An intermediate-layer lithography method for producing metal micron/nano patterns and conducting polymer-based microdevices

Metals have been widely used in the areas of integration circuit (IC) and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) fields as materials for gates, contact pads, interconnects, corrosion resistance coatings, rectifying contacts, redundancy memories, heating elements, mechanical parts, magnetic component, etc. due to their good properties, such as high electrical conductivity and good thermal conductivity. Conducting polymers, because of their promising potential to replace silicon and metals in building devices, have attracted great attention in recent decades. Traditional photolithography methods are often used to pattern metals and conducting polymers. However, it cannot be used to fabricate nano patterns because the minimum feature size is limited by wavelength of light. Lithography processes also involve aggressive chemicals, organic solvents, light, or moisture, and thus may affect human health, pollute the environment, and degrade devices. Therefore, a new pattern technique is needed to solve these problems. Soft lithography has been successfully used to fabricate both metal and conducting polymer patterns. The techniques are free of harmful radiations and other chemicals that might alter the properties of the conducting polymer. However, the problems which result from a soft stamp may cause dislocations of patterns or variations of dimensions. The hot embossing process has low cost, high throughout, and high reliability. Also, no chemical etchant or light is involved in this process. On the other hand, it cannot be directly used to pattern metal or conducting polymer. Motivated by a macrocutting process often used in the manufacturing industry to pattern sheet metals, an innovative intermediate-layer lithography (ILL) approach is developed in this work to generate micro/nano patterns in a thin metal or conducting polymer film. In the ILL method, an intermediate layer of PMMA is introduced between a silicon substrate and a thin metal or conducting polymer film. Subsequently, the metal or conducting polymer film is imprinted through a mold insertion using a hot embossing technique. The ILL has been applied to produce various micropatterns in Al, PEDOT, and PPy films. Micro devices, such as heaters, diodes and capacitors, were also fabricated using the ILL method. Metal nanopatterns have been successfully generated using this approach. This dissertation addresses the corresponding fabrication details and gives a numerical interpretation of some interesting experimental phenomena observed

Spectroscopic Constants and Vibrational Frequencies for l-C3H+ and Isotopologues from Highly-Accurate Quartic Force Fields: The Detection of l-C3H+ in the Horsehead Nebula PDR Questioned

Very recently, molecular rotational transitions observed in the photon-dominated region of the Horsehead nebula have been attributed to l-C3H+. In an effort to corroborate this finding, we employed state-of-the art and proven high-accuracy quantum chemical techniques to compute spectroscopic constants for this cation and its isotopologues. Even though the B rotational constant from the fit of the observed spectrum and our computations agree to within 20 MHz, a typical level of accuracy, the D rotational constant differs by more than 40%, while the H rotational constant differs by three orders of magnitude. With the likely errors in the rotational transition energies resulting from this difference in D on the order of 1 MHz for the lowest observed transition (J = 4 <- 3) and growing as J increases, the assignment of the observed rotational lines from the Horsehead nebula to l-C3H+ is questionable

Adoption of ride-sharing apps by Chinese taxi drivers and its implication for the equality and wellbeing in the sharing economy

The adoption of ride-sharing apps is critical to the survival of taxi drivers in the mobile-driven sharing economy. Based on survey data collected from 1195 licensed taxi drivers in Beijing, the authors present an integrated technology adoption model that combines technology and use factors (perceived usefulness and ease of use), social factors (word-of-mouth, peer adoption and subjective norms), system factors (socioeconomic and digital inequality), and audience factors (demographic characteristics and innovative personality traits). The results showed that adoption was innate, inherited, and socially driven. Adoption was positively associated with income, access to technologies, innovative personality trait, peer adoption, word-of-mouth, and perceived usefulness of the apps. The implications of the findings for inequality in the sharing economy are discussed

Accurate ab initio Quartic Force Fields of Cyclic and Bent HC2N Isomers

Highly correlated ab initio quartic force field (QFFs) are used to calculate the equilibrium structures and predict the spectroscopic parameters of three HC2N isomers. Specifically, the ground state quasilinear triplet and the lowest cyclic and bent singlet isomers are included in the present study. Extensive treatment of correlation effects were included using the singles and doubles coupled-cluster method that includes a perturbational estimate of the effects of connected triple excitations, denoted CCSD(T). Dunning s correlation-consistent basis sets cc-pVXZ, X=3,4,5, were used, and a three-point formula for extrapolation to the one-particle basis set limit was used. Core-correlation and scalar relativistic corrections were also included to yield highly accurate QFFs. The QFFs were used together with second-order perturbation theory (with proper treatment of Fermi resonances) and variational methods to solve the nuclear Schr dinger equation. The quasilinear nature of the triplet isomer is problematic, and it is concluded that a QFF is not adequate to describe properly all of the fundamental vibrational frequencies and spectroscopic constants (though some constants not dependent on the bending motion are well reproduced by perturbation theory). On the other hand, this procedure (a QFF together with either perturbation theory or variational methods) leads to highly accurate fundamental vibrational frequencies and spectroscopic constants for the cyclic and bent singlet isomers of HC2N. All three isomers possess significant dipole moments, 3.05D, 3.06D, and 1.71D, for the quasilinear triplet, the cyclic singlet, and the bent singlet isomers, respectively. It is concluded that the spectroscopic constants determined for the cyclic and bent singlet isomers are the most accurate available, and it is hoped that these will be useful in the interpretation of high-resolution astronomical observations or laboratory experiments

The anti-sepsis activity of the components of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction with high lipid A-binding affinity

Huanglian Jiedu Decoction (HJD), one of the classic recipes for relieving toxicity and fever, is a common method for treating sepsis in China. However, the effective components of HJD have not yet been identified. This experiment was carried out to elucidate the effective components of HJD against sepsis. Thus, seven fractions from HJD were tested using a biosensor to test their affinity for lipid A. The components obtained that had high lipid A-binding fractions were further separated, and their affinities to lipid A were assessed with the aid of a biosensor. The levels of LPS in the blood were measured, and pathology experiments were conducted. The LPS levels and mRNA expression analysis of TNF-α and IL-6 of the cell supernatant and animal tissue were evaluated to investigate the molecular mechanisms. Palmatine showed the highest affinity to lipid A and was evaluated by in vitro and in vivo experiments. The results of the in vitro and in vivo experiments indicated that the levels of LPS, TNF-α and IL-6 of the palmatine group were significantly lower than those of the sepsis model group (p \u3c 0.01). The group treated with palmatine showed strong neutralizing LPS activity in vivo. The palmatine group exhibited stronger protective activity on vital organs compared to the LPS-induced animal model. This verifies that HJD is a viable treatment option for sepsis given that there are multiple components in HJD that neutralize LPS, decrease the release of IL-6 and TNF-α induced by LPS, and protect vital organs

Fast and Accurate, Convolutional Neural Network Based Approach for Object Detection from UAV

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), have intrigued different people from all walks of life, because of their pervasive computing capabilities. UAV equipped with vision techniques, could be leveraged to establish navigation autonomous control for UAV itself. Also, object detection from UAV could be used to broaden the utilization of drone to provide ubiquitous surveillance and monitoring services towards military operation, urban administration and agriculture management. As the data-driven technologies evolved, machine learning algorithm, especially the deep learning approach has been intensively utilized to solve different traditional computer vision research problems. Modern Convolutional Neural Networks based object detectors could be divided into two major categories: one-stage object detector and two-stage object detector. In this study, we utilize some representative CNN based object detectors to execute the computer vision task over Stanford Drone Dataset (SDD). State-of-the-art performance has been achieved in utilizing focal loss dense detector RetinaNet based approach for object detection from UAV in a fast and accurate manner.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1803.0111

RELIABLE IR LINE LISTS FOR SO2 AND CO2 ISOTOPOLOGUES COMPUTED FOR ATMOSPHERIC MODELING ON VENUS AND EXOPLANETS

For SO$_{2}$ atmospheric characterization in Venus and other Exoplanetary environments, recently we presented Ames-296K line lists for 626 (upgraded) and other 4 symmetric isotopologues: 636, 646, 666 and 828. For CO$_{2}$, we reported Ames-296K (1E-42 cm/molecule) and Ames-1000K (1E-36 cm/molecule) IR line lists up to E'=18000 cm$^{-1}$ for 13 CO$_{2}$ isotopologues, including symmetric species 626, 636, 646, 727, 737, 828, 838, and asymmetric species 627, 628, 637, 638, 728, 738. CO$_{2}$ line shape parameters were also determined for four different temperature ranges: Mars, Earth, Venus, and higher temperatures. General line position prediction accuracy up to 5000 cm$^{-1}$ (SO$_{2}$) or 13000 cm$^{-1}$ (CO$_{2}$) is 0.01 � 0.02 cm$^{-1}$. Most transition intensity deviations are less than 5-10%, when compare to experimentally measured quantities. With such prediction accuracy, these SO$_{2}$ and CO$_{2}$ isotopologue lists are the best available alternative for those wide spectra region missing from spectroscopic databases such as HITRAN and CDMS. For example, only very limited data exist for SO$_{2}$ 646/636 and no data at all for other minor isotopologues. They should greatly facilitate spectroscopic analyses in future laboratory or astronomical observations. Our line list work are based on "Best Theory + Reliable High-Resolution Experiment" strategy, i.e. using an ab initio potential energy surface refined with selected reliable high resolution experimental data, and high quality CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pVQ(or Q+d)Z dipole moment surfaces. Note that we have solved a convergence defect on SO$_{2}$ Ames-1 PES and further improved the quality and completeness of the Ames-296K SO$_{2}$ list by including most recent experimental data into the refinement. We will compare the Ames-296K SO$_{2}$ and CO$_{2}$ lists to latest experiments and HITRAN/CDMS models. We expect more interactions between experimental and theoretical efforts. Currently the Ames-296K lists are available at http://huang.seti.org/

Protonated Nitrous Oxide, NNOH(+): Fundamental Vibrational Frequencies and Spectroscopic Constants from Quartic Force Fields

The interstellar presence of protonated nitrous oxide has been suspected for some time. Using established high-accuracy quantum chemical techniques, spectroscopic constants and fundamental vibrational frequencies are provided for the lower energy O-protonated isomer of this cation and its deuterated isotopologue. The vibrationally-averaged B0 and C0 rotational constants are within 6 MHz of their experimental values and the D(subJ) quartic distortion constants agree with experiment to within 3%. The known gas phase OH stretch of NNOH(+) is 3330.91 cm(exp1), and the vibrational configuration interaction computed result is 3330.9 cm(exp1). Other spectroscopic constants are also provided, as are the rest of the fundamental vibrational frequencies for NNOH(+) and its deuterated isotopologue. This high-accuracy data should serve to better inform future observational or experimental studies of the rovibrational bands of protonated nitrous oxide in the ISM and the laboratory