The temperature dependence of yield

A theoretically rigorous expression is derived from the fundamental equation of rate processes to describe the temperature dependence of the upper and lower yield stress in terms of physical quantities. The effect of the activation volume and activation energy on the yield behavior was investigated over a wide temperature range. The analysis shows that the yield stress is a sensitive function of the temperature when the activation volume is small and that the temperature sensitivity is relatively weak at activation volumes V _f>10³ b ³. The theory predicts that the yield drop has a maximum at an intermediate temperature range and vanishes both at very low and very high temperatures. The calculated behavior was found to be in good qualitative agreement with the results of the measurements obtained by several investigators. It is concluded that the proposed theory can explain fully the temperature dependence of the yield behavior.     

The impact of process variations on input impedance and mitigation using a circuit technique in FinFET-based LNA

The effect of process variations of a FinFET-based low noise amplifier (LNA) are mitigated by using the device in an independently driven mode, i.e. an independently driven double gate (IDDG) FinFET. A 45 nm gate length IDDG FinFET-based cascoded LNA, operating at 5 GHz, is designed and studied to assess the impact of process variation on the LNA performance metrics such as input impedance, gain and noise figure. Four geometrical parameters, gate length, channel width, gate oxide thickness and fin width, and one non-geometrical parameter, channel doping concentration, are considered in the study. The effect of these variations on the input impedance (the desired value is 50 Ω purely real) of the LNA is compensated by the second gate bias of the IDDG FinFET.     

Chemical aerosol detection and identification using Raman scattering

Early warning of the presence of chemical agent aerosols is an important component in the defense against such agents. A Raman spectrometer has been constructed for the purpose of detecting and identifying chemical aerosols. We report the detection and identification of a low‐concentration chemical aerosol in atmospheric air using 532‐nm continuous wave laser Raman scattering. We have demonstrated the Raman scattering detection and identification of an aerosol of isovanillin of mass concentration of 1.8 ng/cm³ with a signal‐to‐noise ratio of about 19 in 30 s for the 1116‐cm⁻¹ mode with a Raman cross section of 3.3 × 10⁻²⁸ cm² using 8‐W double‐pass laser power. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Controlling magnetic properties of iron oxide nanoparticles using post-synthesis thermal treatment

Changes in morphological and magnetic properties of Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles before and after annealing are investigated in the present work. The nanoparticles are synthesized in a standard capacitively coupled plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition system with two electrodes using ferrocene as the source compound. Post annealing, due to the sintering process, the particles fuse along with recrystallization. This results in increased size of the nanoparticles and the interparticle interaction, which play a major role in deciding the magnetic properties. X-ray diffraction patterns of the samples before and after annealing indicate a phase change from Fe₃O₄ to Fe₂O₃. Annealing at 200 ^°C causes the apparent saturation magnetization to increase from 6 emu?g^?1 to 15 emu?g^?1. When annealed at 500 ^°C, the magnetic properties of the nanoparticles resemble those of the bulk material. The evidence for the transition from a superparamagnetic state to a collective state is also observed when annealed at 500 ^°C. Variation of the magnetic relaxation data with annealing also reflects the change in the magnetic state brought about by the annealing. The correlation between annealing temperature and the magnetic properties can be used to obtain nanocrystallites of iron oxide with different sizes and magnetic properties.     

Studies on the optical and dielectric properties of a zinc thiourea chloride NLO single crystal

Single crystals of a nonlinear optical material, zinc thiourea chloride were grown by the slow evaporation technique. The crystal structure and lattice parameters of the grown crystal were determined by the single crystal X-ray diffraction studies. The single crystal XRD revealed that the material crystallized in a orthorhombic crystal system. Optical studies were carried out and it was found that the tendency of transmission observed from the specimen, with respect to the wavelength of light, is practically more suitable for opto-electronic applications. The optical band gap is found to be 4.30 eV. Optical constants such as the band gap, refractive index, reflectance, extinction coefficient and real (?_r) and imaginary (?_i) components of the dielectric constant and electric susceptibility were determined from the UV–vis–NIR spectrum. The dielectric constant and dielectric loss of zinc thiourea chloride were measured in the different frequency range from 50 Hz to 5 MHz at different temperatures. Further, electronic properties, such as valence electron plasma energy, Penn gap, Fermi energy and electronic polarizability of the grown crystal have been estimated.     

Propagation of cosh Gaussian laser beam in plasma with density ripple in relativistic – ponderomotive regime

Self-focusing of cosh Gaussian laser beam in plasma with periodic density ripple has been investigated. The pondermotive force on electron and the relativistic oscillation of the electron mass causes periodic self-focusing/defocusing of the cosh Gaussian laser beam. The beam converges in the region of high plasma density due to dominance of self-focusing effect over diffraction effect and diverges in the low density region. Non-linear partial differential equation governing the evolution of complex envelope in slowly varying approximation is solved using paraxial ray approximation. The variation of beam-width parameter is studied with distance of propagation for different values of ripple wave number d and decentred parameter b. In order to get strong self-focusing, wavelength and intensity parameters of cosh Gaussian laser beam are optimized.     

Study of ultrasound stiffness imaging methods using tissue mimicking phantoms

A pilot study was carried out to investigate the performance of ultrasound stiffness imaging methods namely Ultrasound Elastography Imaging (UEI) and Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI) Imaging. Specifically their potential for characterizing different classes of solid mass lesions was analyzed using agar based tissue mimicking phantoms. Composite tissue mimicking phantom was prepared with embedded inclusions of varying stiffness from 50 kPa to 450 kPa to represent different stages of cancer. Acoustic properties such as sound speed, attenuation coefficient and acoustic impedance were characterized by pulse echo ultrasound test at 5 MHz frequency and they are ranged from (1564 ± 88 to 1671 ± 124 m/s), (0.6915 ± 0.123 to 0.8268 ± 0.755 db cm^-1 MHz^-1) and (1.61×10⁶ ± 0.127 to 1.76 × 10⁶ ± 0.045 kg m^-2 s^-1) respectively. The elastic property Young’s Modulus of the prepared samples was measured by conducting quasi static uni axial compression test under a strain rate of 0.5 mm/min upto 10 % strain, and the values are from 50 kPa to 450 kPa for a variation of agar concentration from 1.7% to 6.6% by weight. The composite phantoms were imaged by Siemens Acuson S2000 (Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) machine using linear array transducer 9L4 at 8 MHz frequency; strain and displacement images were collected by UEI and ARFI. Shear wave velocity 4.43 ± 0.35 m/s was also measured for high modulus contrast (18 dB) inclusion and X.XX m/s was found for all other inclusions. The images were pre processed and parameters such as Contrast Transfer Efficiency and lateral image profile were computed and reported. The results indicate that both ARFI and UEI represent the abnormalities better than conventional US B mode imaging whereas UEI enhances the underlying modulus contrast into improved strain contrast. The results are corroborated with literature and also with clinical patient images.     

Determinations of low atomic number elements in real uranium oxide samples using vacuum chamber total reflection x‐ray fluorescence

Conditions for the total reflection x‐ray fluorescence (TXRF) analysis of real uranium samples for low atomic number elements using vacuum chamber TXRF spectrometer were optimized. It was observed that for analysis of low atomic number elements, almost complete removal of uranium matrix is required. Two certified reference materials of uranium containing trace elements in different concentrations were dissolved in minimum amount of high purity nitric acid. The uranium matrix from these solutions was separated by solvent extraction using tri‐n‐butyl phosphate as extracting reagent. Low atomic number elements in TXRF spectrum of the aqueous phase could be seen only after six tri‐n‐butyl phosphate equilibrations in extraction. The TXRF determinations of the certified low atomic number elements Mg and Al were made in these aqueous solutions after addition of Sc as an internal standard. The TXRF determined values for Mg were in good agreement with the certified values, whereas TXRF determined Al values differed from the certified values appreciably, probably due to the interference of Al Kα peak with escape peak of U Mα and the neighboring Si Kα peak. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Isoscalar giant monopole resonance for drip-line and super heavy nuclei in the framework of relativistic mean field formalism with scaling calculation

We study the isoscalar giant monopole resonance for drip-lines and super heavy nuclei in the framework of relativistic mean field theory with a scaling approach. The well known extended Thomas-Fermi approximation in the nonlinear σ-ω model is used to estimate the giant monopole excitation energy for some selected light spherical nuclei starting from the region of proton to neutron drip-lines. The application is extended to the super heavy region for Z=114 and 120, which are predicted by several models as the next proton magic numbers beyond Z=82. We compared the excitation energy obtained by four successful force parameters NL1, NL3, NL3*, and FSUGold. The monopole energy decreases toward the proton and neutron drip-lines in an isotopic chain for lighter mass nuclei, in contrast to a monotonic decrease for super heavy isotopes. The maximum and minimum monopole excitation energies are obtained for nuclei with minimum and maximum isospin in an isotopic chain, respectively.     

Point-of-care device for quantification of bilirubin in skin tissue

Steady state diffuse reflectance spectroscopy is a nondestructive method for obtaining biochemical and physiological information from skin tissue. In medical conditions such as neonatal jaundice excess bilirubin in the blood stream diffuses into the surrounding tissue leading to a yellowing of the skin. Diffuse reflectance measurement of the skin tissue can provide real time assessment of the progression of a disease or a medical condition. Here we present a noninvasive point-of-care system that utilizes diffuse reflectance spectroscopy to quantifying bilirubin from skin reflectance spectra. The device consists of an optical system integrated with a signal processing algorithm. The device is then used as a platform to study two different spectral databases. The first spectral database is a jaundice animal model in which the jaundice reflectance spectra are synthesized from normal skin. The second spectral database is the spectral measurements collected on human volunteers to quantify the different chromophores and other physical properties of the tissue such as Hematocrit, Hemoglobin, etc. The initial trials from each of these spectral databases have laid the foundation to verify the performance of this bilirubin quantification device.