Fabrication of CdSe‐Nanofibers with Potential for Biomedical Applications

The design and synthesis of nanostructured functional hybrid biomaterials are essential for the next generation of advanced diagnostics and the treatment of disease. A simple route to fabricate semiconductor nanofibers by self‐assembled, elastin‐like polymer (ELP)‐templated semiconductor nanoparticles is reported. Core–shell nanostructures of CdSe nanoparticles with a shell of ELPs are used as building blocks to fabricate functional one‐dimensional (1D) nanostructures. The CdSe particles are generated in situ within the ELP matrix at room temperature. The ELP controls the size and the size‐distribution of the CdSe nanoparticles in an aqueous medium and simultaneously directs the self‐assembly of core–shell building blocks into fibril architectures. It was found that the self‐assembly of core–shell building blocks into nanofibers is strongly dependent on the pH value of the medium. Results of cytotoxicity and antiproliferation of the CdSe‐ELP nanofibers demonstrate that the CdSe‐ELP does not exhibit any toxicity towards B14 cells. Moreover, these are found to be markedly capable of crossing the cell membrane of B14. In contrast, unmodified CdSe nanoparticles with ELPs cause a strong toxic response and reduction in the cell proliferation. This concept is valid for the fabrication of a variety of metallic and semiconductor 1D‐architectures. Therefore, it is believed that these could be used not only for biomedical purposes but for application in a wide range of advanced miniaturized devices.     

Computing the Detection Probability for Small Delay Defects of Nanometer ICs

Interconnect imperfections have become an important issue in modern nanometer technologies. Some of them cause Small Delay Defects (SDDs) which are difficult to detect. Those SDDs not detected during testing may pose a reliability problem. Furthermore, nanometer issues (e.g. process variations, spatial correlations) represent important challenges for traditional delay test methods. In this paper, a methodology to compute the Detection Probability (DP) of resistive open and bridge defects using a statistical timing framework that takes into account process variations and other nanometer issues is proposed. The DP gives the sensitivity of the circuit performance to a given resistance range of the defect. The efficiency issue when analyzing large circuits is alleviated using stratified sampling techniques to reduce the space of possible analyzed defect locations This methodology is applied to some ISCAS benchmark circuits. The obtained results show the feasibility of the proposed methodology. Measures can be taken for those circuits presenting non-acceptable DP in order to improve the test quality.     

改进缺陷,套刻和聚焦性能的第五世代浸没式曝光系统

论述了第五世代双扫描平台浸液式扫描曝光机的性能和进展。表明了在高速扫描状态下有生产价值的套刻和聚焦性能的实现。浸液式设备更多的关键部分与缺陷有关,而且该机的改进是通过有生产价值的缺陷水平方面来体现的。为了保持这种缺陷水平的改进效果,需要在圆片应用中进行专门稳定的测量。特加是边缘空泡除去(EBR)设计和圆片斜面良流线性是很重要的。     

Dye‐Doped Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxane (POSS)‐Modified Polymeric Matrices for Highly Efficient and Photostable Solid‐State Lasers

Here, the design, synthesis, and characterization of laser nanomaterials based on dye‐doped methyl methacrylate (MMA) crosslinked with octa(propyl‐methacrylate) polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (8MMAPOSS) is reported in relation to their composition and structure. The influence of the silicon content on the laser action of the dye pyrromethene 567 (PM567) is analyzed in a systematic way by increasing the weight proportion of POSS from 1 to 50%. The influence of the inorganic network structure is studied by replacing the 8MMAPOSS comonomer by both the monofunctionalized heptaisobutyl‐methacryl‐POSS (1MMAPOSS), which defines the nanostructured linear network with the POSS cages appearing as pendant groups of the polymeric chains, and also by a new 8‐hydrogenated POSS incorporated as additive to the polymeric matrices. The new materials exhibit enhanced thermal, optical, and mechanical properties with respect to the pure organic polymers. The organization of the molecular units in these nanomaterials is studied through a structural analysis by solid‐state NMR. The domain size of the dispersed phase assures a homogeneous distribution of POSS into the polymer, thus, a continuous phase corresponding to the organic matrix incorporates these nanometer‐sized POSS crosslinkers at a molecular level, in agreement with the transparency of the samples. The silicon–oxygen core framework has to be covalently bonded into the polymer backbone instead of being a simple additive and both the silica content and crosslinked degree exhibit a critical influence on the laser action.     

Very Large Photoconduction Enhancement Upon Self‐Assembly of a New Triindole Derivative in Solution‐Processed Films

A new carbazole‐related small molecule exhibiting self‐assembly into ordered nanostructures in solution‐processed cast films has been synthesized and its charge‐photogeneration and ‐transport properties have been investigated. Large photoconductivity was measured in the amorphous state while an enormous improvement in the photoconduction properties was observed when the molecules spontaneously organized. Photocurrents increased upon self‐assembly by up to four orders of magnitude, mostly due to the drastic enhancement of the charge photogeneration. A greatly favorable arrangement of the aromatic cores in the resulting nanostructures, which were characterized by X‐ray analysis, may explain these improvements. Photocurrents of mA cm^?2, on/off ratios of 10⁴ and quantum efficiencies of unity at low field and light intensity, which are among the best values reported to date, along with the simplicity of fabrication, give this readily‐available organic system great potential for use in plastic optoelectronic devices.     

Affine-permutation invariance of 2-D shapes.

Shapes provide a rich set of clues on the identity and topological properties of an object. In many imaging environments, however, the same object appears to have different shapes due to distortions such as translation, rotation, reflection, scaling, or skewing. Further, the order by which the object's feature points are scanned changes, i.e., the order of the pixels may be permuted. Relating two-dimensional shapes of the same object distorted by different affine and permutation transformations is a challenge. We introduce a shape invariant that we refer to as the intrinsic shape of an object and describe an algorithm, BLAISER, to recover it. The intrinsic shape is invariant to affine-permutation distortions. It is a uniquely defined representative of the equivalence class of all affine-permutation distortions of the same object. BLAISER computes the intrinsic shape from any arbitrarily affine-permutation distorted image of the object, without prior knowledge regarding the distortions or the undistorted shape of the object. The critical step of BLAISER is the determination of the shape orientation and we provide a detailed discussion on this topic. The operations of BLAISER are based on low-order moments of the input shape and, thus, robust to error and noise. Examples illustrate the performance of the algorithm.     

MnO2-Based Electrochemical Supercapacitors on Flexible Carbon Substrates

Manganese dioxide films were grown on large area flexible carbon aerogel substrates. Characterization by x-ray diffraction confirmed α-MnO₂ growth. Three types of films were compared as a function of hexamethylenetetramine (HMTA) concentration during growth. The highest concentration of HM TA produced MnO₂ flower-like films, as observed by scanning electron microscopy, whose thickness and surface coverage lead to both a higher specific capacitance and higher series resistance. Specific capacitance was measured to be 64 F/g using a galvanostatic setup, compared to the 47 F/g-specific capacitance of the carbon aerogel substrate. Such supercapacitor devices can be fabricated on large area sheets of carbon aerogel to achieve high total capacitance.     

A Tutorial on Multiplierless Design of FIR Filters: Algorithms and Architectures

Finite impulse response (FIR) filtering is a ubiquitous operation in digital signal processing systems and is generally implemented in full custom circuits due to high-speed and low-power design requirements. The complexity of an FIR filter is dominated by the multiplication of a large number of filter coefficients by the filter input or its time-shifted versions. Over the years, many high-level synthesis algorithms and filter architectures have been introduced in order to design FIR filters efficiently. This article reviews how constant multiplications can be designed using shifts and adders/subtractors that are maximally shared through a high-level synthesis algorithm based on some optimization criteria. It also presents different forms of FIR filters, namely, direct, transposed, and hybrid and shows how constant multiplications in each filter form can be realized under a shift-adds architecture. More importantly, it explores the impact of the multiplierless realization of each filter form on area, delay, and power dissipation of both custom (ASIC) and reconfigurable (FPGA) circuits by carrying out experiments with different bitwidths of filter input, design libraries, reconfigurable target devices, and optimization criteria in high-level synthesis algorithms.