Contact mechanisms and design principles for alloyed Ohmic contacts to p-type GaN

Contact mechanisms and design principles of alloyed Ohmic contacts to p-type GaN (p-GaN) are studied. Illustrative studies include bilayer, trilayer and quadrilayer Ohmic contacts. Almost all contacts appear to follow the proposed design principles. The removal of the surface insulating layer, preferably by plasma etching, leads to metal/semiconductor barrier lowering. This, together with thermionic emission, plays a crucial role for yielding low-resistance metal/p-GaN contacts. Band-gap narrowing and/or image force lowering due to heavy doping also contribute to the low contact resistivity. A judicious choice of the layer thicknesses of appropriate metal combination, rapid thermal annealing (RTA) time, RTA temperature and RTA ambient can produce large-work-function alloy(s) in contact with the p-GaN epitaxial layer, creating a robust low-resistivity thermionic-emission-induced Ohmic contact. The fundamental physics of contact mechanisms and design principles proposed in the study is useful for making other contacts. These are general enough to be extended to other III–V nitride materials, at the least.     

Diagnostic Application of Fluorescence Spectroscopy in Oncology Field: Hopes and Challenges

Abstract

Cancer is one of the big killers of world population. The majority of cancers are diagnosed at a late stage, making a cure almost impossible. Fluorescence spectroscopy is an emerging diagnostic tool for various medical diseases including premalignant and malignant lesions. Fluorescence spectroscopy is a noninvasive technique and has been applied successfully for the diagnosis of multisystem cancers with high sensitivity and specificity. Fluorescence spectroscopy minimizes the need for repetitive biopsy, which is routine practice for cancer patient follow-up. But there are many aspects of this new diagnostic technique that should be discussed in future research to overcome limitations and challenges faced by this technique for diagnosis of cancers.     

Compressive sampling based differential detection for UWB impulse radio signals

Noncoherent detectors significantly contribute to the practical realization of the ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse-radio (IR) concept, in that they allow avoiding channel estimation and provide highly efficient reception capabilities. Complexity can be reduced even further by resorting to an all-digital implementation, but Nyquist-rate sampling of the received signal is still required. The current paper addresses this issue by proposing a novel differential detection (DD) scheme, which exploits the compressive sampling (CS) framework to reduce the sampling rate much below the Nyquist-rate. The optimization problem is formulated to jointly recover the sparse received signal as well as the differentially encoded data symbols, and is compared with both the separate approach and the scheme using the compressed received signal directly, i.e., without reconstruction. Finally, a maximum a posteriori based detector using the compressed symbols is developed for a Laplacian distributed channel, as a reference to compare the performance of the proposed approaches. Simulation results show that the proposed joint CS-based DD brings the considerable advantage of reducing the sampling rate without degrading the performance, compared with the optimal MAP detector.     

Fabrication and characterization of nanocrystalline Al,Co:ZnO thin films by a sol–gel dip coating

The consequence of annealing on the micro-structural and electrochemical characteristics of Al doped CoZnO thin films deposited by sol–gel dip coating technique are studied. X-ray diffraction indicates that films have a hexagonal wurtzite structure oriented towards the (100). Optical properties of films are recorded by transmission curves utilising a UV–VIS spectrophotometer. The investigation of the optical transmission spectra indicates that the band gap of the films decrease from 3.99 eV to minimum 3.83 eV upon annealing. All films show room temperature ferromagnetism whose magnetization increases with annealing. Dip coated films possess polycrystalline nanosized grains with porous morphology.     

Convergence of an iterative scheme for multifunctions

Recently, Reich and Zaslavski have studied a new inexact iterative scheme for fixed points of contractive and nonexpansive multifunctions. In this paper, we generalize some of their results to Suzuki-type multifunctions.     

Review on asymmetric synthetic methodologies for chiral isoquinuclidines; 2008 to date

Isoquinuclidines constitute the central structural nucleus of numerous biologically active natural products, for example, iboga alkaloids such as ibogamine and catharanthine as well as non-indole-containing alkaloids such as the dioscorine and the cannivonines. Furthermore, in medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry, the isoquinuclidine core is commonly employed as a rigid azabicyclic scaffold, thus providing significant precursors in the synthesis of numerous valuable alkaloids. Summarizing well-organized approaches to access the chiral isoquinuclidine structural centerpiece signifies a significant endeavor not only for developing biologically active natural products but also enhancing biological researches that can lead to possible drug discovery. Over time, the values and methodologies for the asymmetric synthesis of chiral isoquinuclidines are increasing; hence to advance asymmetric synthesis, this review combines and discusses the pros and cons of each synthesis techniques from 2008. This review should be helpful for promoting further developments of asymmetric synthetic methodologies and for medicinal chemistry.     

Fixed point theorems for mappings with convex diminishing diameters on cone metric spaces

In this work, Cantor’s intersection theorem is extended to cone metric spaces and as an application, a fixed point theorem is derived for mappings with locally power diminishing diameters.     

Photophysical Investigations of Carmoisine Interacting with Conventional Cationic Surfactants Under Different pH Conditions

The present study describes the extent of interactions of an efficient food dye, Carmoisine (CAR), with conventional cationic surfactants, hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide, and ethylhexadecyldimethylammonium bromide (EHDAB). The study was carried out by quantifying the spectral changes of CAR as a function of premicellar to postmicellar surfactant concentrations at various pH conditions. The quantification of CAR molecules entrapped by cationic micellar systems has been estimated with the help of mathematical models. Binding parameters of each surfactant were calculated using differential spectroscopic method. The enhanced solubilization of dye by switching the pH was observed. In support of the electrostatic forces, the larger and more hydrophobic head group favors the promising solubilization of CAR in the outer region of the micellar interior. These findings extend the proficiency of dye molecule as a reporter for sensing electrostatic environment in lipidic membranes and related organized assemblies.