Close‐Packed Two‐Dimensional Silver Nanoparticle Arrays: Quadrupolar and Dipolar Surface Plasmon Resonance Coupling

Silver nanoparticles (NPs) ranging in size from 40 to 100 nm were prepared in high yield by using an improved seed‐mediated method. The homogeneous Ag NPs were used as building blocks for 2D assembled Ag NP arrays by using an oil/water interface. A close‐packed 2D array of Ag NPs was fabricated by using packing molecules (3‐mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane) to control the interparticle spacing. The homogeneous 2D Ag NP array exhibited a strong quadrupolar cooperative plasmon mode resonance and a dipolar red‐shift relative to individual Ag NPs suspended in solution. A well‐arranged 2D Ag NP array was embedded in polydimethylsiloxane film and, with biaxial stretching to control the interparticle distance, concomitant variations of the quadrupolar and dipolar couplings were observed. As the interparticle distance increased, the intensity of the quadrupolar cooperative plasmon mode resonance decreased and dipolar coupling completely disappeared. The local electric field of the 2D Ag NP array was calculated by using finite difference time domain simulation and qualitatively showed agreement with the experimental measurements.     

Morphology and microphase separation of star copolymers

Star copolymers have attracted significant interest due to their different characteristics compared with diblock copolymers, including higher critical micelle concentration, lower viscosity, unique spatial shape, or morphologies. Development of synthetic skills such as anionic polymerization and controlled radical polymerization have made it possible to make diverse architectures of polymers. Depending on the molecular architecture of the copolymer, numerous morphologies are possible, for instance, Archimedean tiling patterns and cylindrical microdomains at symmetric volume fraction for miktoarm star copolymers as well as asymmetric lamellar microdomains for star‐shaped copolymers, which have not been reported for linear block copolymers. In this review, we focus on morphologies and microphase separations of miktoarm (A_mB_n and ABC miktoarm) star copolymers and star‐shaped [(A‐b‐B)_n] copolymers with nonlinear architecture. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2015 , 53, 1–21     

Simple and Precise Quantification of Iron Catalyst Content in Carbon Nanotubes Using UV/Visible Spectroscopy

Iron catalysts have been used widely for the mass production of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with high yield. In this study, UV/visible spectroscopy was used to determine the Fe catalyst content in CNTs using a colorimetric technique. Fe ions in solution form red–orange complexes with 1,10-phenanthroline, producing an absorption peak at λ=510 nm, the intensity of which is proportional to the solution Fe concentration. A series of standard Fe solutions were formulated to establish the relationship between optical absorbance and Fe concentration. Many Fe catalysts were microscopically observed to be encased by graphitic layers, thus preventing their extraction. Fe catalyst dissolution from CNTs was investigated with various single and mixed acids, and Fe concentration was found to be highest with CNTs being held at reflux in HClO₄/HNO₃ and H₂SO₄/HNO₃ mixtures. This novel colorimetric method to measure Fe concentrations by UV/Vis spectroscopy was validated by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy, indicating its reliability and applicability to asses Fe content in CNTs.     

Frequency Insertion Strategy for Channel Assignment Problem

This paper presents a new heuristic method for quickly finding a good feasible solution to the channel assignment problem (CAP). Like many other greedy-type heuristics for CAP, the proposed method also assigns a frequency to a call, one at a time. Hence, the method requires computational time that increases only linear to the number of calls. However, what distinguishes the method from others is that it starts with a narrow enough frequency band so as to provoke violations of constraints that we need to comply with in order to avoid radio interference. Each violation is then resolved by inserting frequencies at the most appropriate positions so that the band of frequencies expands minimally. An extensive computational experiment using a set of randomly generated problems as well as the Philadelphia benchmark instances shows that the proposed method perform statistically better than existing methods of its kind and even yields optimum solutions to most of Philadelphia benchmark instances among which two cases are reported for the first time ever, in this paper. Won-Young Shin was born in Busan, Korea in 1978. He received B.S. in industrial engineering from Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in 2001 and M.S in operation research and applied statistics from POSTECH in 2003. Since 2003 he has been a researcher of Agency for Defense Development (ADD) in Korea. He is interested in optimization of communication system and applied statistics. Soo Y. Chang is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Korea. He teaches linear programming, discrete optimization, network flows and operations research courses. His research interests include mathematical programming and scheduling. He has published in several journals including Discrete Applied Mathematics, Computers and Mathematics with Application, IIE Transactions, International Journal of Production Research, and so on. He is a member of Korean IIE, and ORMSS. Jaewook Lee is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Korea. He received the B.S. degree in mathematics with honors from Seoul National University, and the Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in applied mathematics in 1993 and 1999, respectively. He is currently an assistant professor in the department of industrial engineering at the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH). His research interests include nonlinear systems, neural networks, nonlinear optimization, and their applications to data mining and financial engineering. Chi-Hyuck Jun was born in Seoul, Korea in 1954. He received B.S. in mineral and petroleum engineering from Seoul National University in 1977, M.S. in industrial engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 1979 and Ph.D. in operations research from University of California, Berkeley, in 1986. Since 1987 he has been with the department of industrial engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) and he is now a professor and the department head. He is interested in performance analysis of communication and production systems. He has published in several journals including IIE Transactions, IEEE Transactions, Queueing Systems and Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems. He is a member of IEEE, INFORMS and ASQ.     

Fast handoff with reducing waste rate approach for wireless resources management in UMTS mobile networks

3G Wideband CDMA systems adopt the Orthogonal Variable Spreading Factor code tree as the channelization codes management for achieving high data rate transmission in personal multimedia communications. It assigns a single channelization code for each accepted connection. Nevertheless, it wastes the system capacity when the required rate is not powers of two of the basic rate. One good solution is to assign multiple codes for each accepted connection but it causes two inevitable drawbacks: long handoff delay and new call setup delay due to high complexity of processing with multiple channelization codes, and high cost of using more number of rake combiners. Especially, long handoff delay may result in more call dropping probability and higher Grade of Service, which will degrade significantly the utilization and revenue of the 3G cellular systems. Therefore, we propose herein an adaptive efficient codes determination algorithm based on the Markov Decision Process analysis approach to reduce the waste rate and reassignments significantly while providing fast handoff. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach yields several advantages, including the lowest GOS, the least waste rate, and the least number of reassignments. Meanwhile, the optimal number of rake combiners is also analyzed in this paper. This research was supported in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan, ROC, under contract NSC-93-2213-E-324-018.     

A novel compact ring dual-mode filter with adjustable second-passband for dual-band applications

In this letter, a novel compact ring dual-mode with adjustable second-passband for dual-band applications are presented. A ring resonator with two different geometric dimensions are derived and designed to have identical fundamental and the first higher-order resonant frequencies, and to establish appropriate couplings in the structure. Moreover, the proposed filter has smaller size as compared with the basic topology of stopband filters and stepped-impedance-resonator (SIR) filters. The measured filter performance is in good agreement with the simulated response.     

An adaptive p-persistent MAC scheme for multimedia WLAN

The letter proposes an adaptive p-persistent-based (APP) medium access control (MAC) scheme for the IEEE 802.11e distributed WLAN supporting multimedia services. The APP MAC scheme adaptively gives differentiated permission probabilities to transmission stations which are in different access category and with various waiting delay. Simulation results show that the APP MAC scheme can improve the performance of multimedia WLAN, such as small voice packet dropping probability, low delay variation, and high system throughput, compared to conventional MAC algorithms     

ESD protection design to overcome internal damage on interface circuits of a CMOS IC with multiple separated power pins

This paper reports a real case of electrostatic discharge (ESD) improvement on a complementary metal oxide semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) product with multiple separated power pins. After ESD stresses, the internal damage have been found to locate at the interface circuit connecting between different circuit blocks with different power supplies. Some ESD designs have been implemented to rescue this IC product to meet the required ESD specification. By adding only an extra ESD clamp N-channel metal oxide semiconductor with a channel width of 10 /spl mu/m between the interface node and the ground line, the human-body-model (HBM) ESD level of this IC product can be improved from the original 0.5 to 3 kV. By connecting the separated vertical sync signal (VSS) power lines through the ESD conduction circuit to a common VSS ESD bus realized by the seal ring, the HBM ESD level of the enhanced version IC product with 12 separated power supplies pairs can be significantly improved from original 1 kV up to > 5 kV, without the noise coupling issue.