Sharif Digital Repository

This paper presents a dry mechanochemical process to produce hydroxyapatite (HAp) nanoparticles. Two distinct chemical reactions are introduced to prepare HAp powders using milling process. Structural and morphological properties of the obtained materials are studied by X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. The results reveal that the single crystal HAp nanoparticles have been successfully produced in metallic and polymeric vials through two different experimental procedures. Tempered chrome steel and polyamide-6 materials are adopted as the metallic and polymeric vials respectively. Nanoellipse, nanorod and nanosphere powders are obtained in these experimental procedures.... 

Single-crystal hydroxyapatite (HAp) nanorods and nanogranules have been synthesized successfully by a mechanochemical process using two distinct experimental procedures. The experimental outcomes are characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. In this work, the feasibility of using polymeric milling media to prepare hydroxyapatite nanoparticles is described. The resulting hydroxyapatite powder exhibits an average size of about 20 to 23 nm. Final results indicate that the proposed synthesis strategy provides a facile pathway to obtain single-crystal HAp with high quality and suitable morphology. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights... 

In the present study, the structural features, corrosion behavior, and in vitro bioactivity of TiO 2 nanotubular arrays coated on Ti–6Al–4V (Ti64) alloy were investigated. For this reason, Ti64 plates were anodized in an ammonium fluoride electrolyte dissolved in a 90:10 ethylene glycol and water solvent mixture at room temperature under a constant potential of 60 V for 1 h. Subsequently, the anodized specimens were annealed in an argon gas furnace at 500 and 700 °C for 1.5 h with a heating and cooling rate of 5 °C min −1 . From XRD analysis and Raman spectroscopy, a highly crystalline anatase phase with tetragonal symmetry was formed from the thermally induced crystallization at 500 °C.... 

A long-term antibacterial activity of implants without compromising their biocompatibility is highly desirable to minimize the biomaterial-associated infections. Although tantalum oxide nanotubes (Ta2O5 NTs) are promising coating materials for orthodontics and orthopedics applications, their insufficient antibacterial activity retains vulnerability to post-implantation infections. This study aimed to endow antibacterial characteristics to the Ta2O5 NTs-coated Ti6Al4V substrates by decoration of silver oxide nanoparticles (Ag2O NPs). The well-adherent Ta2O5 NTs were grown via anodization of a pure tantalum (Ta) layer coated by physical vapor deposition (PVD) on the Ti6Al4V substrates. The... 

Functionally graded materials (FGMs) have been introduced to significantly reduce the temperature and thermal stresses on structures at severe thermal loading. Design and development of FGMs as the heat treatable and energy-absorbing materials for high-temperature and thermal protection systems requires understanding of exact temperature and thermal stress distribution, in order to optimize their resistance to failure. In this study, transient temperature and associated thermal stresses in a functionally graded slab symmetrically heated on both sides are determined by separation of the variables scheme. This method is applied to the heat conduction equation in terms of heat flux for... 

The nanotubular arrays of titanium dioxide (TiO2 NTs) have recently received considerable interest for fabrication of dental and orthopedic implants. However, their antibacterial activity requires substantial improvement for the potential infections minimization, without compromise of their biocompatibility. In this work, TiO2 NTs were developed on Ti6Al4V substrates via anodization at a constant potential of 60 V for 60 min, followed by heat treatment at 500 °C for 90 min. Physical vapor deposition (PVD) was further employed to decorate silver oxide nanoparticles (Ag2O NPs) on the nanotubular edges. The results indicated that the highly-ordered TiO2 NTs with decorated Ag2O NPs could promote... 

Unlike gold and silver, aluminum shows a localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) over a wide spectral range from ultraviolet (UV) to the visible region. Herein, we demonstrate a new process to optically couple TiO2 nanotubes (NTs) with a high-strength aluminum substrate, to achieve a synergistic enhancement of photocatalytic antibacterial effects through controlled LSPR of aluminum. The high-strength aluminum substrate was produced by tubular channel angular pressing (TCAP). Their LSPR was tailored through the formation of superficial nano-concave arrays (NCAs) with desired concave diameters. A layer of aligned TiO2 NTs was fabricated on the surface of aluminum nano-concave arrays (Al... 

The present study introduces a mechanism design theory framework to address the recruitment problem. Moreover, the study examines the features of the mechanism for the payment function based on value engineering. A two-stage model is also proposed for the mechanism based on the investigation of the initial documentation of the workers at the time of recruitment and their performance over the probationary period. The mechanism takes advantage of the concept of value engineering to account for the critical factors in selecting a firm for collaboration from a worker's perspective, such as wage and subjective preferences. Various features of the mechanism, such as incentive compatibility... 

This study aimed to prepare nanoporous anodic alumina on AA3003-H14 aluminum alloy using a mild anodization process with minimal working voltage and treatment time. The microstructural features, mechanical properties, and tribocorrosion behavior of the coatings were assessed to determine the optimum conditions for the fabrication of nanoporous anodic alumina on AA3003-H14 alloy. The microstructural analysis showed both uniform and nonuniform pore nucleations during anodization in H2SO4/C2H2O4, H2SO4/H2CrO4, and EG/H2O/NH4F electrolytes, where the optimal nanoporous structure with an average thickness, porosity, pore diameter, and interpore distance of 382 nm, 19%, 16 nm, and 35 nm,... 

Achieving dense off-chip interconnection with satisfactory electrical performance is emerging as a major challenge in advanced system engineering. Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) have been recently proposed as one of the potential candidate materials for both transistors and interconnect. In addition, development is still underway for alternative materials and processes for high aspect ratio (AR) contacts. Studding the effect of varying aspect ratio on relative stability of graphene nanoribbon interconnects is an important viewpoint in performance evaluation of system. In this paper, Nyquist stability analysis based on transmission line modeling (TLM) for GNR interconnects is investigated. In... 

The remarkable properties of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) make them attractive for nano-scale devices applications, especially for transistor and interconnect. Furthermore, for reduction interconnects signal delay, low dielectric constant materials are being introduced to replace conventional dielectrics in next generation IC technologies. With these regards, studding the effect of varying dielectric constant (e{open}r) on relative stability of graphene nanoribbons interconnect is an important viewpoint in performance evaluation of system. In this paper, Nyquist stability analysis based on transmission line modeling (TLM) for graphene nanoribbon interconnects is investigated. In this... 

Bode stability analysis based on transmission line modeling (TLM) for single wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) interconnects used in 3D-VLSI circuits is investigated for the first time. In this analysis, the dependence of the degree of relative stability for SWCNT interconnects on the geometry of each tube has been acquired. It is shown that, increasing the length and diameter of each tube, SWCNT interconnects become more stable  

This paper investigates the outage probability and the throughput of relay networks with joint information and energy transfer where the relay harvests energy from transmitted radio-frequency (RF) signal of the source. Considering different power consumption models, we derive the outage probability of the systems for both adaptive and non-adaptive power allocations at the relay. With a total energy consumption constraint at the source, we provide closed-form expressions for the optimal time sharing and power allocation between the source energy and information transfer signals. The analytical and simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of joint energy and information transfer systems... 

Effect of using Al 2O 3-water nanofluids with different volume fractions and particle diameters on generated entropy, hydrodynamic performance and heat transfer characteristics of a tangential micro-heat sink (TMHS) was numerically investigated in this research. Results indicated that considerable heat transfer enhancement is possible when using Al 2O 3-water nanofluids as coolant and clearly the enhancement improves with increasing particles concentration and decreasing particles size. However, using nanofluid has also induced drastic effects on the pumping power that increases with particles volume fraction and Reynolds number. Finally, it was found that generated total entropy decreases... 

Controlling dynamic biped robots is a complex challenge. Almost all researches in this field assume that the internal structure and dynamics of the robot is known to the controller. But in real-world problems we don't have exact model of the robot or this model is very complicated and is not useful in real-time control. As a matter of fact, we use many devices without any knowledge about their internal structure or analytical models. Some researchers used learning algorithms to control bipeds, but their performance is not comparable to human's learning. Fuzzy controllers can control the bipeds with lower cost, but they need sufficient rules. In the previous works we proposed a linguistic... 

The inter-subject variability poses a challenge in cross-subject Brain-Computer Interface learning and classification. As a matter of fact, in cross-subject learning not all available subjects may improve the performance on a test subject. In order to address this problem we propose a subject selection algorithm and we investigate the use of this algorithm in the Riemannian geometry classification framework. We demonstrate that this new approach can significantly improve cross-subject learning without the need of any labeled data from test subjects  

This paper develops a stochastic geometry-based approach for the modeling and analysis of finite millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless networks where a random number of transmitters and receivers are randomly located inside a finite region. We consider a selection strategy to serve a reference receiver by the transmitter providing the maximum average received power among all transmitters. In our system model, we employ the unique features of mmWave communications such as directional transmit and receive beamforming and different channels for line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) links. Accordingly, deploying a blockage process suitable for mmWave networks, we study the coverage... 

In wireless body area networks (WBANs) it is necessary to devise an energy-efficient MAC scheduling mechanism which is capable of meeting strict QoS requirements. In this paper, special characteristics of WBAN channels, namely, the slow fading, the periodicity of fading, and the correlation among the channels have been exploited to formulate the sensor scheduling problem as a partially observable Markov decision problem (POMDP). Specific algorithms based on value iteration and pruning have been proposed in order to reduce the computational burden associated with the corresponding POMDP. The proposed scheduling mechanism is compared against a TDMA scheduling for a three-sensor network, and an...