Rapid, sensitive procedure to determine buspirone levels in rat brains using gas chromatography with nitrogen-phosphorus detection

Reported here is a rapid, sensitive and relatively inexpensive procedure using gas chromatography with nitrogen-phosphorus detection (GC-NPD) to quantify buspirone levels in brains of rats. The analyte was directly extracted from brain homogenate with toluene after basification and then subjected to GC-NPD analysis using a capillary column. The calibration curves were linear over the range of 10 to 320 ng per 2 ml of brain homogenate, with typical r2 values >0.99. The assay was highly reproducible and gave peaks with excellent chromatographic properties.     

Low temperature‐coefficient for solar cells processed from solar‐grade silicon purified by metallurgical route

This study is dedicated to the temperature (T)‐variation of the photovoltaic performances of solar cells made from solar‐grade silicon directly purified by metallurgical route (SoG_M‐Si). Experimental results were systematically compared with those for standard electronic‐grade silicon (EG‐Si) solar cells. We showed that the conversion efficiency (η) of SoG_M‐Si cells decreases much less when T increases than the η of EG‐Si cells. This major difference is due to a strong increase with T of the short‐circuit current density (J_sc) of the SoG_M‐Si solar cells. We showed that this a priori unexpected result could be described and explained by numerical simulations, by taking into account the main particularities of SoG_M‐Si: dopant compensation, moderate minority carrier diffusion length and larger amount of boron–oxygen complexes. These results are significant since T of a solar module under illumination being generally higher than 25°C, modules made from low‐cost SoG_M‐Si cells should have performances closer to those of standard EG‐Si solar panels. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

All-optical Multiplication with the help of Semiconductor Optical Amplifier—assisted Sagnac Switch

An all-optical two 2-bit numbers multiplication with the help of Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA)—assisted Sagnac Switch is proposed and described. The paper describes the multiplication using a set of all-optical half-adder and AND gate. Because of the lack of fast, accurate, and large dynamic range analog-to-digital converter, optical implementation of the digital multiplication through analog convolution algorithm yields a slow digital multiplier. By using a set of optical half-adder and optical AND, a new optical fast digital multiplication method is proposed. The new method promises both higher processing speed and accuracy. Numerical simulation result confirming described methods and conclusion are given in this paper.     

Compositional effects on microstructure evolution and microwave properties of silver–palladium based thick film microstrips

Recent improvements in materials and processing technologies have dramatically increased the frequency range where ceramic thick film circuits can be utilized. Coupled with inherent advantages of thick film technology viz. low manufacturing cost, multilayering capability and relative insensitivity to substrate surface characteristics, such improvements have resulted in circuits that are penetrating the domain which was previously reserved to thin film technology. In view of newer developments in modern electronics, there is still ample scope for the development of new materials and processes especially in thick film technology. In thick films, conductors play a major role and silver–palladium is one of the important conductor materials in microelectronic circuits. Efforts are made in this work towards the development of suitable silver–palladium thick film conductors from the standpoint of microwave applications. The properties such as surface microstructure, sheet resistance, adhesion and microwave performance of the indigenously developed silver–palladium paste compositions is reported here. Highly porous surface structure, low adhesion and low characteristic impedance of thick film microstrip are observed for pastes with high palladium concentration.     

Compositional effects on microstructure evolution and microwave properties of silver–palladium based thick film microstrips

Recent improvements in materials and processing technologies have dramatically increased the frequency range where ceramic thick film circuits can be utilized. Coupled with inherent advantages of thick film technology viz. low manufacturing cost, multilayering capability and relative insensitivity to substrate surface characteristics, such improvements have resulted in circuits that are penetrating the domain which was previously reserved to thin film technology. In view of newer developments in modern electronics, there is still ample scope for the development of new materials and processes especially in thick film technology. In thick films, conductors play a major role and silver–palladium is one of the important conductor materials in microelectronic circuits. Efforts are made in this work towards the development of suitable silver–palladium thick film conductors from the standpoint of microwave applications. The properties such as surface microstructure, sheet resistance, adhesion and microwave performance of the indigenously developed silver–palladium paste compositions is reported here. Highly porous surface structure, low adhesion and low characteristic impedance of thick film microstrip are observed for pastes with high palladium concentration.     

All-Electrical Detection of the Spin-Charge Conversion in Nanodevices Based on SrTiO3 2-D Electron Gases

The Magnetoelectric Spin-Orbit (MESO) technology aims to bring logic into memory by combining a ferromagnet with a magnetoelectric (ME) element for information writing, and a spin-orbit (SO) element for information read-out through spin-charge conversion. Among candidate SO materials to achieve a large MESO output signal, oxide Rashba two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) have shown very large spin-charge conversion efficiencies, albeit mostly in spin-pumping experiments. Here, all-electrical spin-injection and spin-charge conversion experiments in nanoscale devices harnessing the inverse Edelstein effect of SrTiO₃ 2DEGs are reported. Nanodevices aredesigned, patterned, and fabricated in which a spin current injected from a cobalt layer into the 2DEG is converted into a charge current. The spin-charge conversion signal is optimized by applying back-gate voltages and studied its temperature evolution. It further disentangles the inverse Edelstein contribution from spurious effects such as the planar Hall effect, the anomalous Hall effect, or the anisotropic magnetoresistance. The combination of non-volatility and high energy efficiency of these devices can potentially lead to new technology paradigms for beyond-CMOS computing architectures.     

Topological structure of fuzzy soft sets

In this paper, the concept of fuzzy soft topology is introduced and some of its structural properties such as neighborhood of a fuzzy soft set, interior fuzzy soft set, fuzzy soft basis, fuzzy soft subspace topology are studied.     

Effect of power and pressure on the properties of hydrogenated amorphous silicon films prepared by DC glow discharge

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon films prepared at different rates of deposition up to 18 Å s^-1, on the anode of a DC glow discharge reactor have been studied for their optoelectronic properties. In this system, use of earthed shield to confine the plasma has been utilised and one does not need to use any “grid”, as has previously been found necessary to deposit device quality films on insulating substrates. Films are grown at three pressure regimes, i.e. 0.3, 0.5 and 1.0 Torr without any dilution of silane and, it is found, that the best quality films at high rates can only be obtained at ≈ 0.5 Torr silane pressure in this system (δ_ph/δ_D ≈ 10⁵ and E₀ values 54.8 meV at 13 Å s^-1).