Sharif Digital Repository

In this work, the electrokinetic properties of asphaltene particles have been investigated. Micro-electrophoresis method by applying DC electric field, was utilized to different mixtures containing asphaltene to determine its electric charge. It was observed that in the case of using n-heptane and its mixture with toluene (heptol), the asphaltene particles were showed to be positively charged however for toluene itself, they expressed no tendency toward the electrodes. While it is expected that larger asphaltene aggregates carry higher electric charge, the results contradictorily showed that they are mainly governed by gravity rather than electro-static force and that “aggregation” reduces... 

Scaling transistor size to the scale of the nanometer coupled with reduction of supply voltage has made SRAMs more vulnerable to soft errors than ever before. The vulnerability has been accentuated by increased variability in device parameters. In this paper, we present an analytical model for critical charge in order to assess the soft error vulnerability of 6T SRAM cell. The model takes into account the dynamic behavior of the cell and demonstrates a simple technique to decouple the nonlinearly coupled storage nodes. Decoupling of storage nodes enables solving associated current equations to determine the critical charge for an exponential noise current. The critical charge model thus... 

In spite of various works which were carried out on CdO and porous Si (PSi) separately, the interesting properties of CdO/PSi/Si system are not known well. In this work, we study the photoconductivity of deposited CdO layer on PSi/Si system. PS and CdO layers were prepared by electrochemical anodisation of p-type crystalline silicon and pulsed laser deposition (PLD) of cadmium oxide target. Then samples were annealed in air at 500°C to increase their optical transmissions to a value as large as 90% for wavelengths above 700 nm. The XRD study reveals that the annealed films are polycrystalline with grain size of about 25 nm. SEM micrograph of the CdO/PSi/Si system indicates that CdO layer has... 

We used two digital methods—rise time discrimination (RTD) and an artificial neural network (ANN)—to simultaneously discriminate alpha particles and gamma rays detected by a phoswich detector (50 μm BC-400 coupled to 3 mm CsI(Tl)). The results for 10,000 pulses discriminated by the RTD method showed that the rise time distribution of the pulses is rather vast (between 200 and 800 ns for gamma rays and less than 40 ns for alpha particles). The same result was also observed in the dual-parameter diagram (pulse rise time versus area under the pulse) for an 241Am source. Then, as another approach, three pulse features—rise time, pulse height ratio, and charge ratio—were extracted from 2000... 

Titanium does not react well with the human tissues and due to its bio-inert nature the surface modification has yet to be well-studied. In this study, the sonoelectrochemical process has been carried out to generate TiO2 nanotube arrays on implantable Ti 6–4. All the prepared nanotubes fill with the vancomycin by immersion and electrophoresis method. Drug-releasing properties, antibacterial behavior, protein adsorption and cell attachment of drug-modified nanotubes are examined by UV–vis, flow cytometry, modified disc diffusion, BSA adsorption, and FESEM, respectively. The most uniform morphology, appropriate drug release, cell viability behavior and antibacterial properties can be achieved... 

Despite a diverse range of active pharmaceutical agents currently at our disposal, high morbidity rate diseases continue to pose a major health crisis globally. One of the important parameters in this regard is the controlled cargo delivery at desired sites. Among a variety of synthetic and natural macromolecular systems, chitosan, an abundant biopolymer, offers a platform for tailored architectures that could have high loading capacity of cargo, target and deliver. Stimuli directed accumulation of vehicles and drug release is an area of direct relevance to biomedical applications. In this review, we highlight essential characteristics of modified chitosan that present themselves for... 

This paper presents an optimal phasor measurement units (PMUs) placement algorithm for the purpose of power system observability and also increasing the performance of secondary voltage control scheme. The optimal placement problem (OPP) is formulated such that to minimize the number of PMU installations subject to full network observability and monitoring pilot buses of the system to improve secondary voltage control performance. The branch and bound optimization method is adopted to solve the OPP problem which is suitable for problems with integer and boolean variables. Topology-based algorithm is used for observability analysis. Constraint functions considering adjacent zero-injection... 

Single-phase ac-dc Power Factor Correction (PFC) rectifiers have attracted considerable attention in recent years due to the adoption of increasingly stringent power quality regulations. In this paper a nonlinear model predictive controller design for a single-phase Flyback PFC rectifier is presented. After approximation of the tracking error in the receding horizon by its Taylor-series expansion to a specified order, an analytic solution to the model predictive control (MPC) is developed and a closed-loop nonlinear predictive controller is introduced. The main advantage of this digital control method is that unity power factor can be achieved over wide input voltage, load current range and... 

Distribution systems management is becoming an increasingly complicated issue due to the introduction of new technologies, new energy trading strategies, and new deregulated environment. In the new deregulated energy market and considering the incentives coming from the technical and economical fields, it is reasonable to consider Distributed Generation (DG) as a viable option to solve the lacking electric power supply problem. This paper presents a mathematical distribution system planning model considering three planning options to system expansion and to meet the load growth requirements with a reasonable price as well as the system power quality problems. DG is introduced as an... 

Porous gelatin-chitosan microcarriers (MCs) with the size of 350 ± 50 μm were fabricated with blends of different gelatin/chitosan (G/C) weight ratio using an electrospraying technique. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to study the quantitative influence of process parameters, including blend ratio, voltage, and syringe pump flow rate, on MCs diameter and density. In the following, MCs of the same diameter and different G/C weight ratio (1, 2, and 3) were fabricated and their porosity and biocompatibility were investigated via SEM images and MTT assay, respectively. The results showed that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) could attach, proliferate, and spread on fabricated porous MCs... 

Bacterial transport parameters play a fundamental role in microbial population dynamics, biofilm formation and bacteria dispersion. In this study, the novel model was extended based on the capability of microsized microbial fuel cells (MFCs) as amperometric biosensors to predict the cells' chemotactic and bioelectrochemical properties. The model prediction results coincide with the experimental data of Shewanella oneidensis and chemotaxis mutant of P. aeruginosa bdlA and pilT strains, indicating the complementary role of numerical predictions for bioscreening applications of microsized MFCs. Considering the general mechanisms for electron transfer, substrate biodegradation, microbial growth... 

A novel solid phase microextraction (SPME) fiber was fabricated by electrospinning method in which a polymeric solution was converted to nanofibers using high voltages. A thin stainless steel wire was coated by the network of polymeric nanofibers. The polymeric nanofiber coating on the wire was mechanically stable due to the fine and continuous nanofibers formation around the wire with a three dimensional structure. Polyamide (nylon 6), due to its suitable characteristics was used to prepare the unbreakable SPME nanofiber. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of this new coating showed a diameter range of 100-200nm for polyamide nanofibers with a homogeneous and porous surface...