Improved bias stress stability of In–Ga–Zn–O thin film transistors by UV–ozone treatments of channel/dielectric interfaces

Possibility of improving the bias stress stability of amorphous In–Ga–Zn–O thin film transistors (a-IGZO TFTs) was explored by irradiating the channel/dielectric interface with ultraviolet (UV) light during the device fabrication process. The UV treatment of the channel/dielectric interface did not cause significant changes in the device performance itself. However, when the TFTs were tested under prolonged gate bias stress, the device with longest UV treatment showed the smallest time dependence of threshold voltage shift. This accompanied the smallest changes in the field effect mobility and subthreshold swing with extended bias stress. Such improvements in bias stress stability are attributed to the modification of the channel/dielectric interface due to the UV-generated ozone that in turn decreased the interface trap density and structurally modified the interface region on the dielectric side to prevent the redistribution of the trapped charges.     

Comparison of structural,spectral and magnetic properties of NiO nanofibers obtained by sol–gel electrospinning from two different polymeric binders

NiO is a p-type semiconductor with wide band gap energy. In this study, nickel oxide nanofibers were fabricated by sol–gel electrospinning followed by high temperature calcination, using two sacrificial polymeric binders. Poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) (PEtOx) in water and styrene-acrylonitrile random copolymer (SAN) in N,N- dimethylformamide (DMF) along with nickel (II) acetate tetrahydrate (NATH), as metal oxide precursor, were the two distinct polymeric systems used in this study. The morphological and structural properties of NiO fibers obtained from the aforementioned systems were compared with each other. The degradation behavior of the sacrificial polymeric binder imparted a significant effect on the properties of the obtained NiO fibers. The grain sizes and the activation energies for grain growth of NiO fibers from two systems were different. The non-stoichiometric NiO fibers obtained from the SAN/NATH system had a better ferromagnetic behavior as compared with that produced from the PEtOx/NATH system. This non-stoichiometry made a difference also in the optical band gap energies of the NiO nanofibers.     

Effect of annealing on the structural and optical properties of laser ablated nanostructured barium tungstate thin films

High quality BaWO₄ thin films are successfully deposited on quartz substrate for a duration of 30 min using pulsed laser ablation technique and using a laser radiation of wavelength 355 nm and the effect of thermal annealing on the structural and optical properties is studied by using techniques like X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy, micro-Raman, FTIR and UV–visible spectroscopy. All the films show monoclinic crystalline structure with (2 0 2) plane as the preferred orientation of crystal growth. From the XRD analysis it is found that the optimum annealing temperature for better crystallization of the BaWO₄ film is 700 °C and there is no phase change observed with annealing temperature. The presence of the characteristic bands for the BaWO₄ in the Raman spectra of the films suggests the formation of BaWO₄ crystalline phase in all the films. SEM and AFM analyses show that as the annealing temperature increases the connectivity between individual grains increases and shows an ordered packing. The geometrical optimization and energy calculation of the title compound were done using the Gaussian 09 software package and the calculations were carried out using the CAM-B3LYP functional combined with standard Lanl2Dz basis set. The thickness of the films was calculated using lateral SEM images and also from optical transmission spectral data using PUMA software.     

A Chlorotoxin-Directed Diselenide-Bridged Tumor-Homing Persistent Luminescence Nanoprobes Mediating Inhibition of Oxidative Phosphorylation for Long-Term Near-Infrared Imaging and Therapy of Glioblastoma

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most prevailing malignant primary brain tumor, and the precise diagnosis of GBM has always been a challenge. Gboxin is a recently developed drug efficiently inhibiting the oxidative phosphorylation in GBM cells, and both the chlorotoxin (CLTX) and GBM cell membrane coating are capable of GBM targeting and tumor homing. Herein, the near-infrared (NIR) persistent luminescence (PL) nanoparticle, CUDZG, with a dual function of imaging and therapy is developed based on ZnGa₂O₄:Cr³⁺,Sn⁴⁺. CUDZG exhibits superior rechargeable NIR PL for at least 48 h with excellent tissue penetration in vivo, which enables the longstanding autofluorescence-free imaging of the orthotopic GBM. The tumor growth of both the orthotropic and subcutaneous GBM-bearing mice are significantly suppressed by CUDZG. This is the first-time report of 1) the integration of CLTX and cell membrane coating for drug delivery, 2) diselenide-based trigger release for anti-GBM therapy, and 3) the systemic delivery of Gboxin. This study also offers an example of the highly promising blood-brain penetrable drug carriers for precise diagnosis and therapy of central nervous system diseases.     

Optimizing the Oxygen-Catalytic Performance of Zn–Mn–Co Spinel by Regulating the Bond Competition at Octahedral Sites

By using the more electro-negative Mn³⁺ ion to partially replace Co³⁺ at the octahedral site of spinel ZnCo₂O₄, i.e., forming ternary Zn–Mn–Co spinel oxide, the electrocatalytic oxygen reduction/evolution activity is found to be significantly increased. Considering the physical characterization and theoretical calculations, it demonstrated that the bond competition played a key role in regulating the cobalt valence state and the electrocatalytic activity. The partial replacement of octahedral-site-occupied Co³⁺ by Mn³⁺ can effectively modulate the adjacent Co–O bond and induce the Jahn–Teller effect, thus changing the originally stable crystal structure and optimizing the binding strength between the active center and reaction intermediates. Certainly, the Mn-substituted ZnMn_1.4Co_0.6O₄/NCNTs exhibit higher electrocatalytic oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity than that of ZnCo₂O₄/NCNTs and ZnMn₂O₄/NCNTs, supporting that the Co–O bond covalency determines the ORR activity of spinel ZnCo₂O₄. This study offers the competition between adjacent Co–O and Mn–O bonds via the B_Oh–O–B_Oh edge-sharing geometry. The ion substitution at octahedral sites by less electronegative cations can be a new and effective way to improve the electrocatalytic performance of cobalt-based spinel oxides.     

Structural effect on controllable resistive memory switching in donor–acceptor polymer systems

Controllable bistable electrical conductivity switching behavior and resistive memory effects have been demonstrated in Al/polymer/indium-tin oxide (ITO) sandwich structure devices, constructed from non-conjugated vinyl copolymers of PTPA_nOXD_m with pendant donor–acceptor chromophores. The observed electrical bistability can be attributed to the field-induced intra- and intermolecular charge transfer interaction between triphenylamine electron donor (D) and oxadiazole electron acceptor (A) entities, and is highly dependent on the chemical structure of the copolymers. The vinyl copolymers showed different memory behaviors, which depended on the loading of D/A ratios. The polymers containing only donor or acceptor moieties showed as insulators, the polymers containing both donor and acceptor moieties showed as WORM, flash and DRAM as D/A ratio increased. The structural effect on the physicochemical and electronic properties of the PTPA_nOXD_m copolymers, viz surface morphology, thermal stability, optical absorbance and photoluminescence, and molecular orbital energy levels, were investigated systematically to study the factors that influence the memory characteristics of the devices.     

A novel PWM control for a bi-directional full-bridge DC–DC converter with smooth conversion mode transitions

A novel CMOS integrated pulse-width modulation (PWM) control circuit allowing smooth transitions between conversion modes in full-bridge based bi-directional DC–DC converters operating at high switching frequencies is presented. The novel PWM control circuit is able to drive full-bridge based DC–DC converters performing step-down (i.e. buck) and step-up (i.e. boost) voltage conversion in both directions, thus allowing charging and discharging of the batteries in mobile systems. It provides smooth transitions between buck, buck-boost and boost modes. Additionally, the novel PWM control loop circuit uses a symmetrical triangular carrier, which overcomes the necessity of using an output phasing circuit previously required in PWM controllers based on sawtooth oscillators. The novel PWM control also enables to build bi-directional DC–DC converters operating at high switching frequencies (i.e. up to 10?MHz and above). Finally, the proposed PWM control circuit also allows the use of an average lossless inductor-current sensor for sensing the average load current even at very high switching frequencies. In this article, the proposed PWM control circuit is modelled and the integrated CMOS schematic is given. The corresponding theory is analysed and presented in detail. The circuit simulations realised in the Cadence Spectre software with a commercially available 0.18?µm mixed-signal CMOS technology from UMC are shown. The PWM control circuit was implemented in a monolithic integrated bi-directional CMOS DC–DC converter ASIC prototype. The fabricated prototype was tested experimentally and has shown performances in accordance with the theory.     

A customized low-rank prior model for structured cartoon–texture image decomposition

The mathematical characterization of the texture component plays an instrumental role in image decomposition. In this paper, we are concerned with a low-rank texture prior based cartoon–texture image decomposition model, which utilizes a total variation norm and a global nuclear norm to characterize the cartoon and texture components, respectively. It is promising that our decomposition model is not only extremely simple, but also works perfectly for globally well-patterned images in the sense that the model can recover cleaner texture (or details) than the other novel models. Moreover, such a model can be easily reformulated as a separable convex optimization problem, thereby enjoying a splitting nature so that we can employ a partially parallel splitting method (PPSM) to solve it efficiently. A series of numerical experiments on image restoration demonstrate that PPSM can recover slightly higher quality images than some existing algorithms in terms of taking less iterations or computing time in many cases.     

Toward High-Performance Dihydrophenazine-Based Conjugated Microporous Polymer Cathodes for Dual-Ion Batteries through Donor–Acceptor Structural Design

Recent studies have demonstrated that dihydrophenazine (Pz) with high redox-reversibility and high theoretical capacity is an attractive building block to construct p-type polymer cathodes for dual-ion batteries. However, most reported Pz-based polymer cathodes to date still suffer from low redox activity, slow kinetics, and short cycling life. Herein, a donor–acceptor (D–A) Pz-based conjugated microporous polymer (TzPz) cathode is constructed by integrating the electron-donating Pz unit and the electron-withdrawing 2,4,6-triphenyl-1,3,5-triazine (Tz) unit into a polymer chain. The D–A type structure enhances the polymer conjugation degree and decreases the band gap of TzPz, facilitating electron transportation along the polymer skeletons. Therefore the TzPz cathode for dual-ion battery shows a high reversible capacity of 192 mAh g⁻¹ at 0.2 A g⁻¹ with excellent rate performance (108 mAh g⁻¹ at 30 A g⁻¹), which is much higher than that of its counterpart polymer BzPz produced from 1,3,5-triphenylbenzene (Bz) and Pz (148 and 44 mAh g⁻¹ at 0.2 and 10 A g⁻¹, respectively). More importantly, the TzPz cathode also shows a long and stable cyclability of more than 10 000 cycles. These results demonstrate that the D–A structural design is an efficient strategy for developing high-performance polymer cathodes for dual-ion batteries.     

Unraveling the Significance of Li+/e−/O2 Phase Boundaries with a 3D-Patterned Cu Electrode for Li–O2 Batteries

The reaction kinetics at a triple-phase boundary (TPB) involving Li⁺, e⁻, and O₂ dominate their electrochemical performances in Li–O₂ batteries. Early studies on catalytic activities at Li⁺/e⁻/O₂ interfaces have enabled great progress in energy efficiency; however, localized TPBs within the cathode hamper innovations in battery performance toward commercialization. Here, the effects of homogenized TPBs on the reaction kinetics in air cathodes with structurally designed pore networks in terms of pore size, interconnectivity, and orderliness are explored. The diffusion fluxes of reactants are visualized by modeling, and the simulated map reveals evenly distributed reaction areas within the periodic open structure. The 3D air cathode provides highly active, homogeneous TPBs over a real electrode scale, thus simultaneously achieving large discharge capacity, unprecedented energy efficiency, and long cyclability via mechanical/electrochemical stress relaxation. Homogeneous TPBs by cathode structural engineering provide a new strategy for improving the reaction kinetics beyond controlling the intrinsic properties of the materials.