A strip-shield improves the efficiency of a solenoid coil in probes for high-field solid-state NMR of lossy biological samples

A strip-shield inserted between a high inductance double-tuned solenoid coil and the glass tube containing the sample improves the efficiency of probes used for high-field solid-state NMR experiments on lossy aqueous samples of proteins and other biopolymers. A strip-shield is a coil liner consisting of thin copper strips layered on a PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) insulator. With lossy samples, the shift in tuning frequency is smaller, the reduction in Q, and RF-induced heating are all significantly reduced when the strip-shield is present. The performance of 800 MHz ¹H/¹⁵N and ¹H/¹³C double-resonance probes is demonstrated on aqueous samples of membrane proteins in phospholipid bilayers.     

Measure permutation formulas in Feynman’s operational calculi

In Jefferies-Johnson’s theory of Feynman’s operational calculi for noncommuting operators, the two operators T _{µ 1,µ 2} f(Ã, \(\tilde B\)) and T _{µ 2},µ₁ f(Ã, \(\tilde B\)) are not equal. Relationships between these two operators are given, i.e., “measure permutation formulas” in Feynman’s operational calculi are developed; they correspond to the “index permutation formula” in Maslov’s discretized version of Feynman’s operational calculus.     

Drug release from various thicknesses of layered mats consisting of electrospun polycaprolactone and polyethylene oxide micro/nanofibers

A new drug delivery system (DDS) consisting of electrospun nanofibers is proposed. Layered mats of hydrophobic polycaprolactone (PCL) and polyethylene oxide (PEO) nanofibers were prepared successfully in a layer-by-layer manner using an electrospinning process. The PEO mat and drug were co-electrospun as a drug reservoir. Drug release rate was controlled physically by the thickness of the electrospun nanofibrous PCL layer, and its release behavior was examined over time. Release tests showed that the release behavior and the amount of initial burst of the drug were critically dependent on the thickness of the nanofibrous PCL mat. The release of drug showed a linear relationship with the thickness of the porous electrospun PCL mat. In addition, to demonstrate the feasibility of this type of DDS, the release behavior of the antimicrobial peptide HPA3NT3 from the nanofiber system was examined. The release of the peptide was easily controlled by the PCL nanofiber thickness and the released peptide did not lose biological activity.     

Biological functionalization of the amine-terminated Si(100) surface by glycine

A peptide reaction of glycine on an amine-terminated Si(100) surface was investigated using C 1s, N 1s, O 1s, and Si 2p core-level spectroscopy, where the amine-terminated Si(100) surface was prepared using NH₃. In-situ thermal treatments at a mild temperature of 50 °C after the adsorption of glycine on a room-temperature amine-terminated Si(100) surface induced the peptide reaction between the carboxyl group of glycine and the amine group of the surface. This suggests that the amine-terminated Si(100) surface can be an excellent template for constructing a junction between a biomaterial and a Si surface using a dry process.     

Heat Content Asymptotics for Oblique Boundary Conditions

We consider the short-time heat content asymptotics for oblique boundary conditions. The first few coefficients in the asymptotic expansion are calculated.     

Effects of co-substitution on the electrical properties of BiFeO3 thin films prepared by chemical solution deposition

Ferroelectric BiFeO₃ thin films with Nd-Cr (or Sm-Cr) co-substitution (denoted by BNdFCr and BSmFCr, respectively) were deposited on the Pt(2 0 0)/TiO₂/SiO₂/Si(1 0 0) substrates by a chemical solution deposition method. X-ray diffraction patterns revealed the formation of BNdFCr and BSmFCr thin films without any secondary phases. The co-substituted BNdFCr (or BSmFCr) thin films, which were annealed at 550 °C for 30 min in N₂ atmosphere, exhibited enhanced electrical properties compared to BFO thin films with the remanent polarization (2P_r) and coercive electric field (2E_c) of 196, 188 μC/cm² and 600, 570 kV/cm with the electric field of 800 kV/cm, respectively. The leakage current densities of BNdFCr and BSmFCr thin films measured at room temperature were approximately three orders of magnitude lower than that of BFO thin film, and the leakage current at room temperature of the thin films exhibited three distinctive conduction behaviors. Furthermore, the values of pulse polarizations [i.e., +(P*-P^{^}) or −(P*-P^{^})] of BNdFCr and BSmFCr thin films were reasonably unchanged up to 1.4 × 10¹⁰ switching cycles.     

Nanoscale observations of the operational failure for phase-change-type nonvolatile memory devices using Ge2Sb2Te5 chalcogenide thin films

In this study, a phase-change memory device was fabricated and the origin of device failure mode was examined using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ (GST) was used as the active phase-change material in the memory device and the active pore size was designed to be 0.5 m. After the programming signals of more than 2×10⁶ cycles were repeatedly applied to the device, the high-resistance memory state (reset) could not be rewritten and the cell resistance was fixed at the low-resistance state (set). Based on TEM and EDS studies, Sb excess and Ge deficiency in the device operating region had a strong effect on device reliability, especially under endurance-demanding conditions. An abnormal segregation and oxidation of Ge also was observed in the region between the device operating and inactive peripheral regions. To guarantee an data endurability of more than 1×10¹⁰ cycles of PRAM, it is very important to develop phase-change materials with more stable compositions and to reduce the current required for programming.     

High-throughput screening of ferroelectric materials for non-volatile random access memory using multilayer perceptrons

During the last several years, the development of combinatorial technology has enabled synthesis of a huge amount of chemical compounds in a short time. The large number of variables makes the direct human interpretation of data derived from combinatorial experimentation for high-throughput screening (HTS) very difficult. Artificial neural networks using multilayer perceptrons (MLP) have been successfully applied to the regression problems with various material data. In this work, MLP model was applied to HTS of ferroelectric materials including Bi_4−xLa_xTi₃O₁₂ (BLT) and Bi_4−xCe_xTi₃O₁₂ (BCT). The model using MLP was made to predict the ferroelectric properties of whole feasible experimental conditions. Once a neural network model with high accuracy and good generalization performance was established, we could predict the expected optimal reaction conditions with the best characteristics. The highest gradient value obtained using MLP model is higher than the maximum value found from experiments, thereby accelerating the discovery of the optimal compositions and post-annealing time of BCT and BLT.     

Interfacial electronic structure of molybdenum oxide on the fullerene layer,a potential hole-injecting layer in inverted top-emitting organic light-emitting diodes

The interfacial electronic structures of molybdenum oxide (MoO_x) deposited on fullerene (C₆₀) which could be used as a hole-injecting layer in inverted top-emitting organic light-emitting diodes (TE-OLEDs) were investigated by photoemission spectroscopy. The hole-injecting barrier height (Φ_B^h) at each interface investigated by an ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy was reduced to from 1.4 to 0.1 eV as the thickness of MoO_x (Θ_MoOx) was increased from 0.1 to 5.0 nm on C₆₀. In these interface system, the sign of vacuum-level shift, highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO)-level shift, and core-level shifts were all positive indicating that the interface mechanism is attributed to the work-function differences due to a band bending at these interfaces. Moreover, the near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectra at carbon K-edge did not show any structural modification as well as any chemical reaction at the MoO_x-on-C₆₀ interfaces when Θ_MoOx was changed on C₆₀. From these results, the inverted TE-OLED with C₆₀ (5.0 nm)/MoO_x (5.0 nm) showed the power efficiency of 1.7 lm/W at a luminance of about 1000 cd/m² and the maximum luminance of about 76.000 cd/m² at the bias voltage of 11.0 V. It exhibited the highest performance among the inverted TE-OLEDs fabricated as a function of MoO_x thickness from 0 to 5.0 nm.