Performance Evaluation of wide Bandwidth RF Signal Generator Chip

The work in this paper is to give an overview of the compact wide band RF signal generator board design, emphasizing on the analyses and evaluation of the performance characteristics corresponding to the output signal purity and stability. The paper describes the design aspects involved in developing a reliable RF generating source which includes details regarding the factors that have taken care for optimum output power, spectral purity and noise performance. The simulation results obtained from the tool given by Maxim integrated are used as reference to evaluate the actual board when it is realised. These results are shown here for reference. Design aspects such as the power supply, noise filtering, loop filter component selection board layout consideration along with easy and compact form factor is considered. The board contains not only the signal generator device but also an FPGA from Xilinx to control the device, to make the board more useful for future applications; the board also has an SDRAM and an USB controller. This paper mainly concentrates on to MAX2870 signal generator and simulation results obtained by EE-Sim tool. Since the actual board is still in the process of being developed, the comparison of the actual performance to the simulation performance may not be possible at this point of time but definitely is in pipeline

Microstructural and ionic transport studies of hydrothermally synthesized lanthanum fluoride nanoparticles

This article presents the structural and transport characteristics of hydrothermally synthesized LaF3 nanoparticles with an average crystallite size of 35nm. The phase formation of the material is confirmed by both X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy techniques. In addition, phase purity of the LaF3 nanoparticles is corroborated by micro-Raman spectroscopy studies. The complex impedance plots at different temperatures reveal that the conductivity is predominantly due to the intrinsic bulk grains and the conductivity relaxation is non-Debye in nature. The frequency variation of conductivity exhibits dispersion at higher frequencies that can be explained with the frame work of Almond-West formalism. The conduction process is controlled by the mobility of the charge carriers and the charge of transport of mobile fluoride ions occur through hopping mechanism. The scaling behavior of both frequency dependence of conductivity and complex impedance plots at different temperatures confirm that the relaxation mechanism of the mobile fluoride ions is independent of temperature

Physical properties of high performance fluoride ion conductor BaSnF4 thin films by pulsed laser deposition

This article presents the results on the growth and characterization of BaSnF4 thin films on glass substrates prepared by pulsed laser deposition technique. The structural results of BaSnF4 thin film carried out by glancing angle X-ray diffraction technique indicates the formation of the film with similar structure (tetragonal, P-4/nmm) to the bulk target material. The absorption coefficient and band gap of the film is determined by suitable analysis of the transmittance spectra. The transport properties of the thin films are studied using impedance spectroscopy in the temperature range of 323-573 K. The frequency-dependent imaginary part of impedance plot shows that the conductivity relaxation is non-Debye in nature. The scaling behavior of the imaginary part of impedance at various frequencies indicates temperature-independent relaxation behavior

Crystallography and Growth of Epitaxial Oxide Films for Fundamental Studies of Cathode Materials Used in Advanced Li-Ion Batteries

Li-ion battery systems, synthesized as epitaxial thin films, can provide powerful insights into their electrochemical processes. Crystallographic analysis shows that many important cathode oxides have an underlying similarity: their structures can be considered as different ordering schemes of Li and transition metal ions within a pseudo-cubic sublattice of oxygen anions arranged in a face-center cubic (FCC) fashion. This oxygen sublattice is compatible with SrTiO3 and similar perovskite oxides, thus perovskites can be used as supporting substrates for growing epitaxial cathode films. The predicted epitaxial growth and crystallographic relations were experimentally verified for different oxide films deposited by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on SrTiO3 or SrRuO3/SrTiO3 of different orientations. The results based on cross-sectional high-resolution TEM of the following films are presented in the paper: (a) trigonal LiCoO2; (b) orthorhombic LiMnO2; (c) monoclinic Li2MnO3; (d) compositionally-complex monoclinic Li1.2Mn0.55Ni0.15Co0.1O2. All results demonstrated the feasibility of epitaxial growth for these materials, with the growth following the predicted cube-on-cube orientation relationship between the cubic and pseudo-cubic oxygen sublattices of a substrate and a film, respectively