Sharif Digital Repository

The morphology of the perovskite layer, the effective extraction of the charge carriers, and their transport are the main factors determining the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the perovskite solar cells (PSCs). In this work, we demonstrated that the geometric and electronic structures of the PSCs could be modified by using a conductive polymer additive in the lead (Pb) halide layer prepared by a two-step deposition method. Polypyrrole (PPy) as a conductive polymer is used in the perovskite layers which could increase the PCE of CH3NH3PbI3-xClx mixed-halide PSCs. By adding an optimized amount of PPy, PCE has been raised from 10.4 to 13.2%. PPy acts as a conductive channel facilitating... 

In the present work, an unsymmetric laminated plate with surface bonded piezoelectric sensors, and actuators has been considered. Piezoelectric sensor were used to monitor the load and deformation bifurcation occurs. Monitoring the shape and load of a morphing structure is essential to ascertain that the structure is properly deployed and it is not loaded excessively, thus, preventing structural to failure. A piezoceramic actuator is used to provide activation load and to force the structure to change its stability state from one to another. A non-linear finite element model based on the layerwise displacement theory considering the electro-mechanical coupling effects of piezoelectric... 

The condensation process is of great importance in many heat transfer devices in which a large amount of energy must be transferred. Furthermore, condensation is a crucial part of energy conversion and affects the energy efficiency of thermal desalination plants and solar stills. During the condensation process in solar stills, an essential part of the energy is transferred through the condensation surface to produce fresh water. Therefore, the condensation surface plays a significant role in the working efficiency of solar stills. The wettability of the condensation surface influences the condensation mechanism, which, in turn, affects the efficiency of solar stills. This study aims to... 

In this paper, advantages of energy-efficient motors over standard-motors in terms of electrical energy saving and demand reduction in a tire-rubber factory are thoroughly evaluated. Energy-efficient motors reduce losses because of their better design, materials, and manufacturing. These motors are 2 to 8% more efficient than standard ones. Lengthening the core and using lower-electrical-loss steel, thinner stator laminations, and more copper in the windings reduce electrical losses. Because a motor consumes energy worth 4 to 10 times its own cost each year, energy-efficient motors often make economic sense in a wide variety of applications. At the end of this study, the amount of energy... 

Lifetime is the most important concern in wireless sensor networks due to limited battery power of sensor nodes. In this paper, we focus on designing an energy-efficient and energy-aware routing algorithm, LLR, to increase the operational lifetime of multi-hop wireless sensor networks in the presence of unreliable communication links. Our proposed protocol utilizes a parameter, Broadcasting Delay, in each node associated with the hop parameters passed by a route request packet to select long lifetime paths in the network. The key point in Broadcasting Delay formulation is that it includes both node and link specific parameters. We use two different scenarios: either the link layer... 

In this paper, the interaction between various window specifications and different climate conditions is investigated. For this purpose, simultaneous effects of several aspects including glazing system, glass type, filling gas, glass thickness, window frame fraction, and interior shading are considered under three different climatic conditions. To evaluate the energy performance of various considered alternatives, the energy simulation of a base case building is evaluated in a computer environment. Using the validated model, the energy analysis is quantitatively performed, and cost-benefit analyses from the viewpoints of both residents and government are carried out based on the domestic and... 

Nanoelectromechanical (NEM) relays are a promising emerging technology that has gained widespread research attention due to its zero leakage current, sharp ON-OFF transitions, and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor compatibility. As a result, NEM relays have been significantly investigated as highly energy-efficient design solutions. A major shortcoming of NEMs preventing their widespread use is their limited switching endurance. Hence, in order to utilize the low-power advantages of NEM relays, further device, circuit, and architectural techniques are required. In this paper, we introduce the concept of shadow NEM relays, which is a circuit-level technique to leverage the energy... 

A highly energy-efficiency switching procedure for the capacitor-splitting digital-To-Analog converter (DAC) is presented for successive approximation register (SAR) analogue-To-digital converters (ADCs). In this procedure, the MSB capacitor is divided into its binary constituents. All output digital bits, except the least significant bit (LSB), is determined using reference voltage (Vref), while the common-mode voltage (Vcm) is used to determine the LSB. Therefore, the precision of the proposed SAR ADC is independent of the precision of Vcm except in the LSB. This method reduces the area by 75% compared to the conventional binary weighted DAC and reduces the switching energy by 96.89%. ©... 

A highly energy-efficient switching method for capacitor-splitting digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) in successive approximation register (SAR) analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs) is presented. In the proposed DAC, a bottom-plate sampling method is introduced which requires only one reference voltage (Vcm = 1/2Vref) during the entire DAC switching steps. Therefore, in addition to the switching energy reduction, the precision of the DAC is increased since only one reference voltage is used. The DAC average switching energy and the area are reduced by 98.44% and 50% compared with the conventional binary weighted DAC  

In addition to meeting the real-time constraint, power/energy efficiency and high reliability are two vital objectives for real-time embedded systems. Recently, heterogeneous multicore systems have been considered an appropriate solution for achieving joint power/energy efficiency and high reliability. However, power/energy and reliability are two conflict requirements due to the inherent redundancy of fault-tolerance techniques. Also, because of the heterogeneity of the system, the execution of the tasks, especially real-time tasks, in the heterogeneous system is more complicated than the homogeneous system. The proposed method in this paper employs a passive primary/backup technique to... 

The effect of moisture on Shengli lignite breakage behavior and energy efficiency was studied experimentally using a standard Hardgrove mill fitted with a wattmeter. The grinding process concerned both the inputs, namely the occurrence and content of water and instantaneous energy consumption and the outputs, size-reduction and product fineness. Results show that the energy-size reduction process for grinding lignite is markedly influenced by moisture occurrence and content. Removing surface moisture from 37.90% to 16.61% (the air-dried condition) resulted in a slight increase of input energy by 0.04 kWh.t−1 per 10 s. However, with further drying inherent moisture to 0%, the consumed energy... 

Global warming escalation has extended average temperature of earth beyond its safe limit. To avert this environmental-threat, solar energy has acquired substantial attention of remarkable researchers in this century. To effectively utilize solar energy by transforming into thermal and electrical energy, the involvement of nanofluids having intensified thermal, optical and magnetic properties, has become very popular. The foremost objective of this article is to provide a comprehensive review on the applications of nanofluids in solar energy systems like solar collectors, photovoltaic cells, solar stills, and thermal energy storage, which are thoroughly discussed in this paper. The effect of... 

Data centers and their applications are exponentially growing. Consequently, their energy consumption and environmental impacts have also become increasingly more important. Virtualization technologies are widely used in modern data centers to ease the management of the data center and to reduce its energy consumption. Data centers that employ virtualization technologies are typically called virtualized or cloud data centers. Virtualization technologies enable virtual machine (VM) live migration, which allows the VMs to be freely moved among physical machines (PMs) with negligible downtime. Thus, several VMs can be packed on a single PM so as to let the PM run in its more energy-efficient... 

The renewed attention paid to rammed earth materials in recent decades is related to their sustainability, high thermo-buffering capacity and relatively low cost. The energy performance of rammed earth materials can be enhanced with stabilization. However, some of thermal enhancement methods have destructive side-effects. In the current study, the effect of three different methods was investigated on thirteen different alternatives of rammed earth materials to improve energy efficiency of buildings. These methods include using phase change materials, cementitious admixtures and external insulators. Thermo-dynamic parameters such as time lag, thermal conductivity and heat flux were measured... 

With the growing number of cores, high-performance systems face power challenges due to dominating communication power. Thus, attaining energy efficient high-bandwidth inter-core communication nominates photonic network-on chip as the most promising interconnection paradigm. Although photonic networks pave the way for extremely higher performance communications, their intrinsic susceptibility to thermal fluctuations intimidates reliability of system. This necessitates the development of methodologies to analyze and model thermal effects on network behavior. In this paper, we model temperature fluctuations of optical chips and analyze photonic networks in a holistic approach. We present a... 

Internet of Things (IoT) devices have strict necessity for power consumption in order to achieve expected battery life. IoT nodes feature extreme power consumption range over 100 dB, between their operating modes. The main focus of this paper is to design and implement a high precision, high dynamic range, low power, and flexible power measurement system, which can be applied to different applications. The proposed system consists of a voltage regulating control loop, zero offset amplifiers, high precision analog to digital converters, and reference voltage. The proper operation of the proposed circuit are verified numerically with simulations and experimental measurements. The implemented... 

Control input energy efficiency is an important issue which should be considered in designing any control system. Due to the importance of this subject, in the present paper fractional order control systems are studied in the viewpoint of control input energy efficiency. In this study, the divergent terms of the control input energy function of fractional order control systems are obtained. It is shown that these terms have a significant role in the amount of the energy injected to the plant by the controller. Finally, two examples are provided to demonstrate the usefulness of the presented results in the paper  

This paper presents solid-state ligand exchange of spin-coated colloidal lead sulfide quantum dot (PbS QD) films by methylammonium iodide (MAI) and integration of them in depleted heterojunction solar (DHS) devices having an antireflecting (AR) nanocone plastic structure. Time-resolved photoluminescence measurements determine a shorter lifetime of the charge carries on a semiconductor (TiO2) electron transfer layer for the MAI-passivated QD films as compared with those with long-chain aliphatic or short thiol ligands. Consequently, the DHS device yields improved power conversion efficiency (>125%) relative to oleic-acid-passivated PbS QD films. Using anodized aluminum oxide templates, an... 

The emergence of new memory technologies provides us with opportunity to enhance the properties of existing memory architectures. One such technology is Phase Change Memory (PCM) which boasts superior scalability, power savings, non-volatility, and a performance competitive to Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM). In this paper, we propose a write buffer architecture for Solid-State Drives (SSDs) which attempts to exploit PCM as a DRAM alternative while alleviating its issues such as long write latency, high write energy, and finite endurance. To this end and based on thorough I/O characterization of desktop and enterprise applications, we propose a hybrid DRAM-PCM SSD cache design with an... 

With the increasing popularity of cloud computing services, the more number of cloud data centers are constructed over the globe. This makes the power consumption of cloud data center elements as a big challenge. Hereby, several software and hardware approaches have been proposed to handle this issue. However, this problem has not been optimally solved yet. In this paper, we propose an online cloud resource management with live migration of virtual machines (VMs) to reduce power consumption. To do so, a prediction-based and power-aware virtual machine allocation algorithm is proposed. Also, we present a three-tier framework for energy-efficient resource management in cloud data centers....