimental data about action of site point mutation on insulin activity to design functionally important domain with signaling activity and synthesized peptide than might be sufficient for the binding to insulin receptor. The designed and synthesized peptide consist of ten residues and may be obtained in two forms: oxidized and reduced (with or without disulfide bond). The synthesized decapeptide peptide represents functionally important site for binding to the insulin receptor. Amino acid residues at position 1-8 correlate with B-chain of insulin at position (B19-B26). Residues at position 9.10 correlate with A-chain at position A-10-A21. This peptide was tested with cell culture L-929 (glucose uptake) in comparison with bioactive commercial peptide (R-G-FF) and insulin. It was shown that synthesized peptide exhibit biological activity at molar concentration 0.01-1 mkM. Our results successfully demonstrate the synthetic insulin fragment have insulin-like biological activity.     

Three-dimensional structure of the plant photosystem II reaction centre at 8 A resolution

Photosystem II is a multisubunit enzyme complex involved in plant photosynthesis. It uses solar energy to catalyse the breakdown of water to reducing equivalents and molecular oxygen. Native photosystem II comprises more than 25 different subunits, and has a relative molecular mass of more than 600K. Here we report the three-dimensional structure of a photosystem II subcomplex, containing the proteins D1, D2, CP47 and cytochrome b-559, determined by electron crystallography. This CP47 reaction centre, which has a relative molecular mass of 160K, can perform light-mediated energy and electron-transfer reactions but is unable to oxidize water. The complex contains 23 transmembrane alpha-helices, of which 16 have been assigned to the D1, D2 and CP47 proteins. The arrangement of these helices is remarkably similar to that of the helices in the reaction centres of purple bacteria and of plant photosystem I, indicating a common evolutionary origin for these assemblies. The map suggests that redox cofactors in the D1-D2 complex are located in positions analogous to those in the bacterial reaction centre, but the distance between the chlorophylls corresponding to the bacterial 'special pair' is significantly larger.