DSC study on simultaneous interpenetrating polymer network formation of epoxy resin and unsaturated polyester

A kinetic study on simultaneous interpenetrating polymer network formation of epoxy resin based on diglycidyl ether of Bisphenol A (DGEBA) and unsaturated polyester (UP) was performed by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Isothermal DSC characterizations of neat resins and their mixture (in a weight ratio of 50/50) were performed at different temperatures. Dynamic DSC characterization of the systems were performed at three different heating rates. A lower total heat of reaction developed during simultaneous polymerization in dynamic DSC tests was found, compared to the total heats developed during pure resins network formation. This phenomenon can be interpreted as an effect of network interlock that could not be compensated for completely by an increase in curing temperature. The kinetics of the reactions was described by empirical models. The DGEBA, in a 50/50 UP/DGEBA blend, indicated a higher rate constant than the pure DGEBA. The obtained results suggests that the hydroxyl end group of UP in the blend provided a favorably catalytic environment for the DGEBA cure. The results are in good agreement with the literature data. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 83: 2689–2698, 2002     

Object-oriented domain specific compilers for programming FPGAs

Simplifying the programming models is paramount to the success of reconfigurable computing with field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). This paper presents a methodology to combine true object-oriented design of the compiler/CAD tool with an object-oriented hardware design methodology in C++. The resulting system provides all the benefits of object-oriented design to the compiler/CAD tool designer and to the hardware designer/programmer. The two examples for domain-specific compilers presented are BSAT and StReAm. Each domain-specific compiler is targeted at a very specific application domain, such as applications that accelerate Boolean satisfiability problems with BSAT, and applications which lend themselves for implementation as a stream architecture with StReAm. The key benefit of the presented domain specific compilers is a reduction of design time by orders of magnitude while keeping the optimal performance of hand-designed circuits     

Investigation of the Metal–Oxide Buried Interfacial Zone with Linear Sweep Voltammetry

Interest in copper as a technologically important material needs to be met with greater understanding of the fundamental chemical reactions of copper. In particular, there is still a lack of universal agreement on the oxidation process of bulk copper and thin copper films. In this study, the authors demonstrate the use of linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) to study buried structures in the oxide layers on copper. In particular, LSV can be used to detect reactions at buried interfaces. It is also emphasized that surface scientists should recognize Cu₃O₂ and the decomposition of copper oxides at the metal–oxide interface in new studies on copper oxidation and in interpreting already existing copper oxidation data. The two key parameters that drive oxide growth and decomposition are demonstrated to be oxygen activity and the free energies of formation of the oxides (per mole of oxide ion). The complex nature of the oxidation of copper, as well as other metals and alloys, can be described qualitatively using the Modified Cabrera–Mott (C–M) Model. Surface studies of oxidation of metals and alloys need to be supported and complemented by other techniques such as chemical or electrochemical methods.     

Parameterized High Throughput Function Evaluation for FPGAs

This paper presents parameterized module-generators for pipelined function evaluation using lookup tables, adders, shifters, multipliers, and dividers. We discuss trade-offs involved between (1) full-lookup tables, (2) bipartite (lookup-add) units, (3) lookup-multiply units, (4) shift-and-add based CORDIC units, and (5) rational approximation. Our treatment mainly focuses on explaining method (3), and briefly covers the background of the other methods. For lookup-multiply units, we provide equations for estimating approximation errors and rounding errors which are used to parameterize the hardware units. The resources and performance of the resulting design can be estimated given the input parameters. A selection of the compared methods are implemented as part of the current PAM-Blox module generation environment. An example shows that the lookup-multiply unit produces competitive designs with data widths up to 20 bits when compared with shift-and-add based CORDIC units. Additionally, the lookup-multiply method or rational approximation can produce efficient designs for larger data widths when evaluating functions not supported by CORDIC.     

Designing a Posture Analysis System with Hardware Implementation

Posture analysis is an active research area in computer vision for applications such as home care and security monitoring. This paper describes the design of a system for posture analysis with hardware acceleration, addressing the following four aspects: (a) a design workflow for posture analysis based on radial shape and projection histogram representations; (b) the implementation of different architectures based on a high-level hardware design approach with support for automating transformations to improve parallelism and resource optimisation; (c) accuracy evaluation of the proposed posture analysis system, and (d) performance evaluation for the derived designs. One of the designs, which targets a Xilinx XC2V6000 FPGA at 90.2 MHz, is able to perform posture analysis at a rate of 1,164 frames per second with a frame size of 320 by 240 pixels. It represents 3.5 times speedup over optimised software running on a 2.4 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3700+ computer. The frame rate is well above that of real-time video, which enables the sharing of the FPGA among multiple video sources.

Surface mass spectrometry of biotinylated self-assembled monolayers

Biotin and biotinylated self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on gold have been investigated using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, direct laser desorption, laser desorption with 193 nm photoionization of ion- and laser-desorbed species, and laser desorption with vacuum ultraviolet (VUV, 118 nm) photoionization. Our results indicate that direct laser desorption and laser desorption combined with 193 nm multiphoton ionization can detect a chromophoric molecule like biotin that is covalently bound to a SAM. However, secondary ion mass spectra were dominated by fragmentation, and ion desorption/193 nm photoionization detected no species related to biotin. The dominant features of the laser desorption/VUV mass spectra were neat and Au-complexed dimers of intact and fragmented biotinylated SAM molecules. Multiphoton and single-photon ionization of laser-desorbed neutrals from biotinylated SAMs both led to the production of ions useful for chemical analysis of the monolayer. Multiphoton ionization with ultraviolet radiation was experimentally less challenging but required a chromophore for ionization and resulted in significant fragmentation of the adsorbate. Single-photon ionization with VUV radiation was experimentally more challenging but did not require a chromophore and led to less fragmentation. X-ray photoelectron spectra indicated that the biotinylated SAM formed a disordered, 40-60 ? thick monolayer on Au. Additionally, projection photolithography with a Schwarzschild microscope was used to pattern the biotinylated SAM surface and laser desorption/photoionization was used to detect biotinylated adsorbates from the ～10 μm sized pattern.     

Application of Reconfigurable CORDIC Architectures

Reconfiguration enables the adaption of Coordinate Rotation DIgital Computer (CORDIC) units to the specific needs of sets of applications, hence creating application specific CORDIC-style implementations. Reconfiguration can be implemented at a high level, taking the entire CORDIC unit as a basic cell (CORDIC-cells) implemented in VLSI, or at a low level such as Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). We suggest a design methodology and analyze area/time results for coarse (VLSI) and fine-grain (FPGA) reconfigurable CORDIC units. For FPGAs we implement CORDIC units in Verilog HDL and our object-oriented design environment, PAM-Blox. For CORDIC-cells, multiple reconfigurable CORDIC modules are synthesized with state-of-the-art CAD tools. At the algorithm level we present a case study combining multiple CORDICs based on a geometrical interpretation of a normalized ladder algorithm for adaptive filtering to reduce latency and area of a fully pipelined CORDIC implementation. Ultimately, the goal is to create automatic tools to map applications directly to reconfigurable high-level arithmetic units such as CORDICs.     

Efficiency of polymer fractionation—A review

With respect to molecular masses, polymers are polydispersive. Since many of their properties depend on the distribution of molecular masses, to study this correlation it is necessary to have samples of narrow molecular mass distribution or samples with accurately defined distribution. In spite of the developmental progress of fast instrumental methods (analytical and preparative gel chromatography) used to determine the molecular mass distribution curve and to obtain higher amounts of fractions of narrow molecular mass distributions, there still exists an interest in classical methods of fractionation. On the basis of a survey of monographs on polymer fractionation, numerous publications and personal experience, this review describes primarily what is an efficient fractionation. Afterwards, factors that affect fractionation efficiency according to the type of effects arc given and causes of their action are described. Conditions under which efficient fractional precipitation and fractional solution methods are applied are considered separately. At the end of the review, criteria on the basis of which fractionation efficiency is evaluated are considered in detail.     

Synthesis and characterization of organic–inorganic hybrids based on epoxy resin and 3‐glycidyloxypropyltrimethoxysilane

Organic–inorganic hybrid materials based on diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) and 3‐glycidyloxypropyltrimethoxysilane (GLYMO) were prepared, using a poly(oxypropylene) diamine Jeffamine D230 as a curing agent. Materials were studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), infrared spectroscopy, swelling in tetrahydrofurane (THF), and Soxhlet extraction in THF. A dependence of the final conversion of epoxy groups and the final degree of organic phase crosslinking on inorganic phase content was found. The inorganic phase presents a steric hindrance to full crosslinking of epoxy groups. It also immobilizes the organic chains and improves the temperature stability of hybrid materials. Products of GLYMO hydrolysis together with unreacted organic molecules lower the glass transition temperature of hybrid materials. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 92: 498–505, 2004