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Microconfined flow behavior of red blood cells by image analysis techniques
This paper was presented at the 4th Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2014), which was held at University College, London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute, ASME Press, LCN London Centre for Nanotechnology, UCL University College London, UCL Engineering, the International NanoScience Community, www.nanopaprika.eu.Red blood cells (RBCs) perform essential functions in human body, such as gas exchange between
blood and tissues, thanks to their ability to deform and flow in the microvascular network. The high RBC
deformability is mainly due to the viscoelastic properties of the cell membrane. Since an impaired RBC
deformability could be found in some diseases, such as malaria, sickle cell anemia, diabetes and hereditary
disorders, there is the need to provide further insight into measurement of RBC deformability in a
physiologically-relevant flow field. Here, we report on an imaging-based in vitro systematic microfluidic
investigation of RBCs flowing either in microcapillaries or in a microcirculation-mimicking device
containing a network of microchannels of diameter comparable to cell size. RBC membrane shear elastic
modulus and surface viscosity have been investigated by using diverging channels, while RBC time recovery
constant have been measured in start-up experiments. Moreover, RBC volume and surface area have been
measured in microcapillary flow. The comprehension of the single cell behavior led to the analysis of the
RBC flow-induced clustering. Overall, our results provide a novel technique to estimate RBC deformability,
that can be used for the analysis of pathological RBCs, for which reliable quantitative methods are still
lacking
YBCO microwave resonators for strong collective coupling with spin ensembles
Coplanar microwave resonators made of 330 nm-thick superconducting YBCO have
been realized and characterized in a wide temperature (, 2-100 K) and
magnetic field (, 0-7 T) range. The quality factor exceeds 10
below 55 K and it slightly decreases for increasing fields, remaining 90 of
for T and K. These features allow the coherent coupling
of resonant photons with a spin ensemble at finite temperature and magnetic
field. To demonstrate this, collective strong coupling was achieved by using
DPPH organic radical placed at the magnetic antinode of the fundamental mode:
the in-plane magnetic field is used to tune the spin frequency gap splitting
across the single-mode cavity resonance at 7.75 GHz, where clear anticrossings
are observed with a splitting as large as MHz at K. The
spin-cavity collective coupling rate is shown to scale as the square root of
the number of active spins in the ensemble.Comment: to appear in Appl. Phys. Let
Photophysics of pentacene-doped picene thin films
Here were report a study of picene nano-cristalline thin films doped with
pentacene molecules. The thin films were grown by supersonic molecular beam
deposition with a doping concentration that ranges between less than one
molecules of pentacene every 104 picene molecules up to about one molecule of
pentacene every 102 of picene. Morphology and opto-electronic properties of the
films were studied as a function of the concentration of dopants. The optical
response of the picene films, characterized by absorption, steady-state and
time-resolved photoluminescence measurements, changes dramatically after the
doping with pentacene. An efficient energy transfer from the picene host matrix
to the pentacene guest molecules was observed giving rise to an intense
photoluminescence coming out from pentacene. This efficient mechanism opens the
possibility to exploit applications where the excitonic states of the guest
component, pentacene, are of major interest such as MASER. The observed
mechanism could also serve as prototypical system for the study of the
photophysics of host guest systems based on different phenacenes and acenes.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure
Surface doping in T6/ PDI-8CN2 Heterostructures investigated by transport and photoemission measurements
In this paper, we discuss the surface doping in sexithiophene (T6) organic
field-effect transistors by PDI-8CN2. We show that an accumulation
heterojunction is formed at the interface between the organic semiconductors
and that the consequent band bending in T6 caused by PDI-8CN2 deposition can be
addressed as the cause of the surface doping in T6 transistors. Several
evidences of this phenomenon have been furnished both by electrical transport
and photoemission measurements, namely the increase in the conductivity, the
shift of the threshold voltage and the shift of the T6 HOMO peak towards higher
binding energies.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
Linear conduction in N-type organic field effect transistors with nanometric channel lengths and graphene as electrodes
In this work, we test graphene electrodes in nanometric channel n-type Organic Field Effect Transistors (OFETs) based on thermally evaporated thin films of the perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic acid diimide derivative. By a thorough comparison with short channel transistors made with reference gold electrodes, we found that the output characteristics of the graphene-based devices respond linearly to the applied bias, in contrast with the supralinear trend of gold-based transistors. Moreover, short channel effects are considerably suppressed in graphene electrode devices. More specifically, current on/off ratios independent of the channel length (L) and enhanced response for high longitudinal biases are demonstrated for L down to 3c140 nm. These results are rationalized taking into account the morphological and electronic characteristics of graphene, showing that the use of graphene electrodes may help to overcome the problem of Space Charge Limited Current in short channel OFETs
Very low bias stress in n-type organic single crystal transistors
Bias stress effects in n-channel organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) are
investigated using PDIF-CN2 single-crystal devices with Cytop gate dielectric,
both under vacuum and in ambient. We find that the amount of bias stress is
very small as compared to all (p-channel) OFETs reported in the literature.
Stressing the PDIF-CN2 devices by applying 80 V to the gate for up to a week
results in a decrease of the source drain current of only ~1% under vacuum and
~10% in air. This remarkable stability of the devices leads to characteristic
time constants, extracted by fitting the data with a stretched exponential -
that are \tau ~ 2\cdot10^9 s in air and \tau ~ 5\cdot10^9 s in vacuum -
approximately two orders of magnitude larger than the best values reported
previously for p-channel OFETs.Comment: Submitted to Applied Physics Letters; 14 pages, 3 figure
Evaluating the use of graphene electrodes in sub-micrometric, high-frequency n-type organic transistors
In this work we report on fully operational sub-micrometric low voltage OFETs by using graphene as the source-drain electrodes pair and a high-κ ultra-thin dielectric in a local gate architecture. The impact of the graphene electrodes on the miniaturization of the organic devices has been assessed, with particular attention to the influence of the contact resistances as well as the parasitic overlap gate capacitance on the device bandwidth. By the use of a modified Transmission-Line-Method, contact resistances have been analyzed as function of the applied voltages, revealing characteristic functional trends that follow the doping state of graphene electrodes. Through impedance spectroscopy of the electrodes, cut-off frequencies as high as 105 Hz have been estimated, highlighting the peculiar role of quantum capacitance of graphene in such architectures
Perylene diimides functionalized with N-thiadiazole substituents: Synthesis and electronic properties in OFET devices
Two new perylene diimide derivatives N,N′-bis(5-tridecyl-1,3,4- thiadiazol-2-yl)perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic 3,4:9,10-diimide (PDI-T1) and N,N′-bis[5-(1-hexyl)nonyl-1,3,4-thiadiazol-2-yl]perylene-3,4,9, 10-tetracarboxylic 3,4:9,10-diimide (PDI-T2), achieved by functionalizing the basic perylene molecular core at imide nitrogen with 1,3,4-thiadiazole rings, have been synthesized. Both these compounds make possible the fabrication of n-type organic thin-film transistors able to work in air, even when bare SiO2 surfaces are utilized as gate dielectric. As active channels of transistors in the bottom-contact bottom-gate configuration, PDI-T1 evaporated films exhibited a maximum mobility of 0.016 cm2/V s in vacuum. For evaporated PDI-T2 films, instead, mobility values were found to be more than one order of magnitude lower, because of their reduced degree of crystalline order. However, PDI-T2 films can be also deposited by solution techniques and field-effect transistors were fabricated by spin-coating, displaying mobility values ranging between 10-6 and 10-5 cm2/V s. Similar to what previously found for other perylene diimide derivatives, our experimental work also demonstrates that the electrical response of both PDI-T1 and PDI-T2 transistors under ambient conditions can be improved by increasing the level of hydrophobicity of the dielectric surface. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
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