Determination of uranium and thorium isotopes in soil samples by coprecipitation

Summary The paper presents a procedure to prepare soil samples for U and Th isotope measurement by alpha-spectrometry after coprecipitation with LaF₃. In this procedure the reduction of U(VI) to U(IV) was performed by Zn metal in 4M HCl solution. The recoveries of chemical separation equal to e_U-chemistry = 78±4% for uranium and e_Th-chemistry = 82±4% for thorium. Canberra alpha-spectrometer was used with PIPS detectors of A-1200-37-AM Model of 1200 mm² active area. The counting efficiency of the measuring system equals to e_counting = 18% and the total efficiencies were e_U = e_counting ^.e_U-chemistry = 14.0±0.7% for uranium and e_Th = e_counting ^.e_Th-chemistry = 14.7±0.7% for thorium. The recoveries of chemical separation were rather high (about 80%), that leads to the use of a small weight of soil sample (about 0.5 g). The efficiencies were also stable, that allows analyzing the soil sample without using radiotracers. They are advantages of the sample preparation procedure of this work.     

Prompt gamma cold neutron activation analysis applied to biological materials

Summary Cold neutrons at the external neutron guide laboratory (ELLA) of the KFA Jülich are used to demonstrate their profitable application for multielement characterization of biological materials. The set-up and experimental conditions of the Prompt Gamma Cold Neutron Activation Analysis (PGCNAA) device is described in detail. Results for C, H, N, S, K, B, and Cd using synthetic standards and the “ratio” technique for calculation are reported for several reference materials and prove the method to be reliable and complementary with respect to the elements being determined by INAA. IAEA fellow at the KFA from 6. 3. 91 to 2. 9. 91 on contract No. VIE/9016R.     

New compact wideband bandpass filter using three parallel-coupledlines

A new miniature bandpass filter, comprising three-conductor short-circuited spurline resonators of approximately a quarter-wavelength long, with a very wide bandwidth approaching multioctaves is reported for the first time. The chain matrix of the filter resonator is derived. The new filter has been developed using microstrip line with less than 1 dB insertion loss over a passband from 2 to 8 GHz. Reasonably good agreement between the measured and calculated results is observed     

A quadruple well, quadruple polysilicon BiCMOS process for fast 16Mb SRAM's

An advanced, high-performance, quadruple well, quadruple polysilicon BiCMOS technology has been developed for fast 16 Mb SRAM's. A split word-line bitcell architecture, using four levels of polysilicon and two self-aligned contacts, achieves a cell area of 8.61 μm² with conventional I-line lithography and 7.32 μm² with I-line plus phase-shift or with deep UV lithography. The process features PELOX isolation to provide a 1.0 μm active pitch, MOSFET transistors designed for a 0.80 μm gate poly pitch, a double polysilicon bipolar transistor with aggressively scaled parasitics, and a thin-film polysilicon transistor to enhance bitcell stability. A quadruple-well structure improves soft error rate (SER) and allows simultaneous optimization of MOSFET and bipolar performance     

Parasitic bipolar gain in fully depleted n-channel SOI MOSFET's

Fully depleted SOI MOSFET's include an inherent parasitic lateral bipolar structure with a floating base. We present here the first complete physically based explanation of the bipolar gain mechanism, and its dependence on bias and technological parameters. A simple, one-dimensional physical model, with no fitting parameters, is constructed, and is shown to agree well with simulations and measurements performed on a new type of SOI MOSFET structure. It is shown that parameters which affect the gain, such as SOI layer thickness, body doping concentration and gate and drain voltages, do so primarily by affecting the concentration of holes in the body region. Thus, current gain falls dramatically with increasing drain voltage due to the associated impact ionization driven increase in the hole concentration. Gummel plots of this parasitic bipolar indicate an apparent ideality factor of 0.5 for the hole current, due to the body hole concentration's dependence on drain voltage     

Fabrication of low-loss IR-transmitting Ge30As10Se30Te30 glass fibers

Improved purification and processing techniques have been utilized to fabricate Ge₃₀As₁₀Se₃₀Te₃₀ glass fibers with a minimum loss of O.11 dB/m at 6.6 μm. This is the lowest loss reported for any telluride glass fiber in the infrared region. Furthermore, the fibers exhibit less than 1 dB/m loss between 5.25 and 9.5 μm     

Digital filter bank design quadratic-constrained formulation

Formulate the filter bank design problem as an quadratic-constrained least-squares minimization problem. The solution of the minimization problem converges very quickly since the cost function as well as the constraints are quadratic functions with respect to the unknown parameters. The formulations of the perfect-reconstruction cosine-modulated filter bank, of the near-perfect-reconstruction pseudo-QMF bank, and of the two-channel biorthogonal linear-phase filter bank are derived using the proposed approach. Compared with other design methods, the proposed technique yields PR filter banks with much higher stopband attenuation. The proposed technique can also be extended to design multidimensional filter banks     

On the Smoothness of a Generalized Solution of the First Initial Boundary-Value Problem for Strongly Parabolic Systems in a Cylinder with Nonsmooth Base with Respect to Time Variable

We consider the first initial boundary-value problem for strongly parabolic systems in an infinite cylinder with nonsmooth boundary. We establish conditions for the existence of generalized solutions, an estimate for this solutions, and an estimate for the derivative of the solution.     

Experimental study and mathematical modelling of a new of vibro-impact moling device

In this paper experimental study and mathematical modelling of newly designed vibro-impact moling rig are presented. The design is based on electro-mechanical interactions of a conductor with an oscillating magnetic field. The rig consists of a metal bar placed within a solenoid which is connected to an RLC circuit, and an obstacle block positioned nearby. Both the solenoid and the block are attached to a base board. Externally supplied alternating voltage causes the bar to oscillate and hit the block resulting in the forward motion of the base board mimicking a mole penetration through the soil. By varying the excitation voltage and the capacitance in the circuit, a variety of system responses can be obtained.In the paper the rig design and experimental procedure are explained in detail, and the mathematical modelling of the rig is described. Then the obtained coupled electro-mechanical equations of motion are integrated numerically, and a comparison between experimental results and numerical predictions is presented.