Sharif Digital Repository

In this paper, the influence of the van der Waals force on two main parameters describing an instability point of cantilever type nanomechanical switches, which are the pull-in voltage and deflection are investigated by using a distributed parameter model. The fringing field effect is also taken into account. The nonlinear differential equation of the model is transformed into the integral form by using the Green's function of the cantilever beam. The integral equation is solved analytically by assuming an appropriate shape function for the beam deflection. The detachment length and the minimum initial gap of the cantilever type switches are given, which are the basic design parameters for... 

Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) have wide application in the development of sensors for the detection of magnitudes in almost any domain [1]. Resonant mode operation of micro and nano-scale oscillators have gained wide interest for applications including filters, amplifiers, non-linear mixers, atomic scale imaging, biological and chemical sensors. The device that we propose is an electrically actuated microcantilever beam. More precisely, in our design the microcantilever constitutes the movable plate of a micro-capacitor and its displacement is controlled by the voltage applied across the plates. Review of literature shows that the electric field pattern between the beam and the... 

An analytical solution is presented to study the heat transfer characteristics of the combined pressure - electroosmotically driven flow in planar microchannels. The physical model includes the Joule heating effect to predict the convective heat transfer coefficient in two dimensional microchannels. The velocity field, which is a function of external electrical field, electroosmotic mobility, fluid viscosity and the pressure gradient, is obtained by solving the hydrodynamically fully-developed laminar Navier-Stokes equations considering the electrokinetic body force for low wall zeta potentials. Then, assuming a thermally fully-developed flow, the temperature distribution and the Nusselt... 

A numerical procedure is proposed for obtaining the static deflection, pull-in (PI) deflection and PI voltage of electrostatically excited capacitive microcantilever beams. The method is not time and memory consuming as Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Nonlinear ordinary differential equation of the static deflection of the beam is derived, w/wo considering the fringing field effects. The nondimensional parameters upon which PI voltage is dependent are then found. Thereafter, using the parameters and the numerical method, three closed form equations for pull-in voltage are developed. The results are in good agreement with others in literature. Copyright © 2006 by ASME  

In this paper, a periodic structure of different dielectric layers is proposed and investigated for relativistic electron acceleration. The periodic dielectric structure provides an accelerating electric field inside the structure. Results show that the electron beam can experience a strong electric force in one direction during propagation in the structure, leading to the acceleration gradient increasing by more than double in comparison with dual-grating structures. Acceleration gradient enhancement occurs without increasing the electric field much inside the structure; therefore, the maximum achievable acceleration gradient and acceleration factor are increased by more than 100%, reaching... 

Katsnelson has shown that, within the Fermi-liquid approach, the optical conductivity of Dirac electrons in graphene is not affected by many-body interactions [M. I. Katsnelson, Eur. Phys. Lett. 84, 37001 (2008)EULEEJ0295-507510.1209/0295-5075/84/37001]. We show that, when the Dirac cone is tilted, the Fermi-liquid corrections arise in the optical conductivity in a manner that the correction depends on the angle between the electric field of the incident light and the tilt direction. Therefore the mapping of the optical conductivity for various directions of the incident light enables a determination of the many-body effect in the optical conductivity spectrum of the two-dimensional tilted... 

The efficient production of syngas from a CH4+CO2 mixture in an atmospheric pulsed glow discharge, sustained by corona pre-ionization, has been investigated. The products were mainly syngas (CO, H2) and hydrocarbons up to C4, with acetylene having the highest selectivity. The energy efficiency was within 15-40% for different experimental conditions, which demonstrates a comprehensive improvement relative to the achievements of other types of non-equilibrium plasma. These values are, however, comparable with the efficiencies obtained by gliding arc plasmas but this plasma operates at near room temperature. Furthermore, it has been shown that the energy efficiency is increased by decreasing... 

There is still an open question of how to prepare high-performance counter electrodes for dye solar cells (DSCs) at room temperature; a requirement for flexible DSCs. Here, we introduce Pt deposited cube-like chromium coating as a low-temperature highly-efficient counter electrode for DSCs. Cr is a chemically stable metal and can be easily electroplated on conductive substrates with high roughness (here ∼160 nm) and cube-like appearance. A cyclic electrochemical deposition method with optimized temperature and number of cycles is used to grow Pt nanoparticles on this surface and charge transfer resistance as low as 0.54 Ω cm2 and 0.27 Ω cm2 were obtained at 40 °C and 55 °C solution... 

The optimum convolution of dual short pulse for producing the maximum wakefield and the highest dissociation probability of CH4 has been investigated. By using three fundamental shapes of pulses though four different arrangements, the generated wake are considered in plasma. It is found that when the first and second pulses were rectangular-triangular and sinusoidal pulse shapes, respectively, the resultant wakefield amplitude is the highest. This effect opens up a new novel way by pulse shaping mechanism in the photo dissociation dynamics of molecules and controlling of chemical reactions in the desired channels by short pulse intense lasers for reducing the computation time of genetic... 

A semi-analytical formulation is presented to quantify the effects of group delay ripple on the performance of an optical beam-former. For delay elements, implemented with commercially available multi-channel fiber Bragg gratings, an impulse response is introduced and calculated for the group delay ripple. To do this, the transfer function of the fiber Bragg grating is parted into two dispersive and non-dispersive sections. This will also easethe demonstration of the fiber Bragg grating as a true time delay element. The formulation is applied to an ultra-wideband pulsed array of antennas. As an example the array factor and electric field patterns of a four element antenna array is derived,... 

Abstract This article studies a submerged membrane electro-bioreactor (SMEBR), an integrated system embracing biological treatment, electrical coagulation, and membrane filtration, all in one individual reactor, by applying an alternating electric field to a membrane bioreactor (MBR). The alternating electric field has been applied with current densities ranging from 5 to 23 A/m2 under eight different electrical exposure modes. The results indicate that under the optimum condition with a current density of 12.5 A/m2 and an exposure mode of (415 s OFF-185 s ON), the COD and phosphate removals would be respectively 4% and 43% more compared to an unmodified MBR system. Also at the same current... 

Abstract A visible-light-active Ag3PO4/BiPO4 nanocomposite with a p-n heterojunction structure was fabricated via a co-precipitation hydrothermal process using 2-hydroxylethylammonium formate (RTIL) as a room-temperature ionic liquid. The resulting catalysts were characterized by various techniques. The photocatalytic activity of the photocatalysts was evaluated by the photodegradation of phthalocyanine Reactive Blue 21 (RB21) under both visible and UV light irradiations. The results reveal that the heterojunction composite prepared in RTIL noticeably exhibited an improvement in both efficiency and rate of RB21 photodegradation in comparison with pure Ag3PO4 and BiPO4. The enhanced... 

Array scanning method (ASM) is employed to study the input impedance and radiation pattern of a two-dimensional periodic leaky-wave antenna (LWA). The antenna consists of a narrow horizontal strip dipole of arbitrary length underneath a two-dimensional (2D) periodic screen of metallic patches, which acts as a partially reflective surface (PRS), and backed by a ground plane. First, the Green's function in the presence of the 2D array of metallic patches is calculated by means of the ASM and then the current distribution and input impedance of the source dipole are calculated through the electric field integral equation and method of moments. The far-field pattern is computed using the... 

In this paper, the main discharge region and the plasma on the pre-ionization section in a TEA-CO2 laser are simulated by a distributed RLC electric circuit. The transmission line method is applied to the nonlinear distributed circuit, and it is approximated by a lumped nonlinear RLC circuit. By this method the governing partial differential equations are reduced to a system of ordinary differential equations. The parameters of the plasma in this laser are obtained by using this model. The possible photoionization instability is presented. To discuss the instability of the plasma, the current density perpendicular to the applied electric field is obtained. Furthermore, the electron... 

We fabricated gas sensors based on field ionization from multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) arrays grown on porous silicon templates. MWCNTs were grown through thermal chemical vapor deposition. We measured breakdown voltages, discharge and pre-discharge currents of the device for various gases in different concentrations. Our gas ionization sensors (GIS) presented good sensitivity, selectivity and short response time. The GISs based on porous substrates showed higher discharge current and good mechanical stability in comparison to those which were fabricated on polished silicon substrates. Additionally, we applied a high electric field to align CNTs. This increased the pre-breakdown... 

Accurate Partial Discharge (PD) measurement requires the expansion of the measurement frequency range to Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band. For this it is needed to implement modern techniques when monitoring an important element of power system, such as power transformer. Different kind of experimental models, such as insulation defect models, and the complete transformer windings models are used to simulate the partial insulation failure situations which occur in a real transformer. However, since in these models, some kind of simplifications are employed which may result in an electromagnetic waves (EM) propagation pattern different from what exists in a real transformer and encounter... 

We have developed a simulation system for nanoscale high-electron mobility transistors, in which the self-consistent solution of Poisson and Schrödinger equations is obtained with the finite element method. We solve the exact set of nonlinear differential equations to obtain electron wave function, electric potential distribution, electron density, Fermi surface energy and current density distribution in the whole body of the device. For more precision, local dependence of carrier mobility on the electric field distribution is considered. We furthermore compare the simulation to a recent experimental measurement and observe perfect agreement. We also propose a novel graded channel design,... 

In this paper, a three-dimensional (3D) analytical solution of the electrostatic potential is derived for the tri-gate tunneling field-effect transistors (TG TFETs) based on the perimeter-weighted-sum approach. The model is derived by separating the device into a symmetric and an asymmetric double-gate (DG) TFETs and then solving the 2D Poisson’s equation for these structures. The subthreshold tunneling current expression is extracted by numerical integrating the band-to-band tunneling generation rate over the volume of the device. It is shown that the potential distributions, the electric field profile, and the tunneling current predicted by the analytical model are in close agreement with... 

In this paper, the characteristics of an armchair graphene nanoribbon spin FET (SFET) are investigated in the presence and absence of surface roughness, by employing a multiorbital tight-binding method along with the nonequilibrium Green's function approach. It is found that the bandgap monotonically decreases with increasing the vertical electric field, since Stark effect enhances spin-flip rate under a high vertical electric field. Furthermore, spin transport in the presence of a random potential, which is induced by the concurrent effect of the applied vertical electric field and surface roughness, is carefully analyzed. This random potential strongly scatters carriers and reduces spin... 

In this study, a homotopy analysis method was used to obtain analytic solutions to predict dynamic pull-in instability of an electrostatically-actuated microbeam. The nonlinear describing equation of a microbeam affected by an electric field, including the fringing field effect, was obtained based on strain gradient elasticity, couple stress, and classical theory. Influences of different parameters on dynamic pull-in instability were investigated. The equation of motion of a double-clamped microbeam was discretized and solved by using Galerkin's method via mode summation. The resulting non-linear differential equation was also solved by using the Homotopy Analysis Method (HAM). The influence...