Refine
Year of publication
- 2018 (41) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (reviewed) (41) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (41)
Keywords
- Mikrostruktur (2)
- Plastizität (2)
- cardiac resynchronization therapy (2)
- 3D modeling (1)
- 3d Heart Simulation (1)
- Aging (1)
- Alexander von Humboldt (1)
- Astaxanthin (1)
- Canthaxanthin (1)
- Catheter Ablation (1)
Institute
- Fakultät Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik (E+I) (bis 03/2019) (18)
- Fakultät Maschinenbau und Verfahrenstechnik (M+V) (12)
- Fakultät Wirtschaft (W) (5)
- INES - Institut für nachhaltige Energiesysteme (5)
- Fakultät Medien und Informationswesen (M+I) (bis 21.04.2021) (3)
- CRT - Campus Research & Transfer (2)
- ACI - Affective and Cognitive Institute (1)
- ivESK - Institut für verlässliche Embedded Systems und Kommunikationselektronik (1)
Open Access
- Closed Access (19)
- Open Access (17)
- Diamond (1)
- Gold (1)
The growing demand for active medical implantable devices requires data and or power links between the implant and the outside world. Every implant has to be encapsulated from the body by a specific housing and one of the most common materials used is titanium or titanium alloy. Titanium thas the necessary properties in terms of mechanical and chemical stability and biocompatibility. However, its electrical conductivity presents a challenge for the electromagnetic transmission of data and power. The proposed paper presents a fast and practical method to determine the necessary transmission parameters for titanium encapsulated implants. Therefore, the basic transformer-transmission-model is used with measured or calculated key values for the inductances. Those are then expanded with correction factors to determine the behavior with the encapsulation. The correction factors are extracted from finite element method simulations. These also enable the analysis of the magnetic field distribution inside of the housing. The simulated transmission properties are very close to the measured values. Additionally, based on lumped elements and magnetic field distribution, the influential parameters are discussed in the paper. The parameter discussion describes how to enhance the transmitted power, data-rate or distance, or to reduce the size of the necessary coils. Finally, an example application demonstrates the usage of the methods.
In the 19th century Alexander von Humboldt explored the nature and was conceived a new vision of nature that still influences the way we understand the new world. Humboldt believed in the importance of accurate measurements and precise description of observations. His vision of nature included not only facts but also emotions.
Nowadays smart solutions will be developed by using computer technology, which will influence our relationship to nature, our handling of the complexity and diversity of nature itself and the technological influences on the society. Could we avoid a new form of “Colonialism”, when a network of super computers will create a smarter world?
Quantification of astaxanthin in salmons by chemiluminescence and absorption after TLC separation
(2018)
Astaxanthin is a keto-carotenoid, belongs to the chemical class of terpenes and is a yellow lipid soluble compound. The compound is present in marine animals like salmons and crustacean. Its colour is due to conjugated double bonds and these double bonds are responsible for its antioxidant effect. Its antioxidant activity is ten times stronger than other carotenoids and nearly 500 fold stronger than vitamin-E. We present a new thin layer chromatography (TLC) method to measure astaxanthin on TLC-plates (Merck, 1.05554) in the visible absorption range as well as by using chemiluminescence. For separation a solvent mixture of cyclohexane and acetone (10 + 2.4, v/v) was used. The RF-value of astaxanthin is 0.14.The limit of detection in vis-absorption is 64 ng / band and the limit of quantification is 92 ng/band. In chemiluminescence the values are 90 ng / band and 115 ng/band. The method offers two independently working measurement modes on a single plate which increase the accuracy of the quantification.
The authors claim that location information of stationary ICT components can never be unclassified. They describe how swarm-mapping crowd sourcing is used by Apple and Google to worldwide harvest geo-location information on wireless access points and mobile telecommunication systems' base stations to build up gigantic databases with very exclusive access rights. After having highlighted the known technical facts, in the speculative part of this article, the authors argue how this may impact cyber deterrence strategies of states and alliances understanding the cyberspace as another domain of geostrategic relevance. The states and alliances spectrum of activities due to the potential existence of such databases may range from geopolitical negotiations by institutions understanding international affairs as their core business, mitigation approaches at a technical level, over means of cyber deterrence-by-retaliation.
Nonlinearity can give rise to intermodulation distortions in surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices operating at high input power levels. To understand such undesired effects, a finite element method (FEM) simulation model in combination with a perturbation theory is applied to find out the role of different materials and higher order nonlinear tensor data for the nonlinearities in such acoustic devices. At high power, the SAW devices containing metal, piezoelectric substrate, and temperature compensating (TC) layers are subject to complicated geometrical, material, and other nonlinearities. In this paper, third-order nonlinearities in TC-SAW devices are investigated. The materials used are LiNbO 3 -rot128YX as the substrate and copper electrodes covered with a SiO 2 film as the TC layer. An effective nonlinearity constant for a given system is determined by comparison of nonlinear P-matrix simulations to third-order intermodulation measurements of test filters in a first step. By employing these constants from different systems, i.e., different metallization ratios, in nonlinear periodic P-matrix simulations, a direct comparison to nonlinear periodic FEM-simulations yields scaling factors for the materials used. Thus, the contribution of the different materials to the nonlinear behavior of TC-SAW devices is obtained and the role of metal electrodes, substrate, and TC film are discussed in detail.
For an elastic medium containing a homogeneous distribution of micro-cracks, an effective one-dimensional stress-strain relation has been determined with finite element simulations. In addition to flat micro-cracks, voids were considered that contain a Hertzian contact, which represents an example for micro-cracks with internal structure. The orientation of both types of micro-cracks was fully aligned or, for flat micro-cracks, totally random. For micro-cracks with Hertzian contacts, the case of random orientation was treated in an approximate way. The two types of defects were found to give rise to different degrees of non-analytic behavior of the effective stress-strain relation, which governs the nonlinear propagation of symmetric (S0) Lamb waves in the long-wavelength limit. The presence of flat micro-cracks causes even harmonics to grow linearly with propagation distance with amplitudes proportional to the amplitude of the fundamental wave, and gives rise to a static strain. The presence of the second type of defects leads to a linear growth of all harmonics with amplitudes proportional to the power 3/2 of the fundamental amplitude, and to a strain-dependent velocity shift. Simple expressions are given for the growth rates of higher harmonics of S0 Lamb waves in terms of the parameters occurring in the effective stress-strain relation. They have partly been determined quantitatively with the help of the FEM results for different micro-crack concentrations.
Nowadays, robotic systems are an integral part of many orthopedic interventions. Stationary robots improve the accuracy but also require adapted surgical workflows. Handheld robotic devices (HHRDs), however, are easily integrated into existing workflows and represent a more economical solution. Their limited range of motion is compensated by the dexterity of the surgeon. This work presents control algorithms for HHRDs with multiple degrees of freedom (DOF). These algorithms protect pre- or intraoperatively defined regions from being penetrated by the end effector (e.g., a burr) by controlling the joints as well as the device’s power. Accuracy tests on a stationary prototype with three DOF show that the presented control algorithms produce results similar to those of stationary robots and much better results than conventional techniques. This work presents novel and innovative algorithms, which work robustly, accurately, and open up new opportunities for orthopedic interventions.
In rural low voltage grid networks, the use of battery in the households with a grid connected Photovoltaic (PV) system is a popular solution to shave the peak PV feed-in to the grid. For a single electricity price scenario, the existing forecast based control approaches together with a decision based control layer uses weather and load forecast data for the on–off schedule of the battery operation. These approaches do bring cost benefit from the battery usage. In this paper, the focus is to develop a Model Predictive Control (MPC) to maximize the use of the battery and shave the peaks in the PV feed-in and the load demand. The solution of the MPC allows to keep the PV feed-in and the grid consumption profile as low and as smooth as possible. The paper presents the mathematical formulation of the optimal control problem along with the cost benefit analysis . The MPC implementation scheme in the laboratory and experiment results have also been presented. The results show that the MPC is able to track the deviation in the weather forecast and operate the battery by solving the optimal control problem to handle this deviation.
The production of potable water in dry areas nowadays is mainly done by the desalination of seawater. State of the art desalination plants usually are built with high production capacities and consume a lot of electrical energy or energy from primary resources such as oil. This causes difficulties in rural areas, where no infrastructure is available neither for the plants’ energy supply nor the distribution of the produced potable water. To address this need, small, self-sustaining and locally operated desalination plants came into the focus of research. In this work, a novel flash evaporator design is proposed which can be driven either by solar power or by low temperature waste heat. It offers low operation costs as well as easy maintenance. The results of an experimental setup operated with water at a feed flow rate of up to 1,600 l/h are presented. It is shown that the proof of concept regarding efficient evaporation as well as efficient gas-liquid separation is provided successfully. The experimental evaporation yield counts for 98 % of the vapor content that is expected from the vapor pressure curve of water. Neither measurements of the electrical conductivity of the gained condensate, nor the analysis of the vapor flow by optical methods show significant droplet entrainment, so there are no concerns regarding the purity of the produced condensate for the use as drinking water.
Numerous 2,5-dimethoxy-N-benzylphenethylamines (NBOMe), carrying a variety of lipophilic substituents at the 4-position, are potent agonists at 5-hydroxytryptamine (5HT2A ) receptors and show hallucinogenic effects. The present study investigated the metabolism of 25D-NBOMe, 25E-NBOMe, and 25N-NBOMe using the microsomal model of pooled human liver microsomes (pHLM) and the microbial model of the fungi Cunninghamella elegans (C. elegans). Identification of metabolites was performed using liquid chromatography-high resolution-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-HR-MS/MS) with a quadrupole time-of-flight (QqToF) instrument. In total, 36 25D-NBOMe phase I metabolites, 26 25E-NBOMe phase I metabolites and 24 25N-NBOMe phase I metabolites were detected and identified in pHLM. Furthermore, 14 metabolites of 25D-NBOMe, 11 25E-NBOMe metabolites, and nine 25N-NBOMe metabolites could be found in C. elegans. The main biotransformation steps observed were oxidative deamination, oxidative N-dealkylation also in combination with hydroxylation, oxidative O-demethylation possibly combined with hydroxylation, oxidation of secondary alcohols, mono- and dihydroxylation, oxidation of primary alcohols, and carboxylation of primary alcohols. Additionally, oxidative di-O-demethylation for 25E-NBOMe and reduction of the aromatic nitro group and N-acetylation of the primary aromatic amine for 25N-NBOMe took place. The resulting 25N-NBOMe metabolites were unique for NBOMe compounds. For all NBOMes investigated, the corresponding 2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine (2C-X) metabolite was detected. This study reports for the first time 25X-NBOMe N-oxide metabolites and hydroxylamine metabolites, which were identified for 25D-NBOMe and 25N-NBOMe and all three investigated NBOMes, respectively. C. elegans was capable of generating all main biotransformation steps observed in pHLM and might therefore be an interesting model for further studies of new psychoactive substances (NPS) metabolism.
Lithium-ion pouch cells with lithium titanate (Li4Ti5O12, LTO) anode and lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (LiNi0.8Co0.15Al0.05O2, NCA) cathode were investigated experimentally with respect to their electrical (0.1C…4C), thermal (5 °C…50 °C) and long-time cycling behavior. The 16 Ah cell exhibits an asymmetric charge/discharge behavior which leads to a strong capacity-rate effect, as well as a significantly temperature-dependent capacity (0.37 Ah ∙ K−1) which expresses as additional high-temperature feature in the differential voltage plot. The cell was cycled for 10,000 cycles inbetween the nominal voltage limits (1.7–2.7 V) with a symmetric 4C constant-current charge/discharge protocol, corresponding to approx. 3400 equivalent full cycles. A small (0.192 mΩ/1000 cycles) but continuous increase of internal resistance was observed. Using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), this could be identified to be caused by the NCA cathode, while the LTO anode showed only minor changes during cycling. The temperature-corrected capacity during 4C cycling exhibited a decrease of 1.28%/1000 cycles. The 1C discharge capacity faded by only 4.0% for CC discharge and 2.3% for CCCV discharge after 10,000 cycles. The cell thus exhibits very good internal-resistance stability and excellent capacity retention even under harsh (4C continuous) cycling, demonstrating the excellent stability of LTO as anode material.
One of the bottlenecks hindering the usage of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell technology in automotive applications is the highly load-sensitive degradation of the cell components. The cell failure cases reported in the literature show localized cell component degradation, mainly caused by flow-field dependent non-uniform distribution of reactants. The existing methodologies for diagnostics of localized cell failure are either invasive or require sophisticated and expensive apparatus. In this study, with the help of a multiscale simulation framework, a single polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) model is exposed to a standardized drive cycle provided by a system model of a fuel cell car. A 2D multiphysics model of the PEMFC is used to investigate catalyst degradation due to spatio-temporal variations in the fuel cell state variables under the highly transient load cycles. A three-step (extraction, oxidation, and dissolution) model of platinum loss in the cathode catalyst layer is used to investigate the cell performance degradation due to the consequent reduction in the electro-chemical active surface area (ECSA). By using a time-upscaling methodology, we present a comparative prediction of cell end-of-life (EOL) under different driving behavior of New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) and Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Cycle (WLTC).
On the Fundamental and Practical Aspects of Modeling Complex Electrochemical Kinetics and Transport
(2018)
Numerous technologies, such as batteries and fuel cells, depend on electrochemical kinetics. In some cases, the responsible electrochemistry and charged-species transport is complex. However, to date, there are essentially no general-purpose modeling capabilities that facilitate the incorporation of thermodynamic, kinetic, and transport complexities into the simulation of electrochemical processes. A vast majority of the modeling literature uses only a few (often only one) global charge-transfer reactions, with the rates expressed using Butler–Volmer approximations. The objective of the present paper is to identify common aspects of electrochemistry, seeking a foundational basis for designing and implementing software with general applicability across a wide range of materials sets and applications. The development of new technologies should be accelerated and improved by enabling the incorporation of electrochemical complexity (e.g., multi-step, elementary charge-transfer reactions and as well as supporting ionic and electronic transport) into the analysis and interpretation of scientific results. The spirit of the approach is analogous to the role that Chemkin has played in homogeneous chemistry modeling, especially combustion. The Cantera software, which already has some electrochemistry capabilities, forms the foundation for future capabilities expansion.
We present an electrochemical model of a lithium iron phosphate/graphite (LFP/C6) cell that includes combined aging mechanisms: (i) Electrochemical formation of the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) at the anode, leading to loss of lithium inventory, (ii) breaking of the SEI due to volume changes of the graphite particles, causing accelerated SEI growth, and (iii) loss of active material due to of loss percolation of the liquid electrolyte resulting from electrode dry-out. The latter requires the introduction of an activity-saturation relationship. A time-upscaling methodology is developed that allows to simulate large time spans (thousands of operating hours). The combined modeling and simulation framework is able to predict calendaric and cyclic aging up to the end of life of the battery cells. The aging parameters are adjusted to match literature calendaric and cyclic aging experiments, resulting in quantitative agreement of simulated nonlinear capacity loss with experimental data. The model predicts and provides an interpretation for the dependence of capacity loss on temperature, cycling depth, and average SOC. The introduction of a percolation threshold in the activity-saturation relationship allows to capture the strong nonlinearity of aging toward end of life (“sudden death”).
Design of a Programmable Passive SoC for Biomedical Applications Using RFID ISO 15693/NFC5 Interface
(2018)
Low power, low cost inductively powered passive biotelemetry system involving fully customized RFID/NFC interface base SoC has gained popularity in the last decades. However, most of the SoCs developed are application specific and lacks either on-chip computational or sensor readout capability. In this paper, we present design details of a programmable passive SoC in compliance with ISO 15693/NFC5 standard for biomedical applications. The integrated system consists of a 32-bit microcontroller, a sensor readout circuit, a 12-bit SAR type ADC, 16 kB RAM, 16 kB ROM and other digital peripherals. The design is implemented in a 0.18 µm CMOS technology and used a die area of 1.52 mm × 3.24 mm. The simulated maximum power consumption of the analog block is 592 µW. The number of external components required by the SoC is limited to an external memory device, sensors, antenna and some passive components. The external memory device contains the application specific firmware. Based on the application, the firmware can be modified accordingly. The SoC design is suitable for medical implants to measure physiological parameters like temperature, pressure or ECG. As an application example, the authors have proposed a bioimplant to measure arterial blood pressure for patients suffering from Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD).
A printed electronics technology has the advantage of additive and extremely low-cost fabrication compared with the conventional silicon technology. Specifically, printed electrolyte-gated field-effect transistors (EGFETs) are attractive for low-cost applications in the Internet-of-Things domain as they can operate at low supply voltages. In this paper, we propose an empirical dc model for EGFETs, which can describe the behavior of the EGFETs smoothly and accurately over all regimes. The proposed model, built by extending the Enz-Krummenacher-Vittoz model, can also be used to model process variations, which was not possible previously due to fixed parameters for near threshold regime. It offers a single model for all the operating regions of the transistors with only one equation for the drain current. Additionally, it models the transistors with a less number of parameters but higher accuracy compared with existing techniques. Measurement results from several fabricated EGFETs confirm that the proposed model can predict the I-V more accurately compared with the state-of-the-art models in all operating regions. Additionally, the measurements on the frequency of a fabricated ring oscillator are only 4.7% different from the simulation results based on the proposed model using values for the switching capacitances extracted from measurement data, which shows more than 2× improvement compared with the state-of-the-art model.
Oxide semiconductors are highly promising candidates for the most awaited, next-generation electronics, namely, printed electronics. As a fabrication route for the solution-processed/printed oxide semiconductors, photonic curing is becoming increasingly popular, as compared to the conventional thermal curing method; the former offers numerous advantages over the latter, such as low process temperatures and short exposure time and thereby, high throughput compatibility. Here, using dissimilar photonic curing concepts (UV–visible light and UV-laser), we demonstrate facile fabrication of high performance In2O3 field-effect transistors (FETs). Beside the processing related issues (temperature, time etc.), the other known limitation of oxide electronics is the lack of high performance p-type semiconductors, which can be bypassed using unipolar logics from high mobility n-type semiconductors alone. Interestingly, here we have found that our chosen distinct photonic curing methods can offer a large variation in threshold voltage, when they are fabricated from the same precursor ink. Consequently, both depletion and enhancement-mode devices have been achieved which can be used as the pull-up and pull-down transistors in unipolar inverters. The present device fabrication recipe demonstrates fast processing of low operation voltage, high performance FETs with large threshold voltage tunability.
An Ultra-Low-Power RFID/NFC Frontend IC Using 0.18 μm CMOS Technology for Passive Tag Applications
(2018)
Battery-less passive sensor tags based on RFID or NFC technology have achieved much popularity in recent times. Passive tags are widely used for various applications like inventory control or in biotelemetry. In this paper, we present a new RFID/NFC frontend IC (integrated circuit) for 13.56 MHz passive tag applications. The design of the frontend IC is compatible with the standard ISO 15693/NFC 5. The paper discusses the analog design part in details with a brief overview of the digital interface and some of the critical measured parameters. A novel approach is adopted for the demodulator design, to demodulate the 10% ASK (amplitude shift keying) signal. The demodulator circuit consists of a comparator designed with a preset offset voltage. The comparator circuit design is discussed in detail. The power consumption of the bandgap reference circuit is used as the load for the envelope detection of the ASK modulated signal. The sub-threshold operation and low-supply-voltage are used extensively in the analog design—to keep the power consumption low. The IC was fabricated using 0.18 μm CMOS technology in a die area of 1.5 mm × 1.5 mm and an effective area of 0.7 mm2. The minimum supply voltage desired is 1.2 V, for which the total power consumption is 107 μW. The analog part of the design consumes only 36 μW, which is low in comparison to other contemporary passive tags ICs. Eventually, a passive tag is developed using the frontend IC, a microcontroller, a temperature and a pressure sensor. A smart NFC device is used to readout the sensor data from the tag employing an Android-based application software. The measurement results demonstrate the full passive operational capability. The IC is suitable for low-power and low-cost industrial or biomedical battery-less sensor applications. A figure-of-merit (FOM) is proposed in this paper which is taken as a reference for comparison with other related state-of-the-art researches.
Various methods of Digital Manufacturing (DM) have been available for the manufacturing of physical architectural models for several years. This paper highlights the advantages of 3D printing for digital manufacturing of detailed architectural models. In particular, the representation of architectural details and textures is treated. Furthermore, two new methods are being developed in order to improve the conditions for the application of digital manufacturing of architectural models.