Sharif Digital Repository

An Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) is a capable tool to manipulate nanoparticles by exerting pushing force on the nanoparticles located on the substrate. In reality, the substrate cannot be considered as a smooth surface particularly at the nanoscale. Hence, the particle may encounter a step on the substrate during a manipulation. In this study, dynamics of the nanoparticle on a stepped substrate and critical pushing force in the manipulation are investigated. There are two possible dynamic modes that may happen in the manipulation on the stepped substrate. In one mode, the nanoparticle may slide on the step edge and then climb up to the step which is a desired mode. Another possible mode is... 

Molecular dynamics simulations are carried out to investigate the manipulation of metallic clusters on double-layer surfaces. The system parts are made of transition metals. The conditions which are subjected to change in the tests are material combinations for cluster, main substrate and lubricant layer (adlayer). In addition to qualitative observations, two criteria which represent the particle deformation and substrate abrasion are utilized as evaluation tools and are computed for each case. Obtaining this sort of knowledge is highly beneficial for further experiments in order to be able to plan the conditions and routines, which guarantee better success in the manipulation process  

In this paper, a novel robust adaptive control method is proposed for controlling the Lorenz chaotic attractor. A new backstepping controller for the Lorenz system based on the Lyapunov stability theorem is proposed to overcome the singularity problem that appeared in using the typical backstepping control method. By exploiting the property of the system, the resulting controller is shown to be singularity free and the closed loop system is globally stable. Due to unavailability of system states measurement in practice, the controller is selected such that only one system state is needed. To overcome the problem of parameter uncertainty, an additional term to Lyapunov function is added and... 

In this study, a general 3D distributed modeling of Trolling-Mode AFM (TR-AFM) as a nanorobot is presented to analyze the 2D manipulation process of a spherical cell. To this aim, the analysis is categorized into 3 sections. In the first section, 6 deformations of TR-AFM are taken into account, and the standard model of the system is obtained. Moreover, the system is simulated in ANSYS Workbench. The results of modal and transient analyses of the system from both analytical and software methods reveal high agreement, which confirms the accuracy of the presented analytical model. In the second section, by utilizing the 3D derived model, displacement of a spherical yeast single cell (W303)... 

The anatase phase of titania was stabilised with physically modifying particulate sol-gel process. Two major parameters, peptisation temperature and drying temperature, were identified which were responsible for retarding the anatase to rutile phase transformation, crystal growth and packing of primary particles. The critical nucleus size of transformation was controlled by natural (at 25 °C) and artificial (at 50 and 70 °C) peptisation techniques. Moreover, sintering of primary particles was controlled by cool (at 0 and 5 °C) and normal (at 25 °C) drying techniques. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis confirmed that a full conversion of titanium isopropoxide is obtained... 

Mixing in droplets is an essential task in a variety of microfluidic systems. Inspired by electrokinetic mixing, electric field-induced hydrodynamic flow inside a charged droplet embedded in an unbounded polyelectrolyte hydrogel is investigated theoretically. In this study, the polyelectrolyte hydrogel is modeled as a soft, and electrically charged porous solid saturated with a salted Newtonian fluid, and the droplet is considered an incompressible Newtonian fluid. The droplet-hydrogel interface is modeled as a surface, which is located at the plane of shear, with the electrostatic potential ζ. The fluid inside the droplet attains a finite velocity owing to hydrodynamic coupling with the... 

The electric-field induced response of a droplet embedded in a quenched polyelectrolyte gel is calculated theoretically. The response comprises the droplet translation and the electric-field induced flow fields within the droplet. The gel is modeled as a soft, and electrically charged porous solid saturated with a salted Newtonian fluid. The droplet is considered an incompressible Newtonian fluid with no free charge. An analytical solution, using the perturbation methodology and linear superposition, is obtained for the leading-order steady response to a DC electric-field. The fluid within the droplet is driven due to hydrodynamic coupling with the electroosmotic flow. The fluid velocity... 

Characterization of droplet-hydrogel interfaces is of crucial importance to engineer droplet-hydrogel composites for a variety of applications. In order to develop electrokinetic diagnostic tools for probing droplet-hydrogel interfaces, the displacement of a charged droplet embedded in a polyelectrolyte hydrogel exposed to an oscillating electric field is determined theoretically. The polyelectrolyte hydrogel is modeled as an incompressible, charged, porous, and elastic solid saturated with a salted Newtonian fluid. The droplet is considered an incompressible Newtonian fluid with no charges within the droplet. The droplet-hydrogel interface is modeled as a surface with the thickness of zero... 

Determination of effective transport properties of droplet-hydrogel composites is essential for various applications. The transport of ions through a droplet-hydrogel composite subjected to an electric field is theoretically studied as an initial step toward quantifying the effective transport properties of droplet-hydrogel composites. A three-phase electrokinetic model is used to derive the microscale characteristics of the polyelectrolyte hydrogel, and the droplet is considered an incompressible Newtonian fluid. The droplet-hydrogel interface is modeled as a surface, which encloses the interior fluid. The surface has the thickness of zero and the electrostatic potential ζ. Standard... 

Nanostructured and mesoporous TiO2-Ta2O5 films and powders with various TiO2:Ta2O5 molar ratios and high specific surface area (SSA) have been prepared by a straightforward particulate sol-gel route. Titanium isopropoxide and tantalum ethoxide were used as precursors and hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) was used as a polymeric fugitive agent (PFA) in order to increase the SSA. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) revealed that powders contained both hexagonal δ-Ta2O5 and monoclinic β-Ta2O5 phases, as well as anatase and rutile. It was observed that Ta2O5 retarded anatase-to-rutile transformation. Furthermore, δ → β phase transformation temperature increased... 

The original article contained a mistake in Equation 1. The corrected Equation 1 is shown below: MX+Cx+Kx=f.The original article has been updated © Springer Nature B.V. 2022  

For the present article, a pulsating heat pipe (PHP) is fabricated and tested experimentally by bending a copper tube. The effects of working fluid, heat input, charging ratio, inclination angle, magnets location, and ferrofluid (magnetic nanofluid) volumetric concentration have been investigated on the thermal performance of this PHP. Experimental results show that using ferrofluid as a working fluid improves the thermal performance of the PHP significantly. Moreover, applying a magnetic field on a ferrofluidic PHP reduces its thermal resistance. By changing the inclination angle of the PHP from vertical mode to angles close to the horizontal mode, the present PHP has a constant and... 

In this article, the control of an electrohydrodynamic 3D printer is studied. The proposed controller has a hybrid piecewise linear feedback form which is designed based on a hybrid model of the printer. The hybrid model is obtained via a gray box identification process whose structure is proposed utilizing the results of the finite element simulation of the printer within the COMSOL Multiphysics software. The asymptotic stability of the hybrid control combined with a hybrid observer is proven using the Lyapunov theory. In addition, the obtained control is applied to the finite element model of the printer to check its performance which shows the success of the controlled system in tracking... 

Nanostructured TiO2-Al2O3 films and powders were prepared by a straightforward aqueous particulate sol-gel route. Titanium (IV) isopropoxide and aluminum chloride were used as precursors, and hydroxypropyl cellulose was used as a polymeric fugitive agent in order to increase the porosity. The effect of Al:Ti molar ratio was studied on the crystallization behavior of the products. X-ray diffraction (XRD) revealed that the powders crystallized at 800°C, containing anatase-TiO2, rutile-TiO2 and cubic-Al2O3 phases. Furthermore, it was found that Al2O3 retarded the anatase to rutile transformation. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) image showed that one of the smallest crystallite sizes was... 

Analyzing the features of the chromosomes can be very useful for diagnosis of many genetic disorders or prediction of the possible abnormalities that may occur in the future generations. For this purpose, karyotype is often used which to make it, there is necessary to identify each one of the 24 chromosomes from the microscopic images. Definition and extraction of the morphological and band pattern based features for each chromosome is the first step to identify them. An important class of the morphological features is the location of the chromosome's centromere. Thus, centromere localization is an initial step in designing an automatic karyotyping system. In this paper, a novel algorithm... 

This study presents optimal placement of Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) for the purpose of power system observability using topology based formulated algorithms. The optimal PMU placement problem is formulated to minimize the number of PMUs installation subject to full network observability. The Branch and Bound (B and B) and genetic algorithm optimization methods are selected to solve the problem, which are suitable for problems with integer and Boolean variables. Topology-based algorithm used for observability analysis and a hybrid method of topology transformation and nonlinear constraint is used to form constraints. The IEEE 14, 30, 57 and 118-bus and the New England 39-bus test systems...