No abstract available

[en] Highlights: • Surface-associated processes affect the SPR biosensor responses. • Interaction of Tris with carboxylic groups of SAMs and short DNAs demonstrated. • Complex kinetics of interaction of Tris with carboxylic groups of SAMs decoupled. • Effect of buffer on determination of surface coverage of DNAs demonstrated. Functional materials employing organic coatings on inorganic substrates are perceived as potential platforms for applications in a variety of fields. Therefore, the investigation of interactions of such systems with the microenvironment has become an important research direction in surface science. Herein, we study the interaction of one of the buffers most commonly used in biological studies, Tris buffer, with self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiols and short DNAs using a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor. We show that the interaction between Tris and carboxylic groups of SAMs is a complex multiphasic process. We demonstrate that Tris base binds to the protonated carboxylic groups. When those groups become deprotonated, Tris base dissociates and Tris acid is attracted, which results in the formation of a diffuse layer over the charged surface. In addition, we show that the interaction of Tris with the immobilized DNA molecules biases the determination of surface concentrations of the immobilized DNA molecules and thus also the determination of hybridization efficiencies.

[en] Effects of texture on the electrochemical behaviors of single grains in polycrystalline zinc were investigated using a capillary-based micro-droplet cell. Pontiodynamic sweeps and capacity measurements were carried out in pH 9 borate buffer solution. The cyclic voltammograms and the capacity measurements on single grains with different crystallographic orientations in polycrystalline Zn showed a strong dependence of oxide growth on crystallographic grain orientation. The total charge consumed for oxide formation and the inverse capacity increased with an increase of surface packing density of grain, suggesting the oxide formation was greater on grains with higher surface packing density

[en] 65-nm CMOS element of matching for content-addressable memory resilient to impact of single nuclear particles is proposed. Element includes upset-hardened STG DICE memory cell and XOR logical gate based on two tristate inverters. Transistors of the element are separated into two identical joint groups spaced on the chip by distance of more than 4 μm, which practically excludes the possibility of cell upset under impact of single nuclear particles. Designed element of matching is implemented in resilient to single event effects translation lookaside buffer of microprocessor. (paper)

[en] Ba_0.5Sr_0.5TiO₃(BST) thin films were prepared on very thin buffer layer ( 10 nm) of the same BST by rf sputtering. The crystal orientation of the BST films was very dependent on the deposition rate of the buffer layer deposited at 700 .deg. C. As the deposition rate of the buffer layer decreases from 3.0 nm/min to 0.25 nm/min, the crystal orientation changed from (110) to (111), and the electrical properties, such as the dielectric constant or the leakage current, were greatly improved. The crystallization temperature was also lowered to 250 .deg. C

[en] To meet the demand for high on-chip network performance, flexible routing algorithms supplying path diversity and congestion alleviation are required. We propose a CAOE-FA router as a combination of congestion-awareness and fair arbitration. Buffer occupancies from downstream neighbors are collected to indicate the congestion levels, among the candidate outputs permitted by the odd-even (OE) turn model, the lightest loaded direction is selected; fair arbitration is employed for the condition of the same congestion level to replace random selection. Experimental results show that the CAOE-FA can reduce the average packet latency by up to 22.18% and improve the network throughput by up to 68.58%, with ignorable price of hardware cost. (paper)

[en] The effects of Niobium on the structure and properties(especially electric properties) of passive film of Zirconium alloys in pH 8.5 buffer solution are examined by the photo-electrochemical analysis. For Zr-xNb alloys (x = 0, 0.45, 1.5, 2.5 wt%), photocurrent began to increase at the incident energy of 3.5 ∼ 3.7 eV and exhibited the 1^st peak at 4.3 eV and the 2^nd peak at 5.7 eV. From (i_ph hv)^1/2 vs. hv plot, indirect band gap energies E_g¹ = 3.01∼3.47 eV, E_g² = 4.44∼4.91 eV were obtained. With increasing Nb content, the relative photocurrent intensity of 1^st peak significantly increased. Compared with photocurrent spectrum of thermal oxide of Zr-2.5Nb, It was revealed that 1^st peak in photocurrent spectrum for the passive film formed on Zr-Nb alloy was generated by two types of electron transitions: the one caused by hydrous ZrO₂ and the other created by Nb. Two electron transition sources were overlapped over the same range of incident photon energy. In the photocurrent spectrum for passive film formed on Zr-2.5Nb alloy in which Nb is dissolved into matrix by quenching, the relative photocurrent intensity of 1^st peak increased, which implies that dissolved Nb act as another electron transition source

[en] In this work, a novel three-layer SiGe strain relaxed buffer/strained Si_0.5Ge_0.5 layer stacking structure is systematically investigated. The novel three-layer graded SiGe strain relaxed buffer, whose Ge concentration increased from bottom to top by roughly 10% with an in situ annealing after each layer grown, can effectively constrain the threading dislocation in the strain relaxed buffer layer. Moreover, a chemical mechanical planarization process can be applied to the strain relaxed buffer to further improve its surface roughness. A high crystal quality and atomically smooth surface Si_0.5Ge_0.5 layer can be successfully realized on the novel chemical mechanical planarization-treated three-layer SiGe strain relaxed buffer. This strategy can attain at least 50 nm and 0.6% compressive strained Si_0.5Ge_0.5 layer and its quantification of the strain level is confirmed by utilizing the scanning moiré fringe imaging technique. It can be seen that this novel structure can provide a better mobility and larger width for the FinFET or nanowire SiGe channel device.

[en] The third-order incremental dual-basis set zero-buffer approach was combined with CCSD(T)-F12x (x = a, b) theory to develop a new approach, i.e., the inc3-db-B0-CCSD(T)-F12 method, which can be applied as a black-box procedure to efficiently obtain the near complete basis set (CBS) limit of the CCSD(T) energies also for large systems. We tested this method for several cases of different chemical nature: four complexes taken from the standard benchmark sets S66 and X40, the energy difference between isomers of water hexamer and the rotation barrier of biphenyl. The results show that our method has an error relative to the best estimation of CBS energy of only 0.2 kcal/mol or less. By parallelization, our method can accomplish the CCSD(T)-F12 calculations of about 60 correlated electrons and 800 basis functions in only several days, which by standard implementation are impossible for ordinary hardware. We conclude that the inc3-db-B0-CCSD(T)-F12a/AVTZ method, which is of CCSD(T)/AV5Z quality, is close to the limit of accuracy that one can achieve for large systems currently

[en] Bentonite has been considered as a candidate buffer material in the underground repository for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste because of its low permeability, high sorption capacity, self sealing characteristics, and durability in nature. The water uptake from the rock and the associated swelling causes a penetration of the bentonite into open fractures, the front of the advancing clay being characteristically very soft. Knowledge of the potential extent of colloid generation is required to estimate the required stability for disposal borehole buffer material and to estimate the potential influence of bentonite colloid on radionuclide transport in deep geological media. It has been recently shown that bentonite colloids can be generated at the host rock/buffer interface of such repositories. Bentonite colloids may constitute an additional mechanism for radionuclide migration toward the geosphere and biosphere, provided they are stable. In this study, therefore, the potential for generation of bentonite colloids caused by the groundwater erosion and the resulting bentonite colloids was studies experimentally for a Korean Ca-bentonite under repository relevant conditions