Investigation of viscoelastic focusing of particles and cells in a zigzag microchannel

Microfluidic particle focusing has been a vital prerequisite step in sample preparation for downstream particle separation, counting, detection, or analysis, and has attracted broad applications in biomedical and chemical areas. Besides all the active and passive focusing methods in Newtonian fluids, particle focusing in viscoelastic fluids has been attracting increasing interest because of its advantages induced by intrinsic fluid property. However, to achieve a well-defined focusing position, there is a need to extend channel lengths when focusing micrometer-sized or sub-microsized particles, which would result in the size increase of the microfluidic devices. This work investigated the sheathless viscoelastic focusing of particles and cells in a zigzag microfluidic channel. Benefit from the zigzag structure of the channel, the channel length and the footprint of the device can be reduced without sacrificing the focusing performance. In this work, the viscoelastic focusing, including the focusing of 10 μm polystyrene particles, 5 μm polystyrene particles, 5 μm magnetic particles, white blood cells (WBCs), red blood cells (RBCs), and cancer cells, were all demonstrated. Moreover, magnetophoretic separation of magnetic and nonmagnetic particles after viscoelastic pre-focusing was shown. This focusing technique has the potential to be used in a range of biomedical applications.     

Nonlinear Mechanical Response of Polymer Matrix Composites: A Review

Abstract

The present article provides a review on the nonlinear mechanical behavior of polymer matrix composites (PMCs). Initially, essential mechanisms driving the nonlinear response of PMCs under different loading conditions are discussed. Rate-dependence, tension-compression asymmetry, viscous behavior, unloading characteristics, interaction between stress components and effects of environmental factors on mechanical properties are briefly reviewed. This is followed by a review of major approaches and constitutive models for predicting stress–strain behavior of PMCs. Following an increasing degree of complexity, models are categorized into four major classes: nonlinear elasticity models, elastic-plastic models, elastic-plastic-viscous models and Damage-Plasticity models. The vast number of existing models is mainly due to the anisotropy and inhomogeneity of PMCs. In brief, this review focuses on informing the reader of major frameworks, rather than addressing all the models in detail.     

An efficient method for the oxathioacetalization of carbonyl compounds using N-bromosaccharin as a catalyst

A mild and highly chemoselective method for the preparation of oxathiolane from aliphatic and aromatic aldehydes and ketones with 2-mercaptoethanol in the presence of catalytic amount of N-bromosaccharin at room temperature is reported.     

Analysis of high-reflectivity metal-dielectric mirrors for edge-emitting lasers

A metal-dielectric mirror is shown as a simple solution for high-reflectivity coatings on cleaved-facet edge-emitting lasers, as well as a means to provide wavelength stabilization and spectral filtering. We show, through the use of a simple SiO2/Ti/Au coating, reflectivities better than 90% and a 25% reduction in the 30-dB linewidth of the output spectrum. Wavelength filtering and varying reflectivities are described as the result of multiple reflections and a coupled-cavity effect.     

Ballistic transport through a sharp domain wall in a semiconducting ferromagnetic nanoconstriction and in the presence of the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling

We study the effect of the Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction on the magnetoresistance (MR) of a quasi-one-dimensional ferromagnetic semiconductor containing a sharp domain wall. The MR is calculated in the ballistic regime, within the Landauer-Büttiker formalism. The results show that the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling which induces an effective magnetic field along the wire, reduces the domain wall MR.     

Estimation of VLE of binary systems (tert-butanol + 2-ethyl-1-hexanol) and (n-butanol + 2-ethyl-1-hexanol) using GMDH-type neural network

The group method of data handling (GMDH) method was used to estimate (vapour + liquid) equilibrium (VLE) for the binary systems of (tert-butanol + 2-ethy1-1-hexanol) and (n-butanol + 2-ethy1-1-hexanol). Using this method, a new model was proposed, which is suitable for predicting the VLE data. In this publication, the proposed model was ‘trained’ before requested predictions. The data set was divided into two parts: 70% were used as data for ‘training’ (either 10 or 12), and 30% were used as a test set, which were randomly extracted from the database (either 14 or 16). After the training on the input–output process, the predicted values were compared with those of experimental values in order to evaluate the performance of the GMDH neural network method. The model values showed a very good regression with the experimental results.     

Dynamic Response of a Grid-Stiffened Composite Cylindrical Shell Reinforced with Carbon Nanotubes to a Radial Impulse Load

Mechanics of Composite Materials - Equilibrium equations of a rib grid-stiffened composite cylindrical shell reinforced with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are derived based on the first-order shear...     

Passivation of Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Sol–Gel

A passivation method for improving long-term stability of organic-inorganic sol–gel material is reported. The effect is observed in experiments with two different passivation materials: Teflon AF and SiO₂. A regime of material curing prior to the passivation is found to strongly affect the optical loss. The degradation of waveguide loss with time due to moisture adsorption from the atmosphere is drastically suppressed by coating the material with a thin silica film. The results indicate a long-term optical loss below 0.3 dB/cm in coated waveguides, significantly smaller than that in uncoated waveguides. The mechanism of the loss reduction is described and experimentally confirmed.     

Slow light engineering in a photonic crystal slab waveguide through optofluidic infiltration and geometric modulation

In this paper, a new type of flat-band slow light structure with high group index (n _g) and large normalized delay-bandwidth product (NDBP) in a silicon on insulator (SOI) based photonic crystal (PC) slab waveguide with a triangular lattice of circular holes is demonstrated. The dispersion engineering is performed by infiltrating optical fluids with different refractive indices n _f in the first row and shifting the second row of air holes adjacent to the PC waveguide (PCW) in the longitudinal direction. In the optimized case, a high NDBP of 0.32 with a group index of 54.55 and a bandwidth of 9.13 nm could be obtained. Furthermore, an ultra-low group velocity dispersion (GVD) in the range of 10^–20 s²/m is achieved in all of the structures. These results are obtained by numerical simulations based on three-dimensional (3D) plane wave expansion (PWE) method.     

A chaotic secure communication scheme using fractional chaotic systems based on an extended fractional Kalman filter

In recent years chaotic secure communication and chaos synchronization have received ever increasing attention. In this paper, for the first time, a fractional chaotic communication method using an extended fractional Kalman filter is presented. The chaotic synchronization is implemented by the EFKF design in the presence of channel additive noise and processing noise. Encoding chaotic communication achieves a satisfactory, typical secure communication scheme. In the proposed system, security is enhanced based on spreading the signal in frequency and encrypting it in time domain. In this paper, the main advantages of using fractional order systems, increasing nonlinearity and spreading the power spectrum are highlighted. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, a numerical example based on the fractional Lorenz dynamical system is presented and the results are compared to the integer Lorenz system.